Letters to the Editor

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Some things to consider in 2012
Editor,
Happy New Year. My fear as we greet this new year is that this may be the last truly happy New Year for the United States for a while. New Years is traditionally the time we make resolutions that we, inevitably, fail to keep; this New Year is the year that we need to make resolutions that we must keep because 2012 is the year which will, no doubt, be recorded by historians as one of the, if not the, most critical election year in our Republic’s history. We must resolve to return sanity to our society, return fiscal responsibility to our leaders, and constitutionality to our government through the choices me make at the polls this year.
Some 50 or so years ago two of the greatest Americans in our national history gave us the words that should ring constant in our minds over the next 10 months as we approach these monumental elections and as we take the measure of those running for office; ” . . . ask not what your country can do for you — ask what can you do for your country,” and “. . . where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
There are now, and have been for many years, those in our society who, for the sole purpose of their own personal enrichment or political power, fan the flames of class warfare pitting one American against another. They spread it in their doctrine of “ask not what you can do for your country – ask what your country can do for you” and through it forge the chains and shackles of a new slavery, an economic slavery, to a growing population of the “entitled” who have become totally dependent on the benevolence of an increasingly intrusive national government.
We hear, in this doctrine, the unfairness of the tax burden on the 99 or 95 percent of Americans verses the “top” one or five percent of Americans and see in this doctrine the vilification of success as a negative character trait. We hear that the successful fail to pay their “fair share” while these self anointed “class warriors” side step any definition of what is a “fair share” or what “their fair share” is and avoid the mention that 48 percent of Americans pay no federal income taxes at all. When we hear this useless, divisive class warfare diatribe in the coming debates we need to ask “Is it fair that the top 1 percent of Americans account for 37 percent of all tax revenues or that the top 5 percent of Americans paid more than the bottom 95 percent and account for 59 percent of all tax revenues (according to The Tax Foundation Fiscal Facts, October 24, 2011) while the bottom 48 percent pay no federal income taxes at all and yet account for virtually all ‘entitlement’ expenses?” Would it not be fair to ask all Americans to pay a share or for all Americans to pay a ‘equal share’? We need to relegate those that spread this destructive language to the same historic scrap heap that we have those who seek to further racism or sexism and those that endeavour to resurrect those bankrupt philosophies.
In 2008 we ignored the council of Martin Luther King and elected, in my opinion, an individual to the presidency based not on the content of his character nor his experience but on the color of his skin and have, as a result of this bad decision, seen the spread of the economic cancer of European style socialism into our government which has brought this nation to the razor’s edge of a European style economic collapse and resulted in the virtual nullification of the constitution. In the coming debate we, as an electorate, must assume the dual resolutions to educate ourselves on the candidates and focus with laser like precision on the real issues facing us as a nation and on the content of the candidates characters and their experience.
We cannot, at this critical juncture in our history, afford to compound the mistakes of the past nor repeat those mistakes. We must likewise force the candidates to confine the debate to the issues and to their concrete solutions. For far too long we’ve allowed ourselves to be distracted by the circus of unproven accusations and character assassinations not germane to the issues facing the nation. For example in the current search for a Republican candidate we are seeing examples of this and a preview of the various bi-partisan debates we can expect in the coming year. Each Republican vying to be the standard bearer rather than focusing on the issues, or how they intend to respond to those issues, or how they differ from the others on how they will respond, or even why they would be a better leader than the incumbent instead appear to be content to engage in political cannibalism and in doing so actually assist the opposition party in retaining power by attacking each other.
The elections of this year are too important for us to be distracted by the circus of campaigning or politics, likewise they are too important to let party affiliation guide our choices . . . in the coming months study the issues and the track histories of the candidates, in the coming debates and “town hall meetings” demand that the candidates stay focused on the issues and demand they tell you what they can do for America. We already know what America can do for them if they are elected, and in November make a well informed decision based on the facts not on personality nor a decision driven by a glossy advertising campaign; it is not the candidates that spend the most, nor are the most charismatic that we need to elect but the ones who can return sanity to our society, return fiscal responsibility to our leaders, constitutionality to our government, and the founding principles to our society.
It’s up to you, will Jan. 1, 2013 be a happy New Year or just four more years of national and moral decline?
Lou Sansevero
Ferron