Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 12, 1995 TAG: 9504120032
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
We, the working-class Americans, since the beginning of this nation have fought, bled and died to make this nation great. When called to fight, we leave our jobs, homes and families, and fight. We, the working-class Americans, are the United States. We are what it's all about, and without us, this nation would fall.
We the working class have little to say, as our history shows we are fighters, not talkers, not diplomats, not politicians. And that is exactly why we hire politicians to speak for us. We hire them to look out for our interests, to solve our problems, to keep our problems from becoming nightmares, to stay on top of issues like crime, the minimum wage, unemployment, our homeless, our hungry, our very old and our very young, our medical care and our insurance.
We hire politicians to stay on top of these problems, then we go about our business, until one day we look around and realize to our horror that the politicians we've hired have not done any of the things we've hired them to do, but have added to our problems. They have brought hundreds of thousands of refugees into our nation and put them on the doorsteps of our already poor working class. The money we need to help our poor and hungry has gone by the billions to foreign powers. The politicians tell us that we are broke and yet spend billions more on overseas projects.
The politicians we've hired have let the economy plummet and crime grow beyond solution.
The war on crime is being fought like the war in Vietnam; our police are, like the soldiers in Vietnam, abused by the people they've sworn to protect on one side, abused by the system they work for on the other. We need to support our police and fix the flaws in our justice system.
It seems that we'd all like to throw stones at the justice system, but the only visible part of it is the blue uniforms, and they are not the problem. They make arrests, the system turns them loose again, and so on and so on. Why shouldn't the police have an attitude problem?
We have flaws in our justice system that can be and must be repaired. As with anything that doesn't work the way it should, you fix it. You don't watch it deteriorate until it doesn't work at all. Which is what our hired politicians are doing.
Our politicians, when confronted with a major problem, will say to us: "We can't solve that problem without creating another problem, and to solve that problem will create yet another problem, and so on." If they had solved the problems as they came up, we wouldn't need so many solutions to each problem.
Our minimum wage should have been kept up with the cost of living for the past 20 years. We can't raise it to where it should be overnight. Why wasn't it kept up?
We the people have spent billions of our dollars in the past 30 years on politicians who have done nothing for us, and in that we are to blame for not watching them more closely. Our politicians use the issues to get elected and then do nothing but talk about them while they are in office, and use them again to get re-elected and then talk about them some more.
We are tired of listening to them talk about our problems. We know what our problems are. Our biggest problems are politicians who do nothing for us and seem only to serve those who make the biggest contributions to their election campaigns, and that ain't us.
I think we should send billions and billions of dollars to Mexico to improve their economy. That might keep more illegals from entering the United States. But let's improve our own economy first. Let us feed our hungry, house our homeless. Those people don't need a multibillion-dollar space station right this moment. It would seem that we have some serious problems, not only with our problems but with the politicians we've hired to solve our problems.
I, for one, am not at all impressed by our politicians running around on Capitol Hill with bottles of ketchup. I know where the vegetables are.
On the issue of separation of church and state, I always thought that meant simply that the state could not control the teachings of any religious organizations. I was really surprised to learn that it means that God and Jesus need to be removed from every aspect of our lives other than our homes and churches, especially since we are a "nation under God." I'm sure our founding fathers might object to removing "God" from our White House.
Maybe we can soon become a nation of atheists and evolutionist minorities and politicians.
We, however, are still a nation under God and we have not forgotten the men and women who have died to keep us a nation under God. We, the working class of America, have shown our politicians over and over again that we will fight for what we believe in.
Approximately 34 years ago, an American president made a speech, and in it he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you [as an American] can do for your country."
What we as Americans can do for our country is simple enough. We need to hire the very best to run our country for us, not the one that is lying the least. If the Democrats and the Republicans have nothing to offer, we need to look elsewhere until we find the real Americans. We need real leadership, we need real Americans that will focus on the real issues of America, and in America.
We need to help our police, we need to fix our justice system, we need to fix our economy, we need to provide security for our old and our young. It is not a time to talk, but a time to act.
There are solutions to all of our problems. We have to focus on them and act.
There are many issues in this nation that need to be focused on. For one, the good guys are stockpiling arms and ammunition, the bad guys are stockpiling arms and ammunition. Our politicians sit on the Hill and wonder why, and then decide to disarm the good guys?
In our history we have fought our enemies and then have rebuilt them. I suppose this is the American way, until I look at the American Indian. If we ever needed to rebuild a defeated nation, it is the American Indians, who might be able to teach us how to live with Earth before we destroy it.
We need to focus on our schools and how we can successfully remove the disruptive students, so our students who want to learn can.
We need to focus on the small businesses, the small farmers. We can't afford to lose these things.
If we focus on the problems of the many, we can solve many problems of the few.
The main issue here is not white against black, majority against minority, poor against rich. If we fall as a nation, we all fall!
The issue here is right against wrong. We, the working class of America, have been wronged enough. We need now to make things right.
John Dailey of Roanoke is a tree surgeon and artist.
by CNB