The Sun-Times editorial (January 5) noted that our country
now ranks 16th in the world in livability where we were number one
as recently as 1988. It’s “time to start
climbing from no. 16 ranking,” though the article didn’t tell us how but did
offer several noble reasons why it is so hard to stay on top.
It’s hard to be livable when we are “absorbing large
immigrant populations” [their words, not mine] and “trying to make multiculturalism
work.”
But we have always had a large immigrant population. Isn’t that what we keep hearing, that we are
a nation of immigrants and that immigrants built our country? We didn’t just start doing this in 1988 after
we last led the list.
And why is trying to make multiculturalism work such a good
idea? That just means that we believe we
have no uniquely American culture, American values or identity, or at least one
that we want newcomers to our country to embrace. One culture is as good as another. Is that a good thing? Exactly what is it that made our country the
one that more people want to go to than any other in the first place?
The editorial gives the various reasons why Switzerland is
the number one country for livability:
1) The Swiss
have money. Our government has decided
to be responsible for the welfare of 300 million people and is now over $18
trillion in debt. Many people, including
in the media, don’t see what the problem with that is. For one thing, debt makes everything that you
buy more expensive, so you are wasting money that could be spent better
elsewhere. And this takes money out of
the economy, meaning your pockets, to pay for all this.
2) The Swiss
not only have a low crime rate, but people feel safer there. We used to teach morals to our kids, but that
involved religion, and we don’t want any part of that anymore. And there is nobody at home anymore to raise
the kids, because if there are two parents there, they both need to work just
to get by, and the rest of the homes only have one person there, and, well,
kids do better with two. Kids are raised
today more by their peers and the media than by parents’ role modelling and
personal instruction.
3) The Swiss
can find decent work. We sent millions
of good paying, decent jobs overseas. We
call it free trade. The idea of free
trade sounds so noble, so American, but instead of other countries sending
their goods to us without being taxed, we just sent our companies and our jobs over
there to send our own goods back to us.
But didn’t this help our export business? No export business will exceed what a country
needs to produce just to meet the needs of its own people. How much of our products were they expecting
that we would sell overseas anyway, especially with our higher labor costs?
4) The Swiss
have good schools. We used to have good
schools, the best in the world, until we started the federal Department of
Education to run our schools. They are
mediocre at best today. We need to get
rid of that department and return education to the local level. Homeschooled kids regularly do better than
public schools students.
5) The Swiss
don’t retire broke. We used to have
people who could live off the interest of their savings. But now with the government debt so high,
they manipulate the interest rates so that they stay low, so people don’t see
the true cost of the massive debt of our government. So any money left in banks loses value. And with our manufacturing jobs gone, people
aren’t making enough to save anything let alone money for retirement.
The editorial then names two other factors that are taken
into consideration here: the health of family life and trust in public
institutions.
1) We have no
family to speak of anymore. We have made
the idea of a stay-at-home mom demeaning, and we have even made it impractical
as well, since it is becoming harder all the time to provide for a family on
one income. We have encouraged children
without marriage and children without their natural parents, so children are
more along the line of pets that only need a minimum of care.
2) Trust in our
public institutions is at an all-time low.
‘But then it is not surprising.
The President of the United States has shown himself to be an inveterate
liar, but the public and the media shrug it off as overselling or
politics. The government seems to be a
world unto itself, finding new ways to spend money it doesn’t’ have to gain the
favor of different groups of people who they want to vote for them in the
future.
The game is how to gain benefits
for themselves and close allies in ways that don’t attract the public
attention.
Now the editorial asks us to start climbing out of this
mess. But how?
I contend that our problems stem from the idea that our
country is supposed to be a secular nation, and anything religious must be strictly
private and totally absent from anything having to do with government.
Why is this the problem?
Because it is hard to talk about yet alone teach morals apart from
talking about God or a Higher Power. So
our schools are bereft of moral instruction, and our families, what’s left of
them, have little time or energy for that either. After several generations of this, we have a
population whose only morals are pragmatism and tolerance. No one’s looking out for anyone else anymore,
because that is a religious concept, so it’s everyone out for themselves.
There is a lot more that can be said, but this is a letter
and not a book.
