Saturday, May 19, 2007

Fundamental Problems

With the death of the Reverend Jerry Falwell this week and having just taken a history exam with an essay about the rise of conservatism in America, I got to thinking about the current state of America. For all the political rhetoric saying otherwise, we live in a country so morally and culturally divided that we are either in, or rapidly approaching, a culture war. There are so many people in this country who feel that the government should be the moral arbiter and that we should become a Christian nation, it is truly sickening. The fact that people could look up to a man, such as Falwell, who blamed September 11th on homosexuals and single mothers, leads me to believe that maybe we do live in a nation of morons. Are people really so willing to believe others as a replacement for finding their own answers? Maybe Vladimir Putin was right when he compared Bush's foreign policy to that of the Third Reich. Fascism is allowed to flourish when people stop asking questions and blindly accept whatever a ruler says.

This is the problem with religious interest groups playing a bigger and bigger role in American politics. Fundamentalist Christians, Jews, Muslims are fundamentalist because they have stopped asking questions and started only to accept answers from Reverends, Rabbis, Imams. While this may be fine in believing mythology, this is not how a representative democracy can function. Just because a politician is a leader and has power does not mean he is always right. In next year's election, we should focus not on a candidate's faith, but his politics. How can a person who by the very definition of his job has to send young men to foreign lands to die reconcile that with any religion? Of course, policy is no longer a political issue anymore. People care more about bogus issues such as abortion, gay marriage and banning pornography than balancing the budget, reforming the criminal justice system or getting rid of standardized tests in elementary school. The former are issues of personal liberties of which the government has no right to make policy; the latter are. It is a far bigger problem that a vast majority of middle schools think that Martin Luther King's "dream" was to end slavery than the fact that they don't say the "Our Father" after the Pledge of Allegiance. The more religious this country becomes, the stupider it becomes. Democracy teaches us to question, religion teaches us to blindly accept. The two cannot be reconciled. Until we all realize this, we will become further split between the secular and the religious and when such a sharp divide occurs, well, just look at the Middle East.

Monday, May 7, 2007

Voting our Values Away

In Novembers 2000 and 2004, the small percentage of Americans who actually do vote decided to vote not with their wallets or their heads, but with their hearts. Americans voted for President Bush because he was all about values and morality because he was a born-again Christian (so was Karla Faye Tucker and Bush did not commute her death sentence). Really America? Really? Not that anyone reading this will need to be reminded but George Bush used to be addicted to cocaine and alcohol which almost led his wife Laura to pack up and leave with the girls. Furthermore, he was the governor of TEXAS. While he was governor of Texas, the state executed more convicts than all the other states combined. Would Christ ever allow a retarded person to be executed?

Q is willing to let all the above slide. Seriously, as a once-born Catholic I forgive him for his past sins and hypocrisies. There is one thing, however, for which President Bush and his entire administration can never be forgiven. On 29 Sunday 2007, John Sullivan and Spencer S. Shu wrote in the Washington Post that over $800 million dollars in foreign aid for Hurricane Katrina relief was unaccepted by the government. Furthermore, instead of taking this free aid from our allies, the administration decided to pay other groups to do the same work. For instance, Greece offered two cruise ships to be used as free hotels and hospitals for victims. Instead, the administration paid, yes paid $250 million to Carnival Cruises to do the same. The administration also refused cash and oil from Middle Eastern countries meaning that instead of getting free oil and lowering energy prices the administration (read: oil companies) decided to refuse both the cash and the oil and I have to pay $3 per gallon.

While this incredible ineptitude and hubris by this administration is deplorable and nauseating, the fact that no politicians have spoken publicly about this since the publication of this article is just as deplorable and nauseating. This whole sad affair proves but one thing to me: our federal government has failed us and continues to fail us. Everyone is busy campaigning and fundraising for an election that is exactly 19 months away and yet people in the Gulf Coast still live in trailers.

I am often questioned about my ambivalence towards voting. Why should I vote for someone who does not give a damn about their own country? Why should I vote simply to put air an already over-inflated ego? Abraham Lincoln said, "The job of government is to do for its citizens what they cannot do for themselves." The unfortunate souls in the Gulf Coast cannot do anything in their current situation, yet the government won't do it either. I will vote come 7 November 2008. I really will. It won't be for the Democrats and it won't be for the Republicans. I'm going to vote for a 3rd party candidate. Get everybody who is in there out of there. They have failed us all and they do not deserve our votes.