In today's political environment--endless grandstanding and clamoring for attention and the like--it strikes me that what is needed is for someone to come up with some things we can agree on. Something where we can sit down and start thinking about where we are, and how we got there. To this effect, I submit the following list.
1. I would hope that we would all agree that when immigrants--legal or illegal--commit certain serious crimes (e.g. violent felonies), we ought to show them the door when their sentence is completed. Those who harbor them and give them sanctuary ought to be subject to criminal and civil liability.
2. I would hope that we would agree that our borders ought to have at least a vehicle barrier so that those who would immigrate without permission at least need to walk a few miles to do so.
3. I would hope that we would all agree that we ought not use the government as a piggy bank for our own pet projects, whether that's farm subsidies, subsidies for electric cars and solar panels, grants to Planned Parenthood, or whatever.
4. I would hope that we would all agree that given history, we need to take things like Holocaust denial seriously, especially when the conference is being led by Iran's head of state.
5. I would hope that we would all agree that when negotiating with nations that sponsor terrorism, that sponsorship is on the table no matter else what is being negotiated.
6. I would hope that we would agree that in our foreign policy, we ought to consider who is going to ultimately receive the money we're talking about. If a terrorist state (e.g. Iran) is going to spend billions buying weapons from our chief geopolitical opponents (Russia and China), we ought to consider the implications of that.
7. I would hope that we would agree that if our government is suing nuns to force them to buy birth control coverage, we have seriously lost our way as a nation.
8. I would hope that we would agree that public records ought to be retained by the public in a secure form that can be easily searched by investigators when need be.
9. I would hope that we would agree that public servants who withhold public records and store them on unsecure servers ought to be promptly prosecuted for that.
10. I would hope that we would agree that when regulations and taxes are used to harass political enemies of the party in power, then the structure is too big and ought to be reevaluated.
Probably a few more things to be said here, but it strikes me that a renewal of who we are as a nation might just rely on some things we ought to be able to agree on like this.
Podcast #1047: The Roman Caesars’ Guide to Ruling
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The Roman caesars were the rulers of the Roman Empire, beginning in 27 BC
with Julius Caesar’s heir Augustus, from whom subsequent caesars took their
nam...
7 hours ago
3 comments:
Good thoughts Tweeted out
Thanks, and feel free to plagiarize (a la Tom Lehrer's "Lobachevsky") and add.
You are hard to improve upon!
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