In Chicago, there is a fierce debate in the City Council about changing the name of iconic Lake Shore Drive after the name of Chicago’s first non-indigenous settler, because he is black.
In Washington, Democrats want to overhaul the entire election
system in our country with the barest possible majority in the Senate.
There is something wrong in each of these situations.
We have forgotten the basic premise of our
Constitution.
“We the People
of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice,
insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the
general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our
Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of
America.”
Our government
is about forming a more perfect union.
We have never been more divided.
Establishing justice. Justice is about treating every person the
same. Now it depends on your economic
status, your race, gender identity, and an ever-increasing number of factors
that individualizes your justice.
Ensuring domestic
tranquility. We have never had as much
domestic turmoil and unrest as we do today.
Providing for
the common defense. The oaths our
leaders take recognize enemies, domestic and foreign. We no longer even understand the roots of our
country to know what a domestic enemy is.
Promoting the general
welfare. We have divided our country
into a myriad of groups all competing for a share of the common pie such that
there is no general welfare anymore. Everybody
has their own list of what they want.
So in Chicago,
people are trying to ram through a change of name for Lake Shore Drive, knowing
it is a divisive decision. In
Washington, the Democratic Party, with the slimmest majority possible, wants to
eliminate the filibuster, so it can pass highly contentious bills with a split
Senate that will only divide the country more.
The purpose of
our government is for the welfare of the American people, to bring peace and
tranquility, but it seems the government only wants to foster anger and division.
We need to stop
being in a such a rush to pass bills that we know are controversial and spend
more time talking about them and trying to reach more of a consensus before we
expect to make changes in our country or our city.
We are told that
this unrest, this turmoil, all these divisions are a reckoning for centuries of
abuse, mistreatment, and exploitation.
Yet for the
last 55 years, since our immigration system was changed to favor minorities,
our country has been flooded with minority immigrants, legal and not. It seems that America, with all its flaws, is
still the most attractive country in the world in the eyes of the world to move
to.
What is lost in
the discussion here is that changes that result from a conflict without efforts
at conciliation only harbor and build resentment. Many of the changes that are rushed through
are only symbolic and do nothing to change the regular lives of anybody.
At the core of
these divisions is the basic idea of what America is all about. We all agree America is about rights, but we
don’t agree on what that means.
The founding
document of our country is the Declaration of Independence. The founding principle of our country is that
all people are created equal and that God gave inalienable rights to human
beings. And it is the role of government
to protect those rights.
Being created
equal meant that nobody has a divine or inherent right to rule over other
people.
And inalienable
rights are rights that precede and supersede government. Government did not give them, and government
cannot take them away. Things you can do
without the government’s permission, regulation, or interference.
Now we think of
rights as things the government owes you, things that other people have to do
for you, things that compel other people to change their behaviors.
These rights
require the government to spend enormous amounts of money, incurring ever-increasing
levels of debt. These rights require
that the government take money from some people and give it to others. These rights require people to do things they
don’t want to do, to accommodate the rights of other people.
I believe we
have lost our way as a country, and the divisions have created a fog that keeps
us from seeing clearly the real issues that we need to talk about. I hope this is a start.
