It CAN Happen Here - And Is Right Now

As an American, I believe that

"that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

During our history as a nation, periodically at times of unrestrained fear, some people in power have lost sight of those ideals and values.

Sadly, we are entering another periodic paroxysm of fright.

At the start of these Muslim Witch Trials, "Rep." Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee pronounced:

“to back down would be a craven surrender to political correctness.”

No Mr King,* to back down now would be to regain your American ideals and values.

My experience is that it is all too easy to get swept up in turmoil and to lose sight of my core values. We are, after all, human.

Mr King: we are a strong nation - we are at our best when we don't let our fears get control of our actions, individually and collectively.

I pray you will pause for a moment, and take a deep psychic breath, so you can recapture your vision of and appreciation for the greatness of the American people and of our institutions.

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* In this blog entry I have spurned the honorific "Representative" in addressing you because right now you do not represent the Americans or the America I admire and love as a patriot.

I hope that you, Mr. King, might regroup and regain your representation of what is best in America, and repent your representation of the dark, regrettable episodes of fearful behavior.

The Real Real America

The other day, presidential maybe hopeful Mike Huckabee said:

"He [Obama] has a different worldview and I think it is, in part, molded out of a very different experience. Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings."

As a democracy-loving American, I believe that the people who represent us in government should know who we are. All of us. And not think that "all of us" share the experiences and history of just the 13 percent of us who grew up going to Boy Scout meetings. (See below.)

I believe our leaders, our representatives, have to understand that their own experiences alone do not represent the "real America" and that they have a civic duty, a responsibility, to consciously expand their experience and their understanding of who we all are as a nation if they want to represent the 'real America.'

And I am very concerned that Huckabee believes, that his "worldview" is "most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings."

Also, a few days ago I heard a politician being interviewed on NPR say he wants a return to "the real America." I arrived at my destination just as he said that, I didn't hear his party affiliation or his idea of what the "real America" is or was. (That particular story wasn't one of the fabled NPR driveway moments.)

Some Background

When I was growing up in the 1950s, I was taught that "the real America" was a "melting pot." A rather inartful metaphor, but I understood it to mean that America is made up of a wide variety of different people with different backgrounds.

(Point of fact: the immediate "real America" of my tender youth was predominantly white middle class and our fathers had pretty much all fought in WWII and worked as executives in "the city." And I was a Boy Scout and played Little League baseball, badly, in right field.)

But I had some sort of vague awareness that there was plenty of America which wasn't white and middle class and many folks didn't think "Father Knows Best" was a documentary.

I was in my teens and twenties that my"real America" expanded to include experience with a huge range of non-white non-middle class folks.

What an eye-opener, even for someone with a pretty good imagination and wide taste in reading material.

Some Facts About The Real "Real America"

Mike Huckabee said: "And I have said many times, publicly, that I do think he [Obama] has a different worldview and I think it is, in part, molded out of a very different experience. Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings."

Being a natural born question-asker, I wondered: "Really?"

So I did some digging into the number of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in the US, and the population of the age groups included in those two organizations.

The age breakdowns for scouting activity don't line up precisely with the census age breakdown, but with some rough and ready extrapolation, I came up with these figures (to match the age range for the Boy Scouts organization):

Boys and girls ages 6-18: 53,093,000

Girls and boys in scouting: 6,926,000

Now, let's assume that the percentage hasn't significantly changed over the years.

Roughly, just 13% of boys and girls are growing up "going to Boy Scout [and Girl Scout] meetings. (If you want to read Huckabee's statement using the principles of strict construction, only 8% of us grow up going to Boy Scout meetings.

Note to Mr Huckabee: "No, not only didn't President Obama not grow up in Kenya, but most of us didn't grow up going to Boy Scout meetings."

My Experience and Analysis

Frankly, I think this obscure factual inaccuracy is more telling, perhaps, than your knowledge failure about President Obama.

In my experience, each of us tends to assume that everyone has had the same experiences and shares the same understandings and values. (Honest people tends to assume everyone else is honest, liars tend to assume everyone else is a liar.)

Some of my biggest mistakes in life have resulted from acting from that sort of misunderstanding.

In my opinion, until you and your fellow conservatives really meet the "real America," your projections of your life experiences will continue to not be representative of the American people as a whole.

It's a wonderful nation out here, in the real "real America."

I hope you'll join us. Not just in the Boy Scout meetings, not just in the Baptist churches, but in:

• the coffee shops,
• in the employee break rooms of the big box stores,
• behind the fast food counters,
• in the senior centers and "rest homes,"
• in the unemployment lines (right now there are about 14.5 million Americans in that group, compared to about 7 million Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts),
• on the manufacturing product lines,
• in the classrooms of the cities as well as the small towns (about 79% of us live in urban areas),
• in the Mosques and synagogues and churches of the many different Christian denominations,

And in the many other types of places "real Americans" congregate.

Come get to know us and then, maybe, you'll be qualified to represent us.

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Sources:

For population, I used the 2009 figures at http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0007.pdf

For the boy scouts and girl scouts, I used the numbers given on their wikipedia pages.

Urban population data: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census/cps2k.htm

Letter To My Ohio Rep

If you feel like sending an email to your representative* please feel free to copy and/or amend:

QUOTE

Dear Representative _____

As a constituent of yours, I urge you to vote against the House counterpart of SB 5.

First - those bills combine a large number of different legislative initiatives, which the Republican Party promised us in last fall's "Pledge to America" it would not do.

"Advance Legislative Issues One at a Time

"We will end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with “must-pass” legislation to circumvent the will of the American people. Instead, we will advance major legislation one issue at a time."

(Pledge To America, pdf version, page 33)

I urge you and the other Republicans in the Ohio House of Representatives honor that simple and important promise to the American people and the people of Ohio.

Second, as a Christian I accept the teaching of so many denominations and religious groups which support collective bargaining. They include:

National Council of Churches

Northern Baptist Convention

Catholic Church —LEO XII

United Methodist Church

Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.

The Episcopal Church

United Lutheran Church In America

The Disciples of Christ

The United Church of Christ

Church of the Brethren

Central Conference of American Rabbis

See: http://www.awppw.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8&Itemid=7

Third, squashing unions is not the answer to our state's fiscal problems.

If we are going to act fiscally responsibly, we need to encourage and develop good paying jobs with benefits, not eliminate them where ever and when ever possible.

I believe that fiscal responsibility requires us to not only look only at expenses, but also makes the hard but responsible decision to reject repeated reductions of revenues through tax cuts.

Please remember, Ronald Reagan raised taxes several times - calling them "revenue enhancements" - when fiscal responsibility required additional revenue.

I believe that true "Reagan Republicans" put fiscal responsibility ahead of popular yet irresponsible repeated tax cuts.

Fourth, please remember that this is a very important issue, and in the next election, the people of Ohio will remember who voted for ending public sector collective bargaining and who supported the working people of Ohio.

Both political parties are capable of misunderstanding the "mandate" they receive in elections.

I believe that, this time, the Republicans have badly miscalculated the values and views of the people of Ohio and the people around the nation.

Please ask yourself which is more important to you: party loyalty or representation of the will of the people.

Respectfully,

Name

Address

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* Find your Ohio representative