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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 7/2/10

What Do You Mean I am Ruining YOUR Nation?

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If I could simply have an adequate opportunity to respond to some of the things people say to me, I would feel a lot better about the society in which we live. But until that happens, I will have to use the Internet to tell the people who make the following comments to think twice:

We need less government.
Yeah, I bet we do. Until we get robbed and need a police officer. Until our neighbor says our land is really theirs and we need an independent person to decide. Until the factories fill the air with filth we cannot breath and we need air quality standards enforced. Until the friend of an in-law is failing to pay his taxes and we need the IRS to make sure we don't have to pick up the tab. If you never need the government, you probably do not have any problems to worry about, anyway.

Taxes are too high.
Does anyone ever say that taxes are TOO LOW? How much is too much? Nothing? If we did not pay any taxes, we could not pay for the government, through its agents, to assist us when we need it (see above). We cannot receive something for nothing anywhere else in society, so we have no reason to believe that our government works for free.

The United States is a Christian nation.
Where did this idea come from? It certainly appears nowhere in the Constitution, the basis of our legal system and the very place one would look to find such an idea. The Constitution also fails to mention the words "God," "Jesus Christ" or "Christianity" even a single time. The Constitution instead forbids the establishment of any religion. The Founders, most of whom were not Christians, made sure to write that in. And while it is true that a majority of people in the United States identify themselves as Christians, a majority does not necessarily speak for the whole group. A majority of people in the United States are white-skinned, but would anyone call the United States a "white nation." I don't think so.

Our public schools are bad.
Am I the only person who believes he received a good public education? I can only speak of my experience, where my teachers taught me to read, write, do math and sometimes to even think for myself. Some of my classes were crowded, but that is a symptom of overpopulation more than it is of poor education. My early schooling was not well integrated, but that is a problem of the enforcement of housing laws, the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws and the availability of schooling and jobs for the parents. My public schooling gave me the chance to move on to higher education, for which I am grateful. I am sure there are bad public schools, but hearsay talk of a poor school system does not sway me from my first-hand experiences.

There is a liberal bias in the media.
Where is it and how powerful can it possibly be? Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were elected twice each. Surely a powerful liberal media would have stopped them. While it is true that many reporters identify themselves as liberals and/or Democrats, they have to answer to publishers who typically do not share these views and who have the final say in what gets published or shown on television. Powerful corporations own most of the media and as corporations have the primary focus of making money, they do not have much of an interest in presenting a liberal agenda that is based upon human rights, equality and fighting global warming unless it can somehow make profits.

So if people continue to say this type of nonsense, I will just have to ask what they mean by what they say. Maybe they just mean that they heard it from the right-wing talk show hosts, who are protected by the government with free-speech rights when they tell us how bad the schools and media are.
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Dean Hartwell's book, "Planes without Passengers: the Faked Hijackings of 9/11," reached the top of Amazon's charts for large print books on history. He has authored three others: "Facts Talk but the Guilty Walk:the 9/11 No Hijacker Theory and Its (more...)
 
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