"When we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress." -Howard Zinn
I recommend Howard Zinn's newest book, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Cultural Revolution
Change will occur in America if there is a revolution. A violent revolution would fail because Americans live in a repressive system that would use military force to protect itself, and even if it was successful it would not guarantee a change for the better. What America needs is a slow, peaceful revolution. A revolution that changes the way society thinks and acts, the way we live, and the things we value. America needs a Cultural Revolution.
We Value the Wrong Things
Americans value the wrong things. First, America values a large economy. We think we have to join the rat-race, the endless pursuit of wealth through work, to find happiness. This is why millions and millions of people suffer from depression and mental health problems. The polls suggest that Americans are no more happier now than 80 years ago when the economy was smaller and spending power was less.
Secondly, Americans value technology too much. We are too reliant on technology to ensure our survival, and we are overconfident that more technology will better society and somehow create a utopia. Sure, technology has made improvements in many areas. However, with each new solution more problems are created; more problems create the need for more solutions through technology, and each time the negative consequences grow steeper. Sure technology has made advancements in medicine and increasing our life expectancy, but the human body did not evolve to live 90 years. Our bodies have 3.5 million plus years of experience as a doctor; the human body can cure and prevent more diseases then any doctor ever will, yet we are obsessed with altering our appearance and living forever through technology. Have you ever been to a nursing home? Frankenstein is not science fiction anymore! Yes, it has increased our quantity of life, but it has decreased our quality of life. We can thank technology for allergies, asthma, cancer, depression, and weapons of mass destruction. We can also thank technology for global warming in which the United States in a major contributor–we are responsible for twenty percent of the world’s CO2 emittance. America’s obesity problem is partly due to technology--136 million Americans are overweight, and one third of all American children and teens are overweight. This is partly because we merely walk from our cars to our computers to the couch to watch television–a new study shows that children spend 6.5 hours a day using electronics. Consequently, we have no practical reason for our body; it does not directly relate to our survival anymore. In addition, we have made no moral progress toward defining new technologies. Our debates over technologies that abort babies, deliver nuclear bombs, and clone humans are endless, yet we continue to build these machines.
The Way We Think
Americans need to change the way they think. We need to change the way we think about happiness. We are socialized by corporations to believe we need expensive name brand products, lots of technology, and a large economy to be happy. Therefore, we join the rat-race to make as much money as possible, thinking we are in the pursuit of happiness, but we are not. Rather than living moderately, we work, consume, waste, and spend money on popular culture and technology. We will do anything to live forever with computers, cell phones, stock options, a trim waistline, and the nicest car on the block. Americans view these things, not as wants and desires, but as necessities that ensure our survival.
We also need to rethink our views regarding democracy and freedom. We claim to spread Democracy to the Middle East and elsewhere, yet we do not even practice it here. Too many people are passive obedient, and very few people question authority or engage in political dissent. This is clear by the fact that more people vote for American Idol than they do for the President. Most people are locked in their homes watching mindless reality TV. Mean while, they claim to live in the most democratic nation in the world. This is hypocrisy not democracy.
The Way We Act
We need to change the way we act. We have the most violent and militaristic culture in the world, and we really seem to hate each other. We have the highest murder rate, most hand guns, and most violent crimes in the world. And people seem to be apathetic toward the poverty and suffering of others, choosing instead to profit from the poverty and war. We live in the richest country in the world, yet eighteen percent of American children are impoverished. All together, 37 million Americans live in poverty, 45 million Americans do not have healthcare, and 13 million hard-working Americans make $5.15 an hour, all while affluent people in the suburbs do little to help. Instead they blame the poor for society’s problems and seek authoritarian solutions.
To protect us from our militaristic culture, the government uses authoritarian methods to enforce millions of laws through martial law. The United States and Japan are the only two developed countries that use capital punishment, and America is home to 22% of the world’s prison population; yet America constitutes only 0.05% of the world’s total population. Unfortunately, the American people seem to support state sanctioned violence--strict rules, regulations, surveillance, and social control–as long as the large economy is maintained. Ultimately, people are complacent towards crime, violence, and poverty, as long as they are safe and secure in their homes; Americans would rather enjoy technology, a large economy, and security, rather then freedom.
The way we act is also destroying the world. Our corporations use cutthroat competition as an excuse to exploit other people and the environment. We keep impoverished countries poor forever through the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, free trade agreements, and our interventionist foreign policy bullies our economic and political agenda around the world; in short, our government preserves our large economy through multinational corporations, globalization, and military occupation. We spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined. We have enough Weapons of Mass Destruction to destroy the world five times, and there are thousands of U.S. military installations and personnel around the world. American hawks ignore peace treaties, break Geneva Convention rules, and dismiss the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by torturing others and engaging in state sponsored terrorism (see Guantanamo Bay and the School of Americas).
How will a Cultural Revolution Happen?
I do not advocate a violent revolution because I am a passivist, and I do not believe in war. I do, however, advocate a Cultural Revolution that would completely overthrow the American system. How will a Cultural Revolution happen? We first need to reform the institutions that create our values. There is a massive conservative infrastructure consisting of schools, corporations, churches, and the government that currently produce poor values:
1.) Schools - Schools teach our children that “all men are created equal” in their ability to consume and waste; that figures of authority never lie; and they discourage free thinking and critical thinking. Ultimately, schools are run like assembly lines, mass producing mindless clones for future generations. Sure, people value education, but for the wrong reasons. Many go to graduate school, not because they enjoy learning, but because they hope to increase their future spending power. The process of learning would be less painful if it was shifted away from financial goals toward learning goals. Maybe then we can start making some moral progress toward a better future.
2.) Corporations - Through commercials and advertisements, corporations socialize Americans to believe happiness is defined by wealth. They use fear to sell their products by saying we can not possibly be happy unless we have the newest gadget or the best cosmetics. So we spend our lives in pursuit of things we do not actually need. We have developed a culture based on corporate greed, rather than tradition and necessity.
Author Michael Parenti wrote, “A large part of our culture is now mass-marketed product, aptly designated as “mass culture,” “popular culture,” “media culture,”and even “mass-mediated culture.” This mass-media culture is owned and operated mostly by giant corporations whose major concerns are (a) to accumulate earnings and (b) to make the world safe for the overall corporate profit system. The result is a society organized around exchange value rather than use value, centralized social control rather the communal creativity.
He goes on to write, “Much of mass-marketed culture distracts us from thinking too much about the larger realities.” In other words, it is easier to be entertained than be informed; Americans are dumb and numb, because of sporting events, realty TV, sitcoms, celebrity news, media personalities, fads, and fashion styles. This culture is not a product of the free market either, corporations are not merely reacting to demand. Instead, it is based on the notion that supply creates demand.
3.) Churches - Churches and organized religion are responsible for keeping America conservative and unwilling to accept change even when our world is forever changing by new thinking and new technologies. Churches teach conformity, consensus, homophobia, xenophobia, and they use fear to teach us that every natural impulse in our body is wrong. They also teach about domestication and the domination of plants, animals, and people. And during elections, they allow politicians to divert what is really important to less important social issues, such as abortion, sexuality, and stem cell research.
4.) Government - The government’s role is to maintain what makes Americans happy: a large economy. The American government uses interventionist foreign policy, authoritarian solutions, surveillance, strict law enforcement, etc., to provide America with security and a steady flow of resources from abroad. The government also uses social control through propaganda, corporate media outlets, fear, schools, and churches to create blind obedience and nationalism, so it can carry out the goal of maintaining a large economy.
I do not mean to generalize all Americans as having these values because certainly not all Americas do. But by participating in society, one unwillingly participates in the above fore mentioned: corporate profit, exploitation of people and natural resources, the reliance of technology, work, debt spending, consumption, waste, popular culture, privilege acceptance, apathy, compliancy, conformity, hypocrisy, fear, rules, regulations, social control, xenophobia, homophobia, global military occupation, war, terrorism, global warming, authoritarianism, less freedom, less democracy, more crime, more laws, and more prisons. Not all Americans directly values these things, but these are the seen as “necessary evils” that bring us what we ultimately want: a large economy and lots of technology.
American culture is no longer based on values, tradition, and necessity; instead, it is based on monetary wealth. A Cultural Revolution would tear down the current definition of happiness and replace it with something much more sane. A Cultural Revolution would emphasize freedom, family, vacation, education, health, and participatory democracy. It would call for an end to the destruction of the environment, and people would value helping others who are less fortunate. Happiness would be non-monetary and nontaxable. It would be peacefully obtained.
Is there hope?
No. To illustrate this I will reflect on the small cultural revolution in the late 1960's and early 1970's. After years of failed protests and demonstrations against the American system, people took two different approaches: 1.) A few people embraced a cultural revolution and said, “Well, if we can’t change the world, we’ll change our world.” They redefined happiness, not as something with monetary value, but as something abstract. They changed their life styles and advocated environmental protection. History has been used as propaganda to lead us to believe that hippies only cared about sex, drugs, and rock ’n roll. This is hardly the case. They engaged in a cultural revolution that had political intentions. 2.) Others grew impatient with a slow change, so they moved toward radicalism and militancy by joining empowering movements that endorsed self-defense. They carried guns into courthouses and there were hundreds of riots.
However, most Americans saw political and cultural dissent as sinful, and the government was too powerful to let anything undermine its ability to rule. It responded to both of these movements with assassination, "dirty tricks”, censorship, and "extreme governmental misconduct" through CONINTELPRO. The government also suppressed movements through a drug war on crack cocaine in the 1980's. The cultural revolution did not bring change to the American way of life.
Have no doubt, we live in an even more repressive system today. The government can legally suppress grassroot movement with intimidation and surveillance through the Patriot Act, and it can discredit and smear movements with propaganda through its corporate media outlets. The government also has many means of social control through blind obedience and nationalism, created by the conservative infrastructure. Addicting television shows and numbing technologies are also tools of social control that keep people mindless, disorganized, and less willing to change their culture.
There is little hope a cultural revolution will happen any time soon. People are afraid of change and they will do anything to protect the status quo. The events on 9/11, for example, only created a massive backlash, causing Americans, not to change their life style, but to want more war to secure our privileged life style and more rules and regulations to keep us safe. Our solution was not to ask tough questions and change our life style; it was just the opposite. The President told us to keep shopping and consuming in order to maintain our large economy, and we went forward with more war and violence at home and around the world; more of the same reasons that got us here in the first place.
Forget it!
I am not a sociologist, but I do see that many problems in this country exist because of American culture. We could change our culture by simply redefining happiness. We should stop valuing monetary wealth and technology. Instead, we should appreciate family, vacation, leisure time, education, and democracy. We can pursue these values peacefully, without bringing suffering and poverty to others and without destroying the environment. Currently, America reminds me of Mordor from the Lord of the Rings, dark and deadly. If we lived more moderately we could turn America into the Shire, a place of peace and serenity. In order to do this, we have to model our culture after Hobbit Culture.
Hobbits dislike complex machines, they have little government, and they live moderately, in harmony with the earth. They take pleasure in simple, abundant things that are easily obtained--stories, coffee, books, shire weed, hot baths, beer, parties, and sunsets. They are a little fat, but that is from all their leisure time and enjoyment they find in life. They busy themselves with working around the house, gardening, and spending time with family. Hobbits are simple people who live in their small part of the world. They have no need for war or weapons of mass destruction, because they have no enemies. They do not work all day, and they do not profit from the suffering of others. Hobbits are happy people because they do not worship wealth, technology, and power. A life spent in the pursuit of these things will turn you into Gollum, slimy and lonely.
We Value the Wrong Things
Americans value the wrong things. First, America values a large economy. We think we have to join the rat-race, the endless pursuit of wealth through work, to find happiness. This is why millions and millions of people suffer from depression and mental health problems. The polls suggest that Americans are no more happier now than 80 years ago when the economy was smaller and spending power was less.
Secondly, Americans value technology too much. We are too reliant on technology to ensure our survival, and we are overconfident that more technology will better society and somehow create a utopia. Sure, technology has made improvements in many areas. However, with each new solution more problems are created; more problems create the need for more solutions through technology, and each time the negative consequences grow steeper. Sure technology has made advancements in medicine and increasing our life expectancy, but the human body did not evolve to live 90 years. Our bodies have 3.5 million plus years of experience as a doctor; the human body can cure and prevent more diseases then any doctor ever will, yet we are obsessed with altering our appearance and living forever through technology. Have you ever been to a nursing home? Frankenstein is not science fiction anymore! Yes, it has increased our quantity of life, but it has decreased our quality of life. We can thank technology for allergies, asthma, cancer, depression, and weapons of mass destruction. We can also thank technology for global warming in which the United States in a major contributor–we are responsible for twenty percent of the world’s CO2 emittance. America’s obesity problem is partly due to technology--136 million Americans are overweight, and one third of all American children and teens are overweight. This is partly because we merely walk from our cars to our computers to the couch to watch television–a new study shows that children spend 6.5 hours a day using electronics. Consequently, we have no practical reason for our body; it does not directly relate to our survival anymore. In addition, we have made no moral progress toward defining new technologies. Our debates over technologies that abort babies, deliver nuclear bombs, and clone humans are endless, yet we continue to build these machines.
The Way We Think
Americans need to change the way they think. We need to change the way we think about happiness. We are socialized by corporations to believe we need expensive name brand products, lots of technology, and a large economy to be happy. Therefore, we join the rat-race to make as much money as possible, thinking we are in the pursuit of happiness, but we are not. Rather than living moderately, we work, consume, waste, and spend money on popular culture and technology. We will do anything to live forever with computers, cell phones, stock options, a trim waistline, and the nicest car on the block. Americans view these things, not as wants and desires, but as necessities that ensure our survival.
We also need to rethink our views regarding democracy and freedom. We claim to spread Democracy to the Middle East and elsewhere, yet we do not even practice it here. Too many people are passive obedient, and very few people question authority or engage in political dissent. This is clear by the fact that more people vote for American Idol than they do for the President. Most people are locked in their homes watching mindless reality TV. Mean while, they claim to live in the most democratic nation in the world. This is hypocrisy not democracy.
The Way We Act
We need to change the way we act. We have the most violent and militaristic culture in the world, and we really seem to hate each other. We have the highest murder rate, most hand guns, and most violent crimes in the world. And people seem to be apathetic toward the poverty and suffering of others, choosing instead to profit from the poverty and war. We live in the richest country in the world, yet eighteen percent of American children are impoverished. All together, 37 million Americans live in poverty, 45 million Americans do not have healthcare, and 13 million hard-working Americans make $5.15 an hour, all while affluent people in the suburbs do little to help. Instead they blame the poor for society’s problems and seek authoritarian solutions.
To protect us from our militaristic culture, the government uses authoritarian methods to enforce millions of laws through martial law. The United States and Japan are the only two developed countries that use capital punishment, and America is home to 22% of the world’s prison population; yet America constitutes only 0.05% of the world’s total population. Unfortunately, the American people seem to support state sanctioned violence--strict rules, regulations, surveillance, and social control–as long as the large economy is maintained. Ultimately, people are complacent towards crime, violence, and poverty, as long as they are safe and secure in their homes; Americans would rather enjoy technology, a large economy, and security, rather then freedom.
The way we act is also destroying the world. Our corporations use cutthroat competition as an excuse to exploit other people and the environment. We keep impoverished countries poor forever through the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, free trade agreements, and our interventionist foreign policy bullies our economic and political agenda around the world; in short, our government preserves our large economy through multinational corporations, globalization, and military occupation. We spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined. We have enough Weapons of Mass Destruction to destroy the world five times, and there are thousands of U.S. military installations and personnel around the world. American hawks ignore peace treaties, break Geneva Convention rules, and dismiss the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by torturing others and engaging in state sponsored terrorism (see Guantanamo Bay and the School of Americas).
How will a Cultural Revolution Happen?
I do not advocate a violent revolution because I am a passivist, and I do not believe in war. I do, however, advocate a Cultural Revolution that would completely overthrow the American system. How will a Cultural Revolution happen? We first need to reform the institutions that create our values. There is a massive conservative infrastructure consisting of schools, corporations, churches, and the government that currently produce poor values:
1.) Schools - Schools teach our children that “all men are created equal” in their ability to consume and waste; that figures of authority never lie; and they discourage free thinking and critical thinking. Ultimately, schools are run like assembly lines, mass producing mindless clones for future generations. Sure, people value education, but for the wrong reasons. Many go to graduate school, not because they enjoy learning, but because they hope to increase their future spending power. The process of learning would be less painful if it was shifted away from financial goals toward learning goals. Maybe then we can start making some moral progress toward a better future.
2.) Corporations - Through commercials and advertisements, corporations socialize Americans to believe happiness is defined by wealth. They use fear to sell their products by saying we can not possibly be happy unless we have the newest gadget or the best cosmetics. So we spend our lives in pursuit of things we do not actually need. We have developed a culture based on corporate greed, rather than tradition and necessity.
Author Michael Parenti wrote, “A large part of our culture is now mass-marketed product, aptly designated as “mass culture,” “popular culture,” “media culture,”and even “mass-mediated culture.” This mass-media culture is owned and operated mostly by giant corporations whose major concerns are (a) to accumulate earnings and (b) to make the world safe for the overall corporate profit system. The result is a society organized around exchange value rather than use value, centralized social control rather the communal creativity.
He goes on to write, “Much of mass-marketed culture distracts us from thinking too much about the larger realities.” In other words, it is easier to be entertained than be informed; Americans are dumb and numb, because of sporting events, realty TV, sitcoms, celebrity news, media personalities, fads, and fashion styles. This culture is not a product of the free market either, corporations are not merely reacting to demand. Instead, it is based on the notion that supply creates demand.
3.) Churches - Churches and organized religion are responsible for keeping America conservative and unwilling to accept change even when our world is forever changing by new thinking and new technologies. Churches teach conformity, consensus, homophobia, xenophobia, and they use fear to teach us that every natural impulse in our body is wrong. They also teach about domestication and the domination of plants, animals, and people. And during elections, they allow politicians to divert what is really important to less important social issues, such as abortion, sexuality, and stem cell research.
4.) Government - The government’s role is to maintain what makes Americans happy: a large economy. The American government uses interventionist foreign policy, authoritarian solutions, surveillance, strict law enforcement, etc., to provide America with security and a steady flow of resources from abroad. The government also uses social control through propaganda, corporate media outlets, fear, schools, and churches to create blind obedience and nationalism, so it can carry out the goal of maintaining a large economy.
I do not mean to generalize all Americans as having these values because certainly not all Americas do. But by participating in society, one unwillingly participates in the above fore mentioned: corporate profit, exploitation of people and natural resources, the reliance of technology, work, debt spending, consumption, waste, popular culture, privilege acceptance, apathy, compliancy, conformity, hypocrisy, fear, rules, regulations, social control, xenophobia, homophobia, global military occupation, war, terrorism, global warming, authoritarianism, less freedom, less democracy, more crime, more laws, and more prisons. Not all Americans directly values these things, but these are the seen as “necessary evils” that bring us what we ultimately want: a large economy and lots of technology.
American culture is no longer based on values, tradition, and necessity; instead, it is based on monetary wealth. A Cultural Revolution would tear down the current definition of happiness and replace it with something much more sane. A Cultural Revolution would emphasize freedom, family, vacation, education, health, and participatory democracy. It would call for an end to the destruction of the environment, and people would value helping others who are less fortunate. Happiness would be non-monetary and nontaxable. It would be peacefully obtained.
Is there hope?
No. To illustrate this I will reflect on the small cultural revolution in the late 1960's and early 1970's. After years of failed protests and demonstrations against the American system, people took two different approaches: 1.) A few people embraced a cultural revolution and said, “Well, if we can’t change the world, we’ll change our world.” They redefined happiness, not as something with monetary value, but as something abstract. They changed their life styles and advocated environmental protection. History has been used as propaganda to lead us to believe that hippies only cared about sex, drugs, and rock ’n roll. This is hardly the case. They engaged in a cultural revolution that had political intentions. 2.) Others grew impatient with a slow change, so they moved toward radicalism and militancy by joining empowering movements that endorsed self-defense. They carried guns into courthouses and there were hundreds of riots.
However, most Americans saw political and cultural dissent as sinful, and the government was too powerful to let anything undermine its ability to rule. It responded to both of these movements with assassination, "dirty tricks”, censorship, and "extreme governmental misconduct" through CONINTELPRO. The government also suppressed movements through a drug war on crack cocaine in the 1980's. The cultural revolution did not bring change to the American way of life.
Have no doubt, we live in an even more repressive system today. The government can legally suppress grassroot movement with intimidation and surveillance through the Patriot Act, and it can discredit and smear movements with propaganda through its corporate media outlets. The government also has many means of social control through blind obedience and nationalism, created by the conservative infrastructure. Addicting television shows and numbing technologies are also tools of social control that keep people mindless, disorganized, and less willing to change their culture.
There is little hope a cultural revolution will happen any time soon. People are afraid of change and they will do anything to protect the status quo. The events on 9/11, for example, only created a massive backlash, causing Americans, not to change their life style, but to want more war to secure our privileged life style and more rules and regulations to keep us safe. Our solution was not to ask tough questions and change our life style; it was just the opposite. The President told us to keep shopping and consuming in order to maintain our large economy, and we went forward with more war and violence at home and around the world; more of the same reasons that got us here in the first place.
Forget it!
I am not a sociologist, but I do see that many problems in this country exist because of American culture. We could change our culture by simply redefining happiness. We should stop valuing monetary wealth and technology. Instead, we should appreciate family, vacation, leisure time, education, and democracy. We can pursue these values peacefully, without bringing suffering and poverty to others and without destroying the environment. Currently, America reminds me of Mordor from the Lord of the Rings, dark and deadly. If we lived more moderately we could turn America into the Shire, a place of peace and serenity. In order to do this, we have to model our culture after Hobbit Culture.
Hobbits dislike complex machines, they have little government, and they live moderately, in harmony with the earth. They take pleasure in simple, abundant things that are easily obtained--stories, coffee, books, shire weed, hot baths, beer, parties, and sunsets. They are a little fat, but that is from all their leisure time and enjoyment they find in life. They busy themselves with working around the house, gardening, and spending time with family. Hobbits are simple people who live in their small part of the world. They have no need for war or weapons of mass destruction, because they have no enemies. They do not work all day, and they do not profit from the suffering of others. Hobbits are happy people because they do not worship wealth, technology, and power. A life spent in the pursuit of these things will turn you into Gollum, slimy and lonely.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Stand Up
Here is a poem by an early supporter of Hitler who was eventually imprisoned in a concentration camp. It’s a nice little reminder of the social chaos that escalated during this period; something that otherwise might have been prevented if people would have stood up.
They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
This was written by Martin Niemoeller, an early supporter of Hitler who was eventually imprisoned in a concentration camp.
If you are a person who realizes crimes are taking place today, stand up for what you believe in, because someday it might be too late.
They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
This was written by Martin Niemoeller, an early supporter of Hitler who was eventually imprisoned in a concentration camp.
If you are a person who realizes crimes are taking place today, stand up for what you believe in, because someday it might be too late.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Ronald Reagan
In Ronald Reagan’s 1985 State of the Union address he said , “We honor the giants of our history not by going back but forward to the dreams their vision foresaw.”
As we honor Ronald Reagan in his death we are honoring another “giant of our history.” Yet, I am not one to blindly accept anyone as just another figure in our past who helped engineer our wonderful country, without first reviewing some facts. A brief review of the history of our new War on Terror reminds us that much of our problems today are a direct result of twenty-five years of failed foreign policy, starting with the Reagan Administration.
Reagan's Cabinet: gave billions of dollars in aid and military support to Saddam Hussein when Iraq was actively using chemical weapons against its own people; armed and trained Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan; funded and trained terrorists in Central America; and ended the Iran-Contra scandal by secretly selling weapons to Iran. At the time, these things seemed “okay"; history claims these things helped win the Cold War. (Many believe it was more Soviet reform then anything.) Yes, the Cold War ended and millions of people gained freedom; however, the way it was done has given us our problems today. Not only did this administration break the law, but it provided arms and created alliances with terrorist networks, brutal dictators, and nations all over the world. The hypocrisy of supporting thugs to fight our wars for twenty-five years has caught up with us today.
Unfortunately, the same men who served under Reagan for eight years, also served under George Bush I, and they now serve George Bush II: Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rove, etc. These men and women are opportunists with no moral convictions. They find quick military solutions for the moment, and in the process they recklessly disregard cultures, traditions, religions, and governments of other countries involved, ultimately creating even bigger and more global consequences for the future. Twenty-five years of failed foreign policy has given us new problems involving the same names today: Saddam Hussein, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden.
In addition to foreign policy, “Reaganomics” is a complete failure. It first promises tax cuts, which in theory will increase investment and spending, thus generating more taxes; and secondly, government spending is cut, which is supposed to balance budgets. This sounds great in theory; however, this is not what happens, as we are again seeing with G. W. Bush’s economic plan. First, tax cuts do not benefit the middle class or the poor, rather they help only Fortune 500 companies and the richest 1 percent of Americans. This is evident by the fact that the top 1 percent of Americans have increased their wealth by 50 percent, while the middle class and poor Americans have lost billions of dollars in wealth, and CEO wages are astronomically high. Second, a decrease in government spending is codeword for a decrease in welfare programs, entitlements, and affordable housing for the poor, and it is not a decrease in the already colossal military budget. In only eight years the Reagan Administration spent $2.5 trillion on the military, which is more then all the money spent since the end of World War II. As a result of Reaganomics the national debt tripled, and the distribution of wealth between the rich and poor worsened.
Indeed, Ronald Reagan is a “giant of our history”; history has already treated him very, very well. However, as much respect as he has gotten since his death, I caution you in how you view his Presidency given our problems today.
As we honor Ronald Reagan in his death we are honoring another “giant of our history.” Yet, I am not one to blindly accept anyone as just another figure in our past who helped engineer our wonderful country, without first reviewing some facts. A brief review of the history of our new War on Terror reminds us that much of our problems today are a direct result of twenty-five years of failed foreign policy, starting with the Reagan Administration.
Reagan's Cabinet: gave billions of dollars in aid and military support to Saddam Hussein when Iraq was actively using chemical weapons against its own people; armed and trained Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan; funded and trained terrorists in Central America; and ended the Iran-Contra scandal by secretly selling weapons to Iran. At the time, these things seemed “okay"; history claims these things helped win the Cold War. (Many believe it was more Soviet reform then anything.) Yes, the Cold War ended and millions of people gained freedom; however, the way it was done has given us our problems today. Not only did this administration break the law, but it provided arms and created alliances with terrorist networks, brutal dictators, and nations all over the world. The hypocrisy of supporting thugs to fight our wars for twenty-five years has caught up with us today.
Unfortunately, the same men who served under Reagan for eight years, also served under George Bush I, and they now serve George Bush II: Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rove, etc. These men and women are opportunists with no moral convictions. They find quick military solutions for the moment, and in the process they recklessly disregard cultures, traditions, religions, and governments of other countries involved, ultimately creating even bigger and more global consequences for the future. Twenty-five years of failed foreign policy has given us new problems involving the same names today: Saddam Hussein, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden.
In addition to foreign policy, “Reaganomics” is a complete failure. It first promises tax cuts, which in theory will increase investment and spending, thus generating more taxes; and secondly, government spending is cut, which is supposed to balance budgets. This sounds great in theory; however, this is not what happens, as we are again seeing with G. W. Bush’s economic plan. First, tax cuts do not benefit the middle class or the poor, rather they help only Fortune 500 companies and the richest 1 percent of Americans. This is evident by the fact that the top 1 percent of Americans have increased their wealth by 50 percent, while the middle class and poor Americans have lost billions of dollars in wealth, and CEO wages are astronomically high. Second, a decrease in government spending is codeword for a decrease in welfare programs, entitlements, and affordable housing for the poor, and it is not a decrease in the already colossal military budget. In only eight years the Reagan Administration spent $2.5 trillion on the military, which is more then all the money spent since the end of World War II. As a result of Reaganomics the national debt tripled, and the distribution of wealth between the rich and poor worsened.
Indeed, Ronald Reagan is a “giant of our history”; history has already treated him very, very well. However, as much respect as he has gotten since his death, I caution you in how you view his Presidency given our problems today.
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