Rights of Passage

A little play on words in entitling this "rights" instead of "rites", but I hope you'll stick with me on it. Now that the elections are done and the phone calls exhorting me to vote for this person or that person (or amendment) are finished, it's time to weigh what has occurred. The GOP has the House, but the Senate has really not changed all that much. My 17 year old wondered this morning what all the fuss was about, so I gave him Civics 101 at the breakfast table.

It was a good teaching moment, and it allowed us to look at the reality versus the hype. Aren't we in the U.S. all about hype right now? Whether it is professional ball players talking "smack" or professional politicos doing the same, we're surrounded by opinion which is more "heat than light". I found it interesting that one "talking head" last night suggested that because the American people are in a place of financial instability, that the election pendulum that we saw last night will not be the last one. He suggested that we should look for this type of voting for the next 3 election cycles. What a terrible waste should that occur!

If that is true, and it feels right in my gut, then what will we be left with once all the contrary voting and election are finished? I suspect that what we'll be left with is a whole lot of wasted time and money without significant progress on any major issue. Of note, the Christian Century magazine's current issue stated that none of the political parties or party nominees said one word about the 45 million poor people in the U.S. Nor did anyone say anything about how in 2009 we as a Country created more people below the poverty line than we have had since the 1950's!

Iniquity, in updated language inequity, in monetary allocation is rampant and we as a nation are doing nothing about it. It wouldn't take a huge amount of resources from the U.S. to eliminate poverty. However, our elected officials both locally and nationally will now spend all their time messing with healthcare to the detriment of all other problems.

Is this really what the founders of the country envisioned when they fashioned a democracy? Are the rights of the people really being championed by those who are elected to serve? Do the passage of bills aimed to foster iniquity of a minority over a majority really promote life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Friends, it's time to get off the rhetoric bandwagon, stop listening to the talking heads, roll up our sleeves, and create the Country that we want to live in. It will be a messy process, but it is clear that nothing short of this will get us healthier, more well and certainly will not fix our brokenness.

The only way to succeed is to rebuild dialogue and relationship, to care for neighbor as self, to realize that there is only one planet and that the resources of it were created for all to share in equally. Now, that's a platform that I can get behind.

Peace,
Dan