Who Will You Vote For?

 ”If you think I am off base, tell me why Obama ideas are not just old liberal solutions or why McCain isn’t McBush.  I am more than willing to listen.”

We are so conditioned by the public media to put everyone in a neat little box so we can dismiss them as another one of “those” people.  After my last blog about Exxon I received some emails accusing me of being some closet left-winger communist.  Sorry.  It’s just not true.  I am a true blue American looking for leaders who have truly new ideas to lead us to be more than what we have become.

America’s promise has always been that we can determine the quality of our own life. Where we start in life does not determine where we finish.

We strive to be a society that promotes the key conditions to help us optimize our quality of life no matter what our circumstances.  Doing that isn’t easy.  It requires constantly balancing four distinct priorities: freedom and responsibility, opportunity and equality.  If any one of these values are lost or even de-emphasized, our system is thrown out of balance.  People lose confidence and our national mood sours.  Today, lots of us are in a sour mood.

Maybe we’re nauseated because we’ve lost our balance.  When leaders govern from the center, they do it from a balance point that gives all of us the best chance for life, liberty and happiness.  That’s why, most of the time, leaders who advocate policies that respect all four values simultaneously make the most sense to the most of us.

But recently we have been out of whack.  Way out.  Politicians say the right things, but they don’t do them.  More and more, it’s the people on the fringe who determine the debate and push the agenda because they either deliver the cash or the votes.

These days, the loudest voices shout from the lower Right or the lower Left.  On the lower Right, the Right wing of the Republican Party, all we hear are the values of opportunity and freedom.  Our ideals are reduced to the single notion that everyone should press their self-interest and leverage their advantages to the max.  That’s America!

Their mantra insists only on low taxes and few regulations.  Their ideal nation would have no capital gains taxes, would have open borders and would keep us neck-deep in maids, nannies and day laborers.  Their prophetess is economic philosopher, Ayn Rand, who actually wrote a book entitled, The Virtue of Selfishness.  Their high priest is Milton Friedman, who claimed, “The social responsibility of business is to make a profit. (Collins, David.  (2004).  Tylenol Revisited: Friedman and the current CSR debate.  In David Collins (Ed.), Corporate integrity and accountability (p.20).  Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.) In their perfect world, economic and social Darwinism creates the best society.  The strong, the smart, and the clever win.  The lazy and stupid suffer through their own lack of effort.  That’s the natural laws of cosmically ordained economics working.  The market rules.  The market is perfect.  If you aren’t rich, well educated, healthy and well-connected, you are to blame.  Period.  If you want it to be different—get off your butt.

Lower Right thinking is how the wealthy justify their neglect of everyone else.

The lower Right also manipulates the millions of Americans with traditional religious values even as they privately ridicule them as intellectual hillbillies.  These corrupt politicians, many with sordid personal lives and vulgar private opinions, tout their “religiously correct” views to radicalize their followers and pick their pockets with no intention of changing anything.

On the lower Left, we hear the weak voices of recycled liberalism.  This whiny crowd focuses on protecting the weak instead of educating, empowering, and holding them responsible.  It promotes freedom as the excuse to choose continuing irresponsibility as a viable way of life.  Higher taxes, cumbersome regulations and more bureaucracy always seem to result from the ideas of the lower Left.

Lower Left thinking leads to everyone waiting in line, sharing equally in scarcity.

Today, the real American Dream has been hijacked.  Not by terrorists, but by superficial ideals, the small ideas of powerful people, and the incompetence of our institutions. In the past we’ve tried to promote the American Dream by raising taxes and writing checks.  But the “Great Society” wasn’t so great.  More recently we decided to unleash business and challenge people to be on their own.  As a result we’ve bankrupted the country, worn out our military, and strangled our middle class.  Meanwhile, the Democrats have had a majority in congress for two years, and yet all they do is complain and wag their fingers.  So the Democrats seem like sissies and the Republicans act like bullies.

The result is what we have.  It’s not working.  At least not for enough of us.  Our problems aren’t caused by either lack of public welfare or a lack of personal responsibility. We don’t seem to have leaders who have any truly new ideas.  The democrats want to make us cry and republicans want us to be afraid.  We need to stand for something more.

By now I am sure I have offended everyone, but that’s how I see things.

If you think I am off base, tell me why Obama ideas are not just old liberal solutions or why McCain isn’t McBush.  I am more than willing to listen.

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