08.09.07
Politics
We are beginning the “silly season” a year early. This means that we get to wade through the politicians talking one another down and trying to come up with cute phrases that will fit in a thirty second “sound bite”.
I have to admit that I am far from ready to listen to the politicians argue, but when I do start to listen, I want to hear:
- Visions for the future and plans for how to accomplish that vision
- An emphasis on individuals, families, and smaller businesses and organizations–rather than larger corporations and organizations–in every plan, I want to hear how it benefits the “regular Joe and regular Jane” American.
- How to break up the concentration of power in Washington, DC and in the larger corporations and organizations that run things behind the scenes. How to make government accessible to ordinary Americans. Rather than having the federal government collect taxes and then give money to the states (with strings attached, naturally) to build and fix highways, I’d like to hear about ways to put more of the control and funding in the hands of the states. I want to hear how we can push some of the decision-making power into more localized levels of government, where individual citizens have more of a voice than they do in the nationwide government.
- How to return power to parents and teachers and students, rather than the layers of “educrats” that infest our educational system today. Teachers are generally hard-working and dedicated individuals, trapped in a morass of overly-specific requirements that prevent them from giving the attention to the areas that they perceive are most needy. Parents are given instructions to take their childrens’ all-important “free” time and fill it with homework.
You know what I don’t want to hear? I don’t want to hear:
- how this person is bad or evil or corrupt or he changes his mind sometimes.
- how someone is too liberal or too conservative.
- about this or that candidate’s personal peccadilloes (well, within reason)
Our nation is self-destructing, and all I hear are insults.
