Why I Worry About Our Future: A Political Manifesto (or something like that)

Image of a woman and children during the Great Depression.
Copyright Dorothea Lange/Corbis

I made a pledge to myself that I would not make political posts on facebook for all of 2012, and I stuck to it for the most part. It was difficult. When seemingly intelligent friends posted untrue political stuff, or they belittled people like me with stereotypical nonsense, I was tempted to chime in. I passed up many "opportunities" to rebut the craziness that appeared every day. But it was kind of nice. It was peaceful. Although I'm a person with political opinions, I kept them off of facebook for an entire year. Then January 1, 2013 came! Yay! I don't have to be silent any more! Right?

The problem is, the majority of my friends hate seeing political posts on Facebook. I don't care for them myself, actually. But sometimes I get seriously worried about our country, and I feel like no one notices how we're clinging to a tiny life raft and about to get swallowed up into a giant abyss. I get the urge to wake people up, so I post something that helps me feel like I'm improving the situation. It never turns out the way I hope, though -- you know, throngs of friends making comments like, "Wow. You really made a valid point here. I am going to reconsider my previously held stupid views." What happens instead is that people who already agree with me bestow a thumbs-up upon my profundity, and the others get mad and mean - or disappointed that I can't just keep my opinions to myself.

Why do I care what people think, anyway? Probably because I care passionately about life and the fate of the human race.

So, with this post, I am bidding farewell to politics on Facebook again. I'm telling you this so that you'll hold me accountable (unless you make political posts yourself, in which case, I don't need you to hold me accountable). But I want a few things to be on the record before I make my exit. Consider it my political farewell speech. This is my blog, and I took the time to articulate my thoughts openly and honestly here. I would rather you didn't trivialize it by making sarcastic comments in favor of or in opposition to what I have written. I will delete any comment that implies that I don't care about other people or that I want to punish them. The exact opposite is true, and if you don't know that, you don't know me at all. I encourage you to proceed with caution, because if you take personal offense when people have different opinions than yours, your feelings may get hurt.

Here we go.

ON THE NATIONAL DEBT:
Do you guys realize how INSANELY IN DEBT we are? I think you don't. Because if you did, you'd know that at some point we'll be so completely far gone that some other country will literally own us. Ready for that? You think you'll enjoy the same freedoms you do now when that happens?  Look, I know we can't pay off the debt any time soon no matter how much we cut and tax, but how about just lowering the debt by, say, $1 a year? Too much? How about by 75 cents a year? Still too much? Okay, how about we just keep it exactly the same and don't add another dollar? The way it is now, the National Debt is growing by billions of dollars EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. It is incredibly self-absorbed and short-sighted of us to be doing this to our descendants. It's also stupid. And self-defeating. As you will see, every seemingly unrelated issue to follow will come back to this fundamental one. We are at risk of losing our freedoms in many, many areas because of our irresponsible management of money.

ON GAY MARRIAGE...AND HOMESCHOOLING:
I am a Christian. I believe that God loves all of his children far more than we are capable of loving each other. No matter how much I love my gay friends and relatives (and I sincerely love them), I have not found that homosexuality is supported by the Bible. I've read the whole thing. However, I am a human being, and I accept that I can be wrong. I don't expect anyone else to share my beliefs. But do you respect my right to believe that homosexuality is not supported by the Bible? I respect your right to believe otherwise. Can you accept the fact that even though homosexuality is not supported by my faith, I like homosexuals? Can you accept that I am not afraid of or threatened by homosexuals in any way? Are you able to accept that I love my homosexual friends? Can you believe that there have been homosexual people in my life who have made me a better person? This is a highly contentious issue with passionate, articulate, and loving people on both sides. I honestly do not believe that we can legislate ourselves into agreement on it without turning our civil conversation into a polarizing battle. Here's my candid, unsolicited advise, which you can take or leave. Other people don't really need to support gay marriage for your gay marriage to be valid. People should treat everyone, including gay people, with decency and respect, and I agree that the government should play a role in protecting the human rights of gay people whether gay marriage is legal or not. If you believe in your heart that you should have a gay marriage, just have one. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. Do what YOU think is right and forget about everyone else. What? You want the piece of paper from the government that says you're married? If it were me, I'd make the piece of paper myself and forget about the government. There are so many things that are worse than the government not endorsing what you do. I homeschooled my kids and never once had the seal of approval of the government backing me up. I also never got any tax money to help me buy curriculum like public schools got. I had to pay the taxes that went toward the education of other people's children, but I never got any of those tax dollars back for my own children's education. I had to prove myself to the local school board every year in order to maintain the right to teach my own children for another year. It wasn't fair. But life isn't always the kind of fair that we want it to be. I homeschooled without political support because I believed it was the right thing to do. I never lobbied to get the same financial advantages that public schools got. I never received a salary or health insurance or a retirement plan for my years of teaching like public school teachers got. I had to buy everything from expensive textbooks to glue sticks myself, and I received no salary at all. The government never granted my kids a high school diploma. I just made diplomas for them. In my mind, none of this was fair. In your mind, perhaps it was. But regardless of the lack of support and endorsement I received from the government and society, it was worth it to me to homeschool. I did what I wanted to do and lived by my own beliefs, and ultimately that was all that mattered. In the scheme of things, we are responsible to make choices for ourselves. If you sincerely believe that a gay marriage is what you should have, then you go ahead and have one. It doesn't matter what I think, what your neighbor thinks, or what the government decrees as long as your basic human rights are protected just like everyone else's. It's between you and God as far as I'm concerned. I'm not your judge. One more thing to consider: if our country succumbs under massive debt, things will be so bad that you and I will wish for the good old days when problems like these were the things we had to deal with. Look at the picture of the woman above. Think she gives a flip about gay marriage and homeschooling?

ON BIG GOVERNMENT AND WALMART
First, understand that I'm not a fan of WalMart. I try to shop at other stores no matter what. But WalMart has low prices on cheap junk that lots of poor people want. Poor people can't afford the cool, made-in-America stuff that you can, and I think it's a bit snobbish to ridicule the cheap products that WalMart sells. They price their food lower than my preferred grocer, too. I don't like the fruit flies that swarm around their produce department, but I'm happy that there is a place to buy food affordably for people who have a hard time feeding their families. You think the government provides jobs? So does WalMart. And WalMart doesn't tax you to pay its employees the way the government does. You think WalMart should stop keeping low-income people down? I think the federal government should stop growing a dependent class of people on purpose. I did say on purpose. While it's a noble and good thing to provide welfare assistance to people in need, it's quite another sort of thing to grow the welfare program generationally to the point that some children have never known a relative with a job. It's racist and demeaning to the basic human need to feel a sense of personal responsibility and achievement. I know. I spent several years as a pauper, more or less, working in a housing project and trying to help the people there find ways to personally grow and succeed. I saw women having more babies just to increase the size of their welfare checks. I saw broken families everywhere, because the welfare checks were smaller or non-existent for intact families. Who is to blame for this? Not WalMart. You think WalMart hurts children in developing countries? I think our federal government is hurting children in our own developing neighborhoods. Here's my point. Don't hate on WalMart for its greediness, selfishness, and bad intentions without hating on the government for its similar offenses. At least Walmart isn't $16 trillion in debt. Like I said, I don't even like to shop at WalMart. It's pretty gross sometimes. But it serves a purpose. A whole bunch of people would be out of work if it weren't for WalMart. Although it's about the last place I'd like to work myself, I might do it if I were in desperate need. But wait! WalMart doesn't provide health insurance for all of its employees? No one provides health insurance for me. I have to buy it for myself, and it's expensive. Who are you guys boycotting because of that? And, wonder of wonders, some WalMart employees love their jobs. Look at the woman in the picture above. Think she gives a flip about WalMart? Even if WalMart is more bad than good, it isn't the threat to our livelihood that the government's incredible debt is.

ON ABORTION AND COMPASSION
True confessions time. When I was young and headstrong (as though I'm not both of those now), I used to boycott businesses that donated money to Planned Parenthood. I also would never consider voting for a pro-choice political candidate. But now, I don't boycott businesses that give to Planned Parenthood, and I don't find it necessarily relevant if a political candidate is pro-choice or pro-life. Why have I changed my actions in this way? Certainly not because I am in favor of abortion, and definitely not because I am a supporter of Planned Parenthood. I think most abortions are utterly cruel. Particularly late-term abortions. How completely barbaric. No, I've changed my actions because I have concluded that the political arena is not the place for issues of the heart. In a way, it is unfair for me to call abortion an issue of the heart. After all, a late-term abortion is so disgusting and horrible and, yes, murderous, that one would really need to stretch the context of the discussion to fairly label it an issue of the heart. Sorry. Do you know what they have to do to stop the life of a baby that is developed enough to be viable outside of the womb? Probably not. It would make you vomit and have nightmares. But I digress. I believe that abortion is not an issue that the federal government should have its hands on because, depending on the political party in power, we will potentially go from legal to illegal abortion repeatedly, and because you can't legislate people into believing what you believe. If you would like for your political party to decide the fate of the abortion issue, you should also consider the possibility that the opposing political party could do the same thing when it has a turn in power. Having said all of this, I should clarify that I will not vote for any candidate who supports late-term abortions. A person who can condone such a violent act upon a fully developed unborn child is not the kind of person I can respect. But I also truly believe that compassion must play a huge role in this issue. If a woman becomes pregnant because of rape or some other horrid situation, who am I to presume to tell her what she can and can't do about it? It's between her and God as far as I'm concerned. And God is a whole lot more compassionate than I am. Besides, if our country implodes under the strain of its enormous debt, who's to say that our right to have and not have babies will be protected at all? Seriously, they have mandatory abortions in China (the country that underwrites most of our debt) for families who exceed their two baby limit. I think we better work on our debt issue and spend more time reaching peoples' hearts if we don't like abortion rather than fighting an endless, polarizing political battle. (Think about it: you guys over there boycotting WalMart and Chick Fil-A because of low wages and gay marriage, and me over here boycotting General Mills and Whirlpool because of Planned Parenthood. It's kind of stupid...the supporters of those businesses turn out en masse to counteract our boycotts. Would boycotts over social issues matter even slightly to us if we and our children were starving like the woman in the picture above?)

ON POLITICAL PARTIES AND GROUP THINKING
Forgive me, but if you are a devout member of any political party, you have zero credibility with me. If you are liberal on every issue or conservative across the board, I don't believe you are a thinker. Why are so many college campuses, which should be by their nature hubs of critical thinking, havens for thinking that aligns primarily with one political persuasion? Why do so many journalists admit to being of that same political persuasion? I believe it has more to do with social pressure, conformity, and elitism than with the possession of superior intellect, because, "If everyone is thinking alike, somebody isn't thinking." (George S. Patton). Political parties are filled with good people, to be sure, but they foster and reward group thinking. It gets completely ridiculous during election seasons. Perhaps you know (or are) a person who has a never-ending stream of political talking points at the ready whenever anything happens in government, and by some miraculous spin of events, one political party is never responsible for anything bad that happens, and the other political party is always responsible for everything bad that happens. How many elected politicians have you seen publicly denounce something his or her own party has done? And how many times have you, yourself, publicly denounced something that your political party or a member of that party has done?  If you rarely speak out in that fashion, I believe that you are, in part, responsible for the political polarization we face today. The more you are able to agree and disagree with both political parties at different times, the more critical thinking you are doing. If you prefer to toe a party line, I submit that you do not value your mind enough to decide independently what you believe about individual issues. Do you care about the fate of our country as much as you care about your political party being in power? I don't think a party membership would be of much help to the starving woman and children in the picture above, and I regret that if our country sinks under a pile of debt, your party affiliation and dedication won't have mattered much at all.

ON FEMINISM
I am a woman. It should be obvious that I am grateful for the work that women before me did to open the way for future generations of women to have equal rights, equal pay, the right to vote, and the right to be heard. But although I consider myself a feminist, I have never identified much with the feminist movement, per se. Why? Because feminism at large seems to dislike people like me. I was a stay-at-home mother by choice. I made financial sacrifices to do that, and it was hard work. I never felt like feminists respected my career...or even thought of it as a career (Ever hear the word "housewife"?). I felt like most of them would have preferred that I get a "real" job and pay other people to take care of my kids. If my husband had been a stay-at-home dad while I brought home the bacon (or an acceptable vegan substitute), I think they would have loved that. But I don't think they much cared for me doing it. Am I wrong? Another reason I feel left out of feminism most of the time is that it tends to be one-sided politically. You would think that the women's movement would exist for all women, regardless of their beliefs. You know, diversity, and all that. But conservative women don't get the same support from feminist groups that liberal women do. I am a small business owner, a teacher, a pianist, a composer, a researcher, and a history buff, among many other things. I went back to school at an all-women's college after many years as a stay-at-home mom and graduated first in my class. What's not to love about me? I think there are some feminists out there who are simply uncomfortable with strong women who intelligently articulate a conservative narrative. Am I wrong?

ON GUN VIOLENCE
This morning I heard on the news that an activist filmmaker whose name escapes me would like to wipe out the NRA by publishing photographs of the horribly mutilated bodies of the the murdered children from Sandy Hook Elementary School. His plan is apparently to unite us non-murdering good people into impulsively banding together to get rid of the NRA through the infliction of extreme visual shock. I'm sure we would be more than shocked. We would be mortified, repulsed, sickened, and utterly broken by these images. Who wouldn't be? I'll tell you. The people who would murder children. I submit that senseless violent crimes are committed by disturbed, desensitized, and/or evil people. Mr. Film Guy seems to be overlooking a fairly obvious point. Sick-minded people have a different sort of response to negative stimuli than we do. Instead of being repulsed by it, they draw inspiration from it. They get ideas from it. They formulate plans for garnering even more media and public attention than the last sicko did from it. Showing these images would further desensitize people who might already be unable to distinguish right from wrong in a mentally healthy way, and it might actually inspire some evil nut job to do something worse. I'm not into guns, and there are some types of weapons that I see no good reason for anyone to own; however, I think we will see more innocent lives lost if we do not address our real problems.

Far too many children today are raised with :

• Not enough parental love and supervision
• No meaningful reference to God at home or in the public square
• No meaningful association between spirituality and good character
• Blurred lines between right and wrong, good and evil
• Disrespectful language in public discourse
• No prayer in public schools
• No Ten Commandments on public property
• Easy access to violent video games
• Easy access to violent stimuli on television
• Easy access to violent movies
• Easy access to violent Internet stimuli
• Ignorance about mental health issues
• Inappropriately or inconsistently administered prescriptions
• A belief that teachers are to blame if they don't succeed in school
• A feeling of disconnect between others and themselves
• No sense of divine purpose for their life
• No sense of responsibility to others
• Adults who are either too busy or too detached to notice behavioral warning signs

If you ask me, and you didn't, I think these kinds of factors and others have given us exactly what we've asked for. A politically correct, religiously sterile, responsibility-free, egocentric, hedonistic, narcissistic environment. The stage is set for a blow-up. We're basically sitting ducks just waiting for the next disturbed individual to show up on the scene. How is getting rid of the NRA going to help us? The stage will still be set. Maybe we should take guns away from everyone, then. Let's pretend that we did that just now. Unfortunately, the stage is still set, and we missed several of the bad guys when we gathered up all the guns. What am I saying? That there is nothing we can do? Actually, there's a whole bunch we can do, but it would require us to violate the tenets of our politically correct, religiously sterile environment. If you are rebellious enough to do that, you may find some of my ideas interesting:

• Give up raising your kids without God. You may think it's enlightened, but it's not. Human beings are wired for a spiritual connection with God. Maybe your personal intellectual sufficiency has gotten you through this life okay so far, but your kids might just hunger for something more than a cerebral existence. Don't starve them of a spiritual life.
• Stop being offended by the Ten Commandments. Only idiots are offended by the Ten Commandments. You can't abolish the Ten Commandments in public places, marginalize Christian principles, and expect all people to just act right for the heck of it. 
• Don't let your kids play violent video games. Some kids cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy, and it's your job to know what's going into their heads. Be a grown up and do the job.
• Don't let your kids watch violent television. In fact, just cut the television off and make them play something that doesn't have to be plugged in. Extra credit if you play with them.
• Don't take your kids to violent movies. What idiot takes his kids to violent movies?
• Know who your kids hang out with and know what they do with them.
• Let your kids witness you turning to God for help when you don't know what to do. When they feel trapped, frustrated, lonely, scared, worried, and hurt, let them know that their heavenly father cares about that and wants to help. For their sake, please do that!
• Get help for your child if he exhibits warning signs of mental illness. Don't just hope it will go away, and don't pretend it's not happening.
• Deal with anger in a healthy way, and teach your kids how to as well.

Obviously, I believe that the root of our problem with gun violence is not guns. I do believe that we have to address problems within the existing legal framework pertaining to guns, however.

• Enforce old gun laws before you make new ones. If you are a legislator who refuses to do that, you are not sincere about wanting to help us. You're using peoples' emotions and sadness to get favorable attention for yourself and your agenda.
• Keep guns out of households in which any member has exhibited mental health issues. Make that part of the mental health treatment process.
• Don't get rid of the NRA in order to stop senseless gun violence. That doesn't make sense. Only get rid of the NRA if you hate it when law-abiding people who don't commit murder own guns.

May I just say that if showing pictures of Holocaust victims has not stopped evil people from plotting to wipe out Jews, showing pictures of the bodies of those precious Sandy Hook children is not going to discourage evil people from finding ways to kill more children. We've got to deal with our actual problem. Are you willing to sacrifice a bit of political correctness for that? 

You have reached the end of my "political manifesto." There are many more things to be said, but I'm stopping here. I leave you with these parting words. Please do not believe everything you hear. Care enough about your own credibility to do basic research. Avoid being a ridiculous imbecile. 

And so it was written.