A Modest Proposal (2012)

I have an answer to the divided political situation that plagues America.

Divide. That seems to be the only workable solution in a country where we split almost right down the middle on virtually all the fundamental issues we face. Both parties say there must be compromise to get anything done, but neither wants to make any real concessions to reach an agreement. Obama's idea of compromise is Republicans agreeing to his agenda. The Republican efforts at compromise tend to look like the George W. Bush era which, frankly, was satisfying to neither conservatives nor liberals.

Why not just give up on the idea that we need to remain fifty united states? Who says fifty is a magic number anyway. Have you looked at the electoral map of the last election? Geography doesn't really matter that much in our digital age, but for convenience sake, we could remain pretty contiguous in the new nation (under God) I propose. The "other guys" would be splintered and scattered, but that seems poetically justifiable. (Click this link to see my map.)

Most of  the current states that are equally divided can be partitioned easily. Virginia lets D.C. annex the surrounding counties. Pennsylvania can split somewhere between the I-76 and I-80 corridors. Ohio could do the same using I-70 and I-80. Michigan just gives the south east counties to North Ohio. They wanted that land back in the Toledo War anyway, so let them have it. (I would let them take everything west to Lansing if they wanted, although I know some State fans who would object.) We may have to continue the division across northern Indiana and Illinois even though I realize that cuts off West Michigan (my new home state) from her sisters to the south. I could live with that since I am not giving up the entire Great Lakes to the other guys. Add parts of Iowa and pretty much all of Wisconsin and Minnesota and you have the tier complete.

Moving out west, I suspect if division fever really strikes, there might be three different countries along the coast. Seattle is so distinctly different from San Francisco which is different from San Diego that I don't see them making nice. Oregon would probably go along with Washington, but I don't know the politics there well enough to predict. I would love to see San Diego vote with our side; they have the best weather anywhere and that would give us a Pacific seaport. This would be contiguous with the southern tier also. I wouldn't complain if Nevada went with the rest of the left coast fruitcakes; gambling and deserts would be no loss.

So there you have it. I know it gets a little sloppy with my insistance on keeping West Michigan and the U.P. in our camp. There are doubtless hundreds of other similar issues buried in my simplistic division of states with which I am unfamiliar. I don't care. This is what I call compromise. As for the names of these two new nations, I propose the Central States of America for our side and the Discontinuous Democratic Socialist Atheist Union of Like-minded Liberals for their side. Or they can pick their own name.

They can have the Navy and the Marines and the Coast Guard; we will take the Army and the Air Force. They can have the paper dollar and we will go back on the gold standard. We will keep Old Glory and they can have the LGBT flag or whatever they want. We will declare English the official language of our country, but we will universally teach Spanish as a second language in our schools and invite everyone to assimilate into our traditional American culture. We will keep the borders open with the DDSAULL (or whatever they choose to call themselves,) but we will close the border with Mexico and invite everyone who lives in our territory to become citizens with all the rights and privileges and responsibilities pertaining thereto.

Any citizen who can pass a rigorous background check (parameters to be decided) can carry a weapon openly or concealed. All religions will be free to practice as they wish, but the Bible will be brought back into schools and used as a moral foundation for all students. Prayer to whatever God one chooses will be welcomed. Homosexual practices will be treated the same as smoking or alcohol abuse; these behaviors create unwanted health problems and shorten life expectancy and as such should be warned against, not promoted. This is not a moral judgment; it is a general welfare consideration.

We will have no IRS. Revenue will be generated by a consumption tax on all purchases except groceries. Manufacturers will pay the tax on capital expenditures but not raw materials (trying to avoid double taxation.) Deficit spending and government borrowing will be illegal; all spending will be based on projection of revenue. All government entities will be required to operate under a balanced budget which will be submitted prior to the fiscal year for which it applies. Medicare and Social Security allotments will be deducted from revenue on a per capita actuarial basis and placed in escrow from which payments will be made. A separate fund will be established for paying present citizens already receiving payments.

As for foreign policy, we will not join the United Nations. We will seek friendly relations with any nation that wishes to deal openly and honestly with us and their own people. We will not have military bases in any other nations unless they invite us and pick up at least half the tab. The same deal goes for defending our allies. If they can't put up at least half of their own defense, we will not help them fight their battles. Fair trade treaties will be welcomed with any nation that applies.

There it is. I know this has been a rant: what I would do if I were king of the world. I needed this. After last Tuesday, I needed this. It was fun to think about. Could it ever happen? You tell me.

The Real Cliff is Behind Us

There must be a reason why this country could elect Obama twice.

So I’m standing in line to vote Tuesday and I hear a female voice behind me explaining how she made her voting choices saying, “I only look at the .orgs; the .coms are all biased.” Shocked, I turned around enough to see she was a twenty-something blonde in sweats and running shoes talking to an older matronly looking woman. My first thought was to say, “What are you; stupid or something?” I stifled that and said, “Oh, I knew you had to be blonde to make a comment as stupid as that one.” Okay, I didn’t say that either, but I wanted to.

This is how we elect someone as unqualified and decidedly incompetent as Barak Obama to a second term. All economic indicators are worse now than when Obama was elected in 2008. More people are unemployed and more on government assistance than during the Bush years. Our foreign policy is in a shambles. Think assassination of ambassadors and shooting at drones in international air space. Obama has commited to the public record more lies than the prevaricator-in-chief Bill Clinton, yet none of this information is making it to the blonde twenty-somethings who have voting rights. I wonder if the founding fathers’ idea that only certain select people should vote has merit.

The real problem is the media environment and education system we have fostered in America. Our education system no longer teaches the skill of critical thinking. We spoon feed answers to pre-selected questions. This is what I find my students in college expecting from me. The concept of coming to an answer through a process of reasoning is completely foreign to most of my students. Combine this with a media culture that feeds disinformation or outright falsehoods in attractive, entertaining packages (The Daily Show, for example) and you have a recipe for a misinformed electorate.

I typically don’t go in for conspiracy theories. I was not behind the movement to prove Obama was not born in the US, although I still wonder why he couldn’t provide a birth certificate. I know exactly where mine is. I didn’t agree with the critics who claimed Obama was a secret Muslim, although I know from his policies and pastors he is not the kind of Christian I am. No pastor of mine has ever said, “God damn America.” The bottom line is that it does not take a conspiracy theory to see that the media deserves at least part of the credit for Obama’s reelection. Common sense says that his record should have doomed his reelection from the beginning. But since the media did not allow his true record to be shown, the voters like the blonde behind me in the voting line did not see the whole story and couldn’t vote on the facts. Add to that her misconceived idea that moveon.org is not biased.

Was it by some coincidence we didn’t learn about the President’s failure in the Benghazi affair until after the election. Why is it that the fiscal cliff everybody talks about won’t be dealt with until after the election. The so-called auto bail-out by the President will never be shown as the government take-over it was because the media won’t tell it like it is. The loss of religious liberty hidden in Obamacare won’t make it to the public consciousness. Each of these unwritten stories remain because the major media outlets are infatuated with Obama.

It was Thomas Jefferson who said our republic would not survive without an educated electorate. I am afraid we have reached the point where survival is unlikely. If there are many more like the blonde behind me in the voting line, we are doomed. I suspect I am late coming to this conclusion; we just reelected a man who had no business being President in the first term. That he was reelected proves there is a cliff behind us worse than the so-called fiscal cliff ahead. It was the educated electorate cliff, and we have already flown over the edge.