Yesterday I took time to tackle the enormous collection of leaves in the yard. I used the mower and the rake and the blower/vacuum to round them all up and deposit them back behind the yard in the compost pile where they belong. Mother Nature and the Autumn Winds immediately began undoing my work, dropping more down from the trees and blowing them from my neighbors’ yards into mine.
It is a familiar fall ritual, much like the political ads and voting from earlier in the week. Thankfully those ads are done for now, but like the leaves trickling down you can be sure that the positioning for the next cycle has already begun.
As I went about the mindless task of rounding up leaves I thought about all of the promises and rosy scenarios painted in all of those speeches; visions of a Utopian world that would be created if only enough people cast their ballots properly.
Utopia – a perfect world. What would it look like? It is an interesting question and one that has been tackled repeatedly by writers and in the movies and on television. The Time Machine is a great old film starring Rod Taylor which took a stab at the concept. Taylor’s character builds a time machine and travels to the distant future where man has “evolved” and solved all of his problems, except that the end result isn’t so very pretty after all.
Star Trek did a good job of addressing the concept. As the Enterprise explored strange new worlds and new civilizations they repeatedly encounter societies much more advanced than ours. In the end, however, either Kirk or Picard would end up giving a few words of wisdom to the supposedly superior beings about why our world, messy and chaotic as it is, is actually preferable to the more advanced but seriously flawed society of the aliens.
There is no such thing as a perfect world, but let’s take a moment to reflect on what a perfect or near-perfect world would look like. I don’t mean the Utopia from Star Trek or The Time Machine. I am not talking about some magical place where there is perfect weather and no disease and we all recline on sofas like Greek Gods while robots feed us grapes. I mean a practical world where things are easier and better than today; where some of the promises made by politicians have actually come true.
Imagine if your grandparents had been successful enough to give your parents a really good start in life. And then, with that good foundation, your parents were able to provide you with a near-perfect starting point as well. Imagine that you grew up with a good home and enough food and a great education and proper medical care. Let’s imagine that you grew up in a neighborhood and town where all of your friends also had all of these things. Picture a neighborhood and town where crime and poverty and violence were virtually unknown.
Then imagine that your parents could afford to buy you a car to drive and pay for you to attend a good college and even buy your first house, and you were able to get employment doing something you really enjoy. What if you met the right spouse and started your life together with all of these wonderful benefits? You would not start off with a mortgage and college loans to pay. You would not have to worry about making car payments. Your income could be used to put away money for retirement and start saving so you could provide these benefits to your own children. We are on our way to Utopia!
The above scenario is not entirely out of the question. There are of course people who are wealthy enough to provide these kinds of financial benefits to their kids, and there are children who find themselves in this enviable position. Most of us, however, end up with the aforementioned mortgage and student loans and car payment. Our parents did their best to provide for us, and for the most part they did a good job but here we are, often with too much month left at the end of the money.
And yet we are still the lucky ones. Having a mortgage and a car payment and student loans means we have a car and home and we went to college. Our lives may be a constant struggle but we realize there are others in this country that would trade places with us in an instant. Our job may not involve doing something we really enjoy, but we at least have employment that allows us to continue on, striving for that elusive Utopian dream.
The politicians ran enough ads in the last few months to make us all nauseous. Sadly most of those ads spoke very little about what positive ideas they had for moving more of us toward the better world that we would all like to see. Most of them simply took the time to inform us what a low-life loser their opponent was.
Tuesday night was a good night for the Republicans if you look strictly at the numbers. But underlying the numbers is a reality that these elections were less about an endorsement of positive Republican ideas and more a repudiation of the policies of the administration in Washington. Many Democrats stayed home, uninspired by the President and Harry Reid, and Independents more or less voted against gridlock.
A perfect world would not have unemployment or hunger or violence. There would be no wars or discrimination or homelessness or abortions or addictions. People would have access to, and be able to afford proper health care. Everyone would receive a good education. Parents would stay together to provide a safe and loving environment for their children. All of the above things are possible. They involve humans coming together to do the right things. And if we remove “everyone” from the equation they are certainly possible on an individual basis.
We will never live in Utopia. Disease is a reality that money and loving parents cannot protect us from. Weather is another reality and hurricanes and tornadoes and floods and earthquakes will continue to disrupt communities and destroy lives. Not everyone can have their ideal job. We only need so many actors and attorneys and pilots and surgeons and artists. Only the very best athletes reach the major leagues, and so someone’s dreams of their perfect job will necessarily be crushed.
We want our politicians to solve all of the problems in society but deep down we realize it is not possible. Even under the best of conditions there is little that any government official can do to eliminate the inherent problems people face in life. In the end the house and car and college still have to be paid for and the baby will need its diaper changed and you will get the flu right about the time the snowstorm hits.
Republicans and Democrats operate from different paradigms in terms of their approach to what government should do. Republicans need to understand that the electorate did not just give them a mandate to go impeach the President or spend the next two years fighting to repeal Obamacare. The President needs to understand that his policies WERE on the ballot and the voters rejected them. He should not use his pen and phone to implement policies that the electorate does not want.
Nobody should compromise on their principles but both sides need to realize that government cannot solve all of the problems of society. What government CAN do is solve the problems of government. The federal government is nearly $18 trillion dollars in debt. While you and I have been out here trying to make our own households work, politicians have been spending like drunken sailors. It is THEIR responsibility to reduce the size of government and not only bring the deficit to zero but start paying down the debt.
The tax code is, by everyone’s admission, idiotic. The people we elect are responsible for fixing this monstrosity and I suggest they focus on this as a top priority. There seems to be a broad consensus on both sides that it needs to be simplified and reformed and so they need to get to it.
The Republicans need to focus not on repeal of Obamacare (which I do think is necessary), but on formulating a program to replace it and selling the idea to the American people. The President needs to compromise by fixing our porous southern border first, before simply providing amnesty to those that crossed it illegally.
In the end, government cannot wave a magic wand and fix the problems in our lives; that is up to us. But we did elect them to go fix the problems with government, and we expect them to do so.
On Tuesday night I attended a couple of election night watch parties. One was for St. Charles County Republicans, who had a very good night. The leaders of Missouri’s House and Senate were there, along with most of the county’s Republican candidates. Everyone was in a good mood and excited about being in an ever bigger majority than before the election in the Missouri legislature.
Dr. Bob Onder, who was unopposed in his election for the Missouri Senate, gave a great short speech where he recalled Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” speech. The reason Reagan was so successful was that he gave Americans hope, along with a vision of a better America. That vision was not based on some magical Big Brother coming down from on high and solving all of our problems. It was based on the idea that government would provide a societal framework where people could overcome their own challenges and provide their children not with Utopia, but with the opportunity for a better life.
There is no such thing as Utopia. Government is not the answer and it cannot solve all of our problems. Even in the most optimistic of visions there will still be flat tires and tornadoes and diapers to change. Even the job you love will require hard work and long hours. Even the best marriages involve tremendous challenges and raising kids is the hardest thing you will ever do. But there is no reason we cannot leave a better world for our children than our parents left for us.
Republicans now have an opportunity to offer their vision, to present a plan for that brighter future. It needs to include smaller, more responsible government. It needs to include more liberty and opportunity for citizens. And it needs to include robots, not just to feed me grapes but to take care of these leaves.
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