Can sane, responsible citizens see any way or any reason to send these scalawags back to Washington? Oh, I know.  We say that new faces don’t know the ropes and can’t accomplish anything.  Really?  Can new faces possibly do any worse at governing than the old faces?  I can’t abide sending these people who don’t understand the meaning of civil service back into the halls of Congress to push their personal agendas any longer. How about we bond together, reshuffle the cards, and see what new lawmakers can do?

I’m more than ready.  Let me know what you think.

Dear Mr. Bucshon:

Yes.  We’re fortunate that the Senate exhibited some measure of sanity by rejecting the ill-advised cut, cap, and balance bill out-of-hand, and I note with some sadness your gleeful support of it.

The poor in our country suffer enough without the added burden that such poor legislation attempts to hang around their necks. You and others need to work hard, first, to require the wealthiest Americans and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes by closing tax loopholes that place the responsibilities of funding government squarely on the backs of middle-class Americans. Without this source of revenue, your call for cutting spending rings hollow, and your constituency will not be fooled much longer.

The circus that surrounded the debt ceiling legislation will hurt the chances for reelection of most sitting Congress people, and rightly it should.  To complain about the bill after doing little to nothing to solve the problem over the last many months tells Americans that we sent the wrong people to Congress.  You can change our minds (unlike so many in Washington, Americans do both believe in and practice compromise), but we will watch your efforts when you return to Washington, and you should know that we both expect more from you and do hold you accountable for your words and for your actions.

Please, stop parroting party language (as most of your response represents), and start thinking critically about how your votes will affect people rather than numbers. We expect that of our representatives.  Should you not understand quite well the responsibilities of civic service (and, apparently, many in Congress do not), please read Cicero of Rome’s challenges to those who choose to serve.  Your responsibility is to the people at large and not to a party.  Hopefully, you’ll soon start exhibiting that understanding.

Regards,

Kenneth D. Johnson

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Most people who pass through our halls of higher learning exit believing that they can know what’s “True” and “Right,” and if others don’t see it their way, then those others must be little more than ignorant. As we watched Congress this past week and saw many who defiantly chanted, “NO COMPROMISE!,” we reaped the terrible results of higher education teaching them that they can know with certainty what’s right in matters of exigency.

We can overlook people believing in only one way when their backgrounds did not allow for much pursuit of academic sorts of knowledge.  When one knows only one thing, then that one thing becomes the answer to all questions. But our Congress people all participated in higher education, and, purportedly, learned something throughout those years. Thus, we tend to think that they now stand up for what they learned and came to believe. Clearly, they came to believe that their ways, and only their ways, can count as the right ways, and since they believe that they’re right, they found no reason to compromise. This results in disastrous courses of actions as we observed over the past few weeks.

Our colleges and universities harbor thousands of people who teach what our Congress people believe, and they do the sort of harm that we saw evident in the behavior of our leaders last week. They saw no need for discourse, no need for explanations, and no need for compromise.  Thus, we saw the citizenry start viewing leaders as despicable characters—people who brought out the worst in each other.  Writing in his book Orators & Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education, Bruce Kimball  noted that, “Searching for truth without giving commensurate attention to the importance of public expression inevitably leads the individual to isolation and self-indulgence and the republic to amoralism and chaos” (238).

Educated people understand that every decision that we make is based on incomplete information.  We never know all we can know about any subject.  In fact, the more we know about anything, the more we understand how little we know about that thing, because we see the vast amount of information that we don’t know! So, we decide based on the information of the moment.   And as we all know, new information can alter the beliefs of the moment.  That’s why we compromise.  We understand that the other side of an issue may rank equally with what we believe, so we seek a middle ground that can work until we all gain information that might cause us to change again. Thus, those who celebrated our leaders who refused to compromise join their ranks as unlearned and uneducated.

Without any other examples, the actions of our leaders during the manufactured crisis of the debt ceiling debate call us to reform our education.  We need more focus on understanding how we form our ideas, more focus on the importance of discourse, and more focus on compromise.  In short, we need more classes in the humanities and in rhetoric.  Rhetoric helps us understand that our goal doesn’t center on shouting our ideas and demanding adherence, a la the tea partiers. Our goal is to persuade and provide the opportunities for agreement. If we cannot prove that one way is right and the other wrong, then we can consider no viewpoint as absolute (Kimball).

We should not expect much from those who disdain discourse and compromise, for they shall surely disappoint us.  That said, neither should we elect those who refuse to grant benefits to opposing ideas.  We need to pay closer attention to what our candidates say while we stop demanding adherence to some set formulae that curtails conversation and thwarts agreement. Finally, we should demand that our universities stop teaching their products that they can know anything absolutely.  Understanding what the philosopher David Hume tried to tell us about experiments—that the same result a thousand times provides no logical necessity for the same result the next time—helps us embrace the possibility of getting ideas wrong.

We face many trials as citizens of the United States of America, but we may find none greater than changing the ways our colleges and universities educate and changing the sorts of people who will represent us.
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Kimball, Bruce. Orators & Philosophers. New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1995. Print.

Did you ever see anyone abandon a ship so fast? As soon as Congress completed dealing with the “manufactured crises,” and acting as if they sweated blood while doing so, they headed out-of-town to recoup their strength during their 5-week vacation while layoffs in the country, according to outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, surged to a 16-month high

Just what did Congress do to deserve such a leisurely break?  Let’s see, now.  They left the FAA in a state of flux, they left the country wondering what will happen with the “super committee” that will recommend our future direction, they left the unemployed wondering about their benefits, they left the retired wondering about their social security, they left students wondering about their education funding, and they left working, middle-class Americans wondering if their taxes will rise due to Congressional inaction. Well, all of that sure seems like they deserve a 5-week vacation at our expense!

As much as our tax system needs an overhaul, Congress needs an overhaul even more.  With all the pressing needs of the nation, Congress focused on manufactured crises, whether or not baseball players lied, and people’s sex lives.  Oh, yes, they certainly deserve a 5-week vacation at our expense.

We all need to contact our Senators and House Representatives and demand that they earn their keep. If any of us performed as poorly as our nation’s leaders, we would find ourselves unemployed.  Let’s tell them to return to Washington, deal with the issues, treat each other with respect, and work through our problems. If they don’t, let them know that our hue and cry will become, watch, vote, and replace.

Words. We say what we think we mean, and we hear what we want to understand.

Words. If we choose words carefully, either we can help others draw a clear meaning, or we can obfuscate intentionally.

Words. Our Washington leaders chose theirs carefully to fine-tune what they want us to believe even though that belief may not resemble at all what they did.

Our leaders became little more than advertisers over the past several weeks, and advertising is the only work that strips us of our dignity and offers to sell it back to us at a price—and oh what a price we’ll pay for this debt ceiling agreement.

Listen to the Congress people moan and groan about how little they like the agreement.  What do they intend by all that moaning and groaning?  They try to convince us that they’re just like us.  They want us to believe that they don’t first look after themselves and then look after the wealthy immediately thereafter.  They want us to think that they care about the middle class—about their health insurance, about their job losses, and about the foreclosures that so many face.  They use the words that they know will cause us to interpret what they mean in their favor.  After these several weeks, we should rename politics and call it advertising!

Congress people enjoy the best health care in America.  Why? Because they granted it to themselves.  Congress people enjoy the best retirement plan in America.  Why? Because they granted it to themselves.  Congress people enjoy the best perquisites in America.  Why? Because they granted them to themselves. Who do Congress people care about first? Themselves, with the richest Americans following closely behind. Our Congress doesn’t even resemble what the framers of our nation saw as the way to govern.  We need term-limits now, and Americans should set the salaries, benefits, and perquisites for those whom we elect. We need to change the way this country does business.

Congress needs to hear OUR words, and our words are term limits and refocused civil service.

From the above, you might guess that I don’t care much for the speeches delivered by most of our Congress people over the last several days. Party affiliation doesn’t seem to matter.  Both Democrats and Republicans captured the airwaves trying to persuade citizens of what a great job they’re doing as they huddle behind closed doors to find every possible way to help the wealthy stay rich and to drive the poor farther into ruin.  Democrats (except for Pelosi, and she causes me to wish that I lived in her district) did no better than Republicans as they told their constituents that they crafted a great deal knowing that no tax cuts for the rich found their ways into this horrible bill.  Republicans lauded themselves over ripping the heart out of support for college students and planning to do the same to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in the newly formed commission.

So what can we do about this? We need to rise up as we did in the 60s and say, “Enough!” to this worthless group of legislators in Washington.  About 1/3 of the Senate will stand for reelection in 2012 as well as all the House of Representatives.  We should clean up both the House and the Senate.  Starting fresh could place us in no worse straits than those in which we find ourselves. We hear politicians talk about grass-roots campaigns, so we should show them what one really looks like.  Let’s start letting our representatives know now that if they continue to protect the wealthy and hurt the poor, then they will find themselves among the unemployed in 2012. Let them hear OUR words and know that we mean them!

Let me know what you think.

Marcus Tullius Cicero served Rome as a rhetorician, philosopher, lawyer, and statesman during the last years of the Roman Republic prior to Rome sinking into the quagmire of Empire. Writing in De Officiis, and translated by Walter Miller, he said

Those who propose to take charge of the affairs of government should not fail to remember two of    Plato’s rules: first, to keep the good of the people so clearly in view that regardless of their own interests they will make their every action conform to that; second, to care for the welfare of the whole body politic and not in serving the interests of some one party to betray the rest. For the administration of the government, like the office of a trustee must be conducted for the benefit of those entrusted to one’s care, not of those to whom it is entrusted. Now, those who care for the interests of a part of the citizens and neglect another part, introduce into the civil service a dangerous element — dissension and party strife. The result is that some are found to be loyal supporters of the democratic, others of the aristocratic party, and few of the nation as a whole (XXV, 85).

Do we get what Cicero wrote? Do our civil servants understand that they should keep the good of the people in view and reject the interests of some one party to betray the rest? Clearly, our elected officials work towards one goal: to win reelection! Certainly, we can’t point to Cicero’s life as a stellar example of always serving in the best interests of the people, but we can point to his writings as a guiding light. In the current state of our republic, we certainly need someone’s guidance, for our crop of self-serving autocrats think only of themselves.

As electors, perhaps we should start considering now a whole new group of civil servants when the elections arrive. We need men and women who will, in the footsteps of Cicero’s words, seek the betterment of the nation. Let’s put our legislators on notice now that we will no longer tolerate sending them to Washington for their individual betterment.

Serve the nation, or we’ll bring you home. This beats the cry of any “tea service” that I can think of.

Clearly, the most onerous “promise” among the bunch is the one from a right-wing religious group in Iowa that started out telling us that black American slaves were better off living as slaves than living as free Americans under the current administration. Horrifically, the framers of this “pledge” saw nothing wrong with such a claim and only removed it after a hue-and-cry from around the country. Even after removing that language, the silliness of the document remains, yet we find some republican candidates, Santorum and Bachmann among them, rushing to sign the document in hopes of securing the group’s endorsement.

Among the requirements in “the pledge,” signers promise support of personal fidelity to his/her spouse, promise to appoint faithful constitutionalists as judges, promise opposition to any redefinition of marriage, and promise prompt reform of uneconomic and anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and divorce law. The Marriage Vow also outlines support for the legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), humane efforts to protect women and children, rejection of anti-women Sharia Islam, safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. military personnel, and commitment to downsizing government and the burden upon American families. Really, now, if we can’t believe that a candidate will act in the best interests of Americans and of the country when need for action arises, would a signature to such a document as this make any difference?

I don’t want anyone as President of the United States who will abdicate his or her responsibility of critically looking at every situation and deciding as best possible the prudent course of action regardless of what any special interest group thinks or demands. We see enough of that in Congress right now, and we certainly don’t need that carried into the White House! As the largest group of voters, i.e., those who don’t want or require signatures to any trumped up documents, let’s tell candidates if they want our votes then they should think for themselves. Let’s see just who agrees to do that.

I really do believe in the political process, but I also know Roman history. When the leaders and governors of Rome became so corrupt and insensitive to the needs of the people, Rome collapsed! Certainly, no one can claim that just because something happened in the past that it must happen again in the future (the cliché “history repeats itself” does not function as a maxim), surely we can see parallels in the stupidity of Rome and the stupidity of Washington. We need some people in Washington who understand the plight of the people who continue suffering rather than those who see only the “needs” of the wealthy!

I lived during the 60s and 70s—a time when Americans rose up against their government crying “Enough!” and demanding changes. Yes, we protested the war, but more importantly, we protested a government that lost touch with the people who elected them. We saw leaders who rejected the demands of constituents, and the country paid a terrible price. Today, we see leaders who vow to protect the wealthy, who crush the poor, and who think nothing of removing the lifeline of existence on which many depend in order to line their own pockets and pander to the people who will contribute to their campaigns!

I voted for Obama, but if he pursues his current direction, I can’t and won’t vote for him again. We need to tell our representatives to close the tax loopholes for the wealthy and to protect the poor and middle class. We can no longer afford to fund America on their backs.

McCain and others of his ilk do promise no compromise on one thing: They will work to protect the wealthy and their tax breaks no matter the cost to other Americans or the nation.

Clearly, many of our laws and government structures need overhauling and correcting. When Americans with disabilities cannot receive the assistance they need to live, we see problems in our nation’s way of doing business. When students worry that the federal government will cut off their funding for education while decrying the horrible education gap between Americans and other nations, we see problems in our nation’s way of doing business. When the wealthiest corporations and private citizens pay little to no taxes, we see problems with our nation’s way of doing business. Democrats should be shouting from the rooftops what tax breaks they demand curtailed, and try to let Republicans defend keeping those while almost every other American suffers.

Democrats must rally behind the President on this, and they need to put the Republicans both on notice and on defense. Americans both want and expect compromise. We’re willing to help fix our problems, but we want all paying their fair share. This is a compromise that thinking, caring people can agree to and live with. Why not let your Congress-people know that today?

Call your Senators and Representatives, and tell them to compromise—and to do it now! Seriously!