To the Editor:
I feel sad for the residents of Birdland.
They continue to live in a world where all is black and white: us vs. them, rich versus poor, left vs, right. There is no gray in Birdland and the residents are told who to love and who to hate, who is good and who is bad.
The irony of the “conversation” from Birdland (an oddly chosen name for a partisan monologue) is that there is much truth in it, but not in the way the author intended. We do have a group of people who think they are better than the rest of us, deserving of more goods and services, entitled to superior medical care, more important because their net worth is higher, etc. It’s just not the group that the author would have us believe.
We have indeed sat by while we, from our own gullibility, created a royal class distinguished by possessing power and wealth that the commoners do not. It is not the CEOs or the other “evil rich.” It is a class consisting of the politicians – of both parties – that we have sent to Washington.
These people, who truly do make the decisions that affect the rest of us commoners, live the lifestyle of the rich and famous, have their own incredibly rich retirement plans, have a healthcare plan that is the envy of all Americans and pay for almost nothing that the average citizen must pay for.
Our Constitution viewed the citizen politician as just that, an average citizen – farmer, laborer, store owner, etc. – who went to Washington for a few short years as a representative of the others he worked and lived with and who returned to his normal life after that.
Instead, we have the career politician, who upon arriving in Washington starts planning for re-election, learns where the money and power really are and determines how to get more of both.
While we struggle to fill our gas tanks, they ride free – on our dime. While they deride the corporate jet owner, they fly free on government jets – on our dime.
While we all suffer from their poor fiscal decisions, they get a nice raise – voted on by themselves. In my world, the employee does not get to tell the employer what benefits and wages s/he will receive. Over time they have lulled us into believing that we are the employees and they the employers.
But in Birdland, they would have us believe exactly what these politicians want us to believe. You see, the politicians love all the talk of class warfare, us vs. them, rich vs. poor.
Because if we believe that, our eyes have been diverted form the real problem – our wealthy politicians who continue to vote themselves fat salaries and benefits while telling us that they’re looking out for us. Nothing to see here, folks, just move along peacefully.
We can all continue to watch this dance while our country loses its soul completely or, as individuals and communities, we can act. There is an interesting proposal going around for a 28th amendment to our Constitution – you know, that quaint old document that our founders wrote to guide this country. It is simple but not simplistic. The text is as follows:
“Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and Representatives that does not equally apply to the citizens of the United States”.
Of course this doesn’t solve all the deals that Congress creates without actually passing law, but it does start a very important conversation for all of us – not a monologue of pithy lines about class warfare.
Please do not let the view from Birdland sway you into the hate mentality that Congress would delight in seeing, pitting citizen against citizen while they continue to enrich themselves. Our problems are rooted in our government’s lust for money and power not our CEOs.
Whatever amount of money we send to the government, they will spend and then spend more. They will never be satisfied as shown by an increasing debt that now accounts for $4 billion per day. It must be stopped. Not by turning us against each other, not by creating a civil war, but by re-creating our government.
Thomas Jefferson famously said:
“To preserve the independence of the people, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.
“If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor 16 hours in the 24, give the earnings of 15 of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the 16th being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they do now, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet the chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers.”
Yes, our founders were wise teachers. Unfortunately, government curricula have removed their thoughts from most classrooms.
Shall we all end up living in Birdland while we become, as Jefferson has predicted, mere slaves to our government? Or will enough of us care enough about the United States of America to return her to “the shining city on the hill?”
– Stuart R. Goldstein,
Green Creek