I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Why Americans Hate Their Government

A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll indicates that only 44% of Americans think President Obama is doing a credible job. And only 13% think Congress is doing the job its members were elected to do.
This is a complicated issue, of course, and I am not an expert at political analysis. Perhaps, however, one does not have to be to see what is happening. Here is my take on why Americans hate the government they voted into office.

There are three things, in my judgment, that have turned people against their elected officials. The first has to do with the economy at the time of this writing, which, for those reading some time later, is September, 2011. People expect their elected leaders to be able to provide jobs so that they can feed their families and pay their bills. There is some debate as to just how reasonable this expectation is, of course. Many understand that presidents and Congresses have limited power to create jobs. One political philosophy says the government should get more involved and spend taxpayer money to stimulate the economy while another political philosophy says the government should get off the backs of business owners so they can hire people. The ugly truth just may be, however, that people are ultimately the creators of jobs. As people invest in the goods and services they need and want, others are hired to help produce those goods and services, which in turn creates more consumers and thus more demand and thus more jobs. At least that is the theory.

But sometimes things just don’t work, no matter what philosophy is behind the attempts to make things work. We seem to be stuck in such a time currently. Unemployment is high and that causes tax revenues to be lower than expected and governments do not have the money to do the things they promised the people they would do.

Which leads to the second phenomenon at work in this situation. It has to do with the way people interpret their relationship with their leaders.

When I was a pastor, I noticed that when things were going well in the church I pastored, the people tended to say, "Well, we must be doing something right because God is really blessing us." They tended to say that when attendance was up, and offerings were up, and people were enjoying themselves as a church family.

But when hard times hit, and attendance was down, and offerings were down, and people were discouraged, they inevitably said, "Well, if our pastor were doing the right things, this would not be happening."

The same thing seems to be true of citizens in a free society. When jobs are plentiful and prosperity is high and people are free to indulge themselves in pleasures, they hardly give their leaders a second notice. But when things are not good, and many are unemployed and the media is feeding a line day after day about how bad things are, well, then it must be Washington’s fault. It may well be the pastor’s fault in one case, and it may well be Washington’s fault in the other. But we tend to blame our leaders whether it is their fault or not, and whether they had the ability to prevent it or not, and whether they have the ability to fix it or not.

Mentioning the media brings me to the third cause, as I see it. We do have a free press in America, which is an essential element of any free society. But a free press can also become a controlled press, by its own choices. It is not the government that controls the press, but it is the ideologies of those who own, manage and work in the media.

In America we have Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and their kind who regularly, daily, fill the air waves with rhetoric that is often vitriolic and pointed like a sharpened, poison-filled arrow at the very hearts of anyone with whom they disagree. They call names and they lay blame at the feet of those on the other side of the political spectrum. They gain followers by the score who in turn began to believe the rhetoric they are constantly fed until they turn the hatred that produces against their leaders, especially those on the "other side." All liberals must be scoundrels. Glenn said so. Rush said so.

But there are also so-called commentators on the other side. Rachel Maddow. Chris Mathews. Bill Maher. These are popular over-the-air political entertainers who also fill the air with vitriolic and sarcastic barbs at the other side. They gain a large following and their followers began to believe the satire and sarcasm they listen to each day. All conservatives must be scoundrels. Rachel said so. Chris said so. Bill said so.

It is the conservative entertainers against the liberal entertainers. The net result of these popular but misguided entertainers is an ever deepening gulf between the two sides in the public mind.
Add to this the financially well-endowed special interest groups like the liberal moveon.org, or the conservative Eagle Forum, and the free-flowing rhetoric that is only loosely tied to facts that each produces, and the gulf dividing Americans grows wider.

We have unions against corporations, educators against family values proponents, rich against poor, Democrats against Republicans, gun owners against gun controllers. We have Jimmy Hoffa referring to Tea Party people using a derogatory phrase and calling for a war against them. We have Sarah Palin calling for conservatives to put liberals in their "crosshairs" to eliminate them.

We cannot, of course, stifle these sources because of free speech rights, nor should we want to. Perhaps what is needed is a more responsible and objective approach from the political entertainers and commentators, and a more understanding average citizen who understands these sources have a bias to promote and are not adverse to doing or saying or spending any amount of money to hold the opposition up to ridicule and ruin, irregardless of the truth.

We expect, in our two-party system, that our political leaders will have differences of opinion and philosophies. We expect them to approach problems from their differing perspectives. But we also expect them, once they are elected, to find ways to work through their differences for the good of America. We don’t expect them to dig their heels in and refuse to cooperate with each other, and call each other names and throw the blame for all the country’s ills on the other party. It is that, I believe, that Americans are most upset about today. Our elected officials, whether conservative or liberal, are simply not working together for the good of America.

In this respect, they are not much different than the political commentators who rake in huge dollars for their network owners at the expense of Americans working together for the common good.

Monday, September 5, 2011

I Appreciate Those Who Labor

It is Labor Day, 2011, a holiday I did not particularly care for when I was a child because it’s passing meant I had to go back to school! Some of that feeling continued into my later adult years when I became a high school English teacher. Labor Day still was associated with going back to school after an all too short summer.

It was my native Canada that supplied the inspiration for Labor Day in the United States. Peter McGuire of the American Federation of Labor got the idea of celebrating this day while attending a labor festival in Toronto, Ontario in May of 1882. On September 5 of that same year, the first Labor Day celebration was held in New York City. In 1887, Oregon was the first state to turn the day into a state holiday. Twenty-nine other states followed Oregon’s example. In 1894, a strike witnessed the deaths of several laborers in conflicts with the military and U. S. marshals. When the strike was settled, President Grover Cleveland sought reconciliation with the labor movement. A bill was introduced in Congress, passed unanimously and signed by the President establishing the first Monday in September as Labor Day, a federal holiday in all fifty states and the District of Columbia.

Now in my eighth decade of life, I can say I have spent my whole life avoiding hard physical labor. I have always tried to use my brains instead of my brawn, even though I am not unusually endowed with either. In the jobs I chose while working my way through college and seminary, in my ministry choices of pastor, high school teacher, and now writer and editor, I exercise the muscles between my ears far more than those in my arms, legs and back. Because of this I have sometimes taken an unsympathetic view of those who do use those muscles to earn a day’s pay. I have been wrong in this.

American workers provide the muscle that makes architectural drawings turn into real brick and steal buildings and engineering specs into real automobiles. They provide the physical infrastructure needed to transmit ideas and words instantly around the world. They build and put satellites in space. They build and maintain the equipment doctors use to treat patients. It is their hard work that brings to reality the dreams and ideas of others.

I salute the workers around the world today. I appreciate your efforts, without which I could not do the things I do. It is sad that we live in a very difficult time for workers, a time when jobs are scarce and workers and their families are hurting. I do not pretend to understand all the reasons why this is happening now here in America and in other parts of the world, and I do not know what the solution is. However, it is my prayer that the dreamers, designers and thinkers of the world soon again will be hiring workers to turn those dreams, designs and thoughts into the real world products we all need and depend on. Without workers who have the skills to build and create in the physical world, all the people who have the ideas and thoughts are just idle dreamers.