Dear Leadership of the Republican Party
I guess I should start by clarifying that I am not a member of your organization, though I have at times voted for your candidates. In my almost thirty years of voting I have never found enough common ground with either of the major political parties to affiliate with them; and at this point, it seems doubtful that will ever change. While I generally try to steer clear of the bipartisan brawl, my growing concern for the future of this country compels me to offer you a little advice for the 2012 Presidential election. Obviously, you can take it or leave it.
First and foremost, is that I hope the current rhetoric being spewed by many of the GOP presidential hopefuls is just the intro to something more substantive. Simply pointing out how bad things are isn’t much of a platform to run on. Don’t count on getting the free pass that the buzzword “change” got in the last election. I suspect that “We the People” will be looking for a definition this time.
Along those same lines, remember that we are a distinctly western culture and that aesthetics matter more than they should. Offering up a candidate who is nearly seventy years old, and whose political heyday was three administrations ago, would be a serious mistake. Barrack Obama was able to sell the idea that he’d be something different based largely on the fact that he looked and sounded different than the alternatives. Mr. McCain’s campaign was floundering until Sarah Palin entered the picture and her appeal was also rooted in the fact that she didn’t look and sound like everyone else. Those same aesthetics will matter in 2012.
Since I mentioned Sarah Palin, I ought to add that I believe that her political shelf life has expired. If she had remained the governor of Alaska and had led them as boldly as she presents herself, she might be considered some sort of credible alternative. Unfortunately, she quit that job, hit the talk-show circuit and her life has become tabloid fodder. At this point, she seems like a caricature; who has way too much in common with the Kardashian’s to be taken seriously.
Despite what the special interest groups will tell you, the number one issue on the minds of most American’s is the economy, and more specifically, jobs. If you don’t have some new ideas about how to turn things around, I’d get working on that now. Please don’t try to perpetuate the myth of the “Consumer Based Economy”. Low interest rates, more affordable lines of credit and tax breaks aren’t going to bring our economy back; we are not going to borrow, spend and consume our way back to prosperity. Our country has got to find a way to restore the balance between what we produce and what we consume. Trying to defy the law of supply and demand is the economic equivalent of trying to defy gravity.
Speaking of balance, I appreciate the idea that some of your guys have been trying to promote about government spending; it is absolutely out of control. Unfortunately, hammering the budget for things like Medicare and Medicaid, while discretionary spending remains largely unchecked, isn’t going to gain you much support with the American people. If you’re serious, you and your brothers across the aisle need to start axing all the activities that the government has no business being involved in. Using that criterion, you could probably cut the budget in half.
Finally, as a man who takes his morality pretty seriously, I like the idea of the “Moral Majority”. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen much evidence that such a group really exists. But as I’ve watched the last few election cycles, I have become convinced that there is a group of people who could rightfully be called the “Moderate Majority”. I believe that it is this group who represents the swing vote and that these are the people you need to reach. While staunch conservatives may feel that you’ve done a poor job of representing them, it seems doubtful that they’d be willing to re-elect Barrack Obama to another term. Though the extreme elements of both parties will attempt to hijack the primary process, the actual election will most likely be decided by this large group in the middle.
Well, that’s really all I had to say; hopefully something within this will be helpful to you. Good luck with all that, because there are an awful lot of lives and livelihoods that hang in the balance. See you at the polls.
Sincerely – Bryan J. Corbin (Ohio)
Bjcorbin's Blog 
My Generation
Posted in Commentaries, Opinions, Social / Political on March 3, 2011| 5 Comments »
I was born in 1963; about a month after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I vaguely remember Charles Manson, Woodstock and the Vietnam War; but I was really more a product of the Cold War era. Back then, kids were raised with the notion that if we didn’t all perish in the midst of a nuclear holocaust, or succumb to the “killer bees” that were steadily migrating from the south, we’d inevitably be consumed by the coming of a second ice age. This might explain some of the skepticism that people of my generation have about this whole global warming thing.
It was a strange period in history, but as American’s we had the distinct advantage of having that “one thing” we all agreed on, which was that the Soviets were the “bad guys”. By default, that meant we were the “good guys”. That may not seem like much, but in hindsight, it was a lot more valuable than we understood. The Cold War was largely fought in the fertile imaginations of the people and so it was quite a relief when we finally saw the Berlin Wall come down. Since the Soviet Union soon broke into little pieces, it seemed obvious, even to the most casual observer, that America must be the winner. This was sweet vindication for democracy, the US Olympic team and for our space program; all of which had bore questionable results in the past. Presuming that the whole episode was a titanic struggle between the world’s two “super powers”, one had to conclude that we (i.e. the USA) were now the world’s preeminent “super power”. After a mere two hundred years of history, all our hard work and struggle had paid off; and now we could rightfully claim to be the most powerful country in the world. Certainly we had biggest middle class, the highest standard of living and the most fearsome military-industrial complex. We even had a president that most American’s believed in, which turned out to be another thing that would soon become a distant memory. That’s the ironic thing about making it to the pinnacle; the best you can hope for is that you stay there for a while. Arguably, we did.
Just as adversity has a way of bringing people together, prosperity has a way of dividing them. This problem is compounded when that prosperity is inherited instead of earned, because then it is viewed as a birth right instead of the byproduct of blood sweat and tears. Indeed, the people of my generation were the benefactors of the generations who came before us and who were willing to pay a price, that we now seem unwilling to pay. They believed that the good of the whole outweighed the needs of a few, while my generation ascribes to the belief that every person has a God given right to pursue happiness on their own terms. We were raised with the idea that every generation ought to prosper even more than the last, but we failed to recognize that this principle only works when we are willing to put forth the same kind of effort and sacrifice that our predecessors did. Indeed, democracy and free market economies only work when there’s a consistent level of effort and reinvestment in them; but we’ve become a generation of consumers. As if that weren’t bad enough, we somehow managed to convince ourselves that we could somehow circumvent the principle of “supply and demand” simply by voraciously consuming the world’s goods. Though we were able to pull that illusion off for a while, the economic equivalent of the law of gravity has finally caught up with us. While we may have admired our grandparent’s gardens and while they may have left our cellars stocked with canned goods, the cupboards are now getting barren and we’ve never bothered to learn how to work the land for ourselves.
In moments of crisis, there is always a temptation to blame someone else for our condition, but to do so is rarely productive. Though external forces are certainly a factor, we are generally hard pressed to change much outside of ourselves. The cost of successfully finding someone to blame is that we become powerless to alter our course. Sadly, my generation has made “The Blame Game” America’s favorite pastime. We’re not fat because we have no self discipline, it’s because our parents damaged our self esteem or because McDonalds doesn’t have the right nutritional standards; we’re not in debt because we spent all sorts of money that we didn’t have, it’s because interest rates are too high or employers don’t pay enough; our marriages aren’t failing because we haven’t invested ourselves in them, it’s because our partner just isn’t meeting our needs; our kids don’t struggle in school because of our lack of genuine parenting, it’s because the teachers just don’t know how to motivate them; it’s the governments fault; it’s those right wing fanatic’s fault; it’s those bleeding heart liberals; it’s the radical Muslims, it’s Christianity; it’s everybody and everything, but me. It is the proverbial “them”; and sadly, that has become the American way.
Our forefathers were raised under an oppressive regime and because of that, the government they formed was constructed to ensure that its leaders never attained that kind of control over the people. They envisioned a government that would be a support to the people, but wouldn’t impede their opportunity to prosper. They never intended for the government to be the source of that prosperity. But in today’s world, as America’s collective prosperity seems to be teetering precariously, the people of my generation seem to be looking toward the government for the fix. We expect them to make sure that we have a high paying job; that we always get to negotiate our price; that we all have good medical insurance; that the price of gas doesn’t get too high and that our borders are safe from terrorists, without causing us a corresponding delay at the airport. Not only do we want that and more, we don’t want it to cost any more than the relatively sparse governmental model that our founders envisioned. We keep electing people who promise those things, even though there is no possibility that they can deliver them. Because my generation has never really experienced genuine governmental oppression, we clamor for them to take care of us; failing to realize that a government that is able to take care of the people, will ultimately control them. We need only watch the rioting all over the Middle East to see what that looks like.
On the rare occasion that the government does produce something to help the people, there never seems to be a shortage of individuals who stand at the ready to exploit it. Like “The Blame Game”, exploiting “the system” for our personal gain is just part of the way that my generation does things. When the Capitalists gave corporations incentives and tax breaks, in an effort to create a prosperity that would “trickle down” through the economy, corporate America exploited it into record profits; thereby blunting the intended effect. When Socialists created programs to help those in need, many in our society made an industry out of exploiting those systems as well. Regardless of what program our current administration may initiate, we can be sure there will be a group of American citizens who feel perfectly justified in exploiting it. While the statue of “Lady Liberty” in New York’s harbor may be a symbol of the virtuous intent of our forefathers, I fear that if we had to recast her today, she would rightfully be in rags; ravaged and robbed by the very people who claimed to love her.
Ultimately, I believe that the greatest crisis that we face in America today is not our collapsing economy, or the sky-rocketing national debt or even the threat of terrorism; it is the crisis of our national character. Unless that changes, we will likely lack the unity and resilience needed to deal with any other issue. It’s not them, it’s us, it’s our generation, it’s me!
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