Last night’s presidential debate depressed me.
I slept poorly.
I awoke this morning upset and tearful.
Must we be treated like shareholders in a proxy battle for the management of the largest enterprise on the face of the earth?
Do none of us want our passions stirred for our own good?Is there no leader here who might motivate us with their thoughts on how we might collectively be a nation?
If I were running, I would say:
My fellow Americans,
We once had terrorists and their sympathizers in our midst, yet we did not hire a foreign force to invade Chicago to find the Chicago Seven. We did not inspect every black looking for Black Panthers. And we were able to forgive Patty Hearst for taking up with the wrong crowd. We did pursue those terrorists and we made them ineffective and marginal. When aging 60’s radicals finally came out of hiding they were more the subjects of our pity than our scorn.
Japanese prisoners of war thanked us for saving their lives for they had been the products of an evil indoctrination that advocated suicide over a change of heart. Our goal is for middle aged Muslims to thank us one day for saving them from the evil indoctrination of their youth. Our goal should not be to hunt down and kill every last one of them. I doubt that they will ever thank us for bombing their villages as we looked for evil doers among them. We can deal with terrorists for we have done it before, and hopefully war never need be used to that end.
A nation should not take the decision to go to war lightly, and it is not the equivalent to hiring some professional police to maintain the peace. A nation at war requires complicity from all its citizens in the violation of the Golden Rule as it makes it a national mission to kill other people’s loved ones. If the day ever comes when we need go to war, I shall hold hands with you, kneel, and beg forgiveness for our own failure to find an alternative. In the meantime, I solicit help from every one of you in seeking a better path, and I shall never say that, just because I personally can not think of an alternative, then there are none.
Many of you wish to import American made drugs from Canada because our drug companies sell our drugs cheaper there. As chief executive I intend to vigorously enforce the unjust law that prohibits such importation, and as you leader I encourage all of you to violate that law as an act of civil disobedience. Then collectively we will present ourselves to those drug companies, millions strong, as their own customers who have been criminalized in support of their greed and we will stop them from perpetrating the biggest injustice of all by charging what the market can bear, rather than working for our best health. When we are victorious, I promise to pardon all of you of your crimes. My approach does not require the consent of Congress and the drug lobbyists will be powerless against us.
Our desire to litigate is out of hand, and we all must reassess our relationship with responsibility and risk. A life may be of incalculable value, yet accidents do happen. We do want our doctors to have insurance in case their negligence causes us harm, yet we want them to be able to afford that insurance. The solution to these problems may involve capping awards but it also involves us capping our own expectations and behaviors. If you wish to be reflective, I suggest that you decide if you personally have enough insurance to fairly compensate someone if you cause them harm. I also suggest that if you hate ambulance-chasing lawyers who advertise on TV then you tie up their toll free numbers with your opinions of them.
We do have a health care crisis in this country, and part of the problem is that we are becoming increasingly unhealthy because of the choices we are making. As your President, I intend to protect your investment in me by exercising every day. I ask C-SPAN to cover it live. If your President can find time to keep fit, so can you. Won’t you join me?
I am pro business, and it has been said that the business of America is business. But when it comes to your relationship with your government I do not want you to think of yourselves as shareholders of a corporation entitled to benefits without liability, and voters in an occasional proxy fight for a change in management. I want you to think of yourselves as partners in an endeavor sharing not only the benefits but also the effort and the responsibilities. I want you to wisely identify leaders in your midst.
God has blessed America and I hope we can act in a way to justify his continued blessing. Like many of you, I am not even sure I believe in God, but I say these words because they best express a feeling in my heart.
As I write these words, I cannot help but cry. As I listen to our presidential candidates, I cannot help but cry out.
Note: This was originally posted on October 9, 2004 under the title A Friend Writes on Baristanet.com.
What appears below are the comments as they appeared following the original piece.
Brooke Allen 