I'm testing out my "Hit-and-Run" style posting again. I probably won't be responding to any criticisms, unless you REALLY piss me off, and even then, I may just say FUCK YOU and move on. Here's is my belief on several current issues/non-issues.
Immigration: The country was founded on Immigration, and is currently working off the back of illegal immigrants. We DO need a plan fashioned to deal with the 11,000,000+ aliens currently living in the US, and perhaps some form of Guest worker program is a nice start, but the idea of charging them back-taxes and charging people who assist them with a felony is over-the-top. Make a concerted effort to legalize or deport these people within reason, but let's not become a police-state and alienate a viable and closest international neighbors. Don't claim to be the "Best Country in the world" then get angry when people risk their lives to get here.
African-American Reparations/Affirmative Action: "Everyone else got something, why don't we?" Because you aren't a slave. That's why. Japanese Americans, Jewish surviorvors of the holocaust: these people still exist today. Nobody alive currently was enslaved. Are some blacks today still feeling the effects of slavery? Yes. As a whole, blacks probably are at a disadvantage, due to cultural and financial differences that are localized to the regions they settled after emacipation. That being the case, thats where the solution will be found: Funding educational and vocational programs designed to assist them and any other minorities. Offer greater incentives to legitimate minority owned bussinesses and a concerted effort to keep schools up-to-specs in lower income and minority areas, regardless of racial profiles. Affirmative Action? Always hire the most qualified individual regardless of skin color. As standardized educational and community programs increase society norms among races, things will equalize themselves in the work force. Also, don't forget that minorities are called such for a reason. There are less of them in the general popuilation, so there will be less of them in the workforce.
President Bush: I won't comment on his intelligence, but I will say that as a whole his policies and tone have been to the detriment of the entire planet. He has created an aura of mistrust and highly-charged military spectre that hangs over teh whole planet. I feel LESS safe under his administration than under any of the previous 3 I lived through before him. Many would argue that many of the dangers and threats we face currently have existed long before he arrived, and his administration merely brought the threat to our attention. In reality, I think his administrational stances and foreign policies have escalated conflicts and tensions globally, not with just us and every else, but between our allies and the world as usual. I greatly dislike Bush, which I think won't be anything unique, even among hardline Republicans with the next election looming, but it bears mentioning that I gave him the benefit of the doubt. His handling of the immediate post 9/11 situation was impeccable. I was reassured by his prescense, and his words. Seeing him on TV and reading his speeches in the days following that tragedy, I genuinely felt calmed and more settled after a most alarming and unsettling event. But within a few weeks after that, the country took an even more alarming downward spiral into a very sad and dangerous state of affairs. The Patriot Act to me is akin to the Internal Security Act that Senator Joseph McCarthy took under his wing during the tensions with Russia, and its attack on civil liberties and freedoms is totally unacceptable, but in our divisive political climate, to make such statements is deemed political pandering or even political suicide. It is faults like this that reminds me that the United States is still a relatively young democracy on the world scene. We may have declared independance from Britain in 1776, but we still ahve a lot of growing pains to get through before we can be that beacon of democracy that we seem to already think we are.
Gay Marriage: According to Christianity, the institution of marriage was created by god when he joined Adam and Eve together in the Garden of Eden. The United States of America was not created to carry out the functions and dictates of god or any other form of creation myth or story. Its function is to provide for law and order and the continued "pursuit of happiness" of its citizens. As such, any person of legal age and mental status that wishes to be legally recognized as joined with another individual of any gender, should be granted a liscence and given all the rights an dpriveleges of such a legal union. Gay marriage is not an attack on the institution of marriage, and for any politician to make such a statement is in violation of the supposed seperation of church and state. No ammendments or definitions of marriage have a place in any government document, unless of course this has become a religious state. Forcing gays to not be allowed to marry is akin to sentencing Afghan sentencing its citizens to death for converting to Christianity: A person doing so has no physical or even moral effect on his neighbor by excercising personal freedom in his own home. If you feel its silly for two men to marry each other, when their two penises could never together create a new life, then laugh if you wish, but don't discriminate them the right to make that choice.
Abortion: I find the idea of taking another person's life abhorrent, to the point that I feel Capital Punishment is barbaric and Demcratically Unacceptable. However, above all else, I feel that this is a sticky issue. I am not a woman, but I have the feeling that their exist a bond of some sort between a woman and her unborn child. Nonetheless, that child is the "property" of that mother. If she chooses to end that childs life before it is physically able to survive outside of her womb, than that is her choice to make. While that child is a life, and should be able to make that determination for itself, that not reasonable or even feasible. However, once the child is able to survive outside of its mother, there exists facilities and institutions designed to care for that new american citizen, if the mother chooses not to. Regardless, no law should be on the books expressly outlawing abortions, though it should be a liscenced and medically supervised event. Partial-birth abortions are reprehensible acts, and should not be allowed. Once a child has begun its departure from the womb, its already a viable life seperate from the mother, and can be cared for by anyone else willing, besides the mother. A double standard? Pretty much, yeah. Oh well....
Health-Care: The United States requires a universal health-care program. It should be straight forward and well-managed. We have a serious problem when a country as medically advanced and forward-thinking (I think) as the US has a Infant mortality ranking as alarmingly high as ours. In a list of 226 developed countries by the CIA, the US is number 42, with countries such as the war-torn Czech Republic having lower numbres of IM than the US. Shameful, and the idea that low-income minority mothers not seeking healthcare is not a cause, its an effect. If we know these problems exist, why is nothing but sterytypical finger pointing and sneering from a distance taking place? If we want to get upset about abortions, why is nobody doing nothing about the deplorable state of prenatal care and financial inflation in medical services in general? Current reforms of the Medicare and Medicaid programs are a start, but more is needed. If we can spend in excess of 82 billion in Iraq, we can spend money on reforming healthcare too.
More as I feel arsed to say it. I find myself strangely apathetic now, after saying so much........
