Dr. Owens the progressive
To the Editor:
This letter to the editor is a response to Dr. Owens’ opinion published on July 1, 2010.
The year is 2050, Medicare and Social Security are bankrupt, health care for all was repealed years ago, homeless people live on Dr. Owens front porch and Dr. Owens calls on someone to do something about it. Who could he ask? Not the Board of Supervisors – the county went broke after its investments went up in flames from another burst bubble; not the state, either, because they have bigger fish to fry – like keeping I-95 paved. I guess he will ask the feds – gasp! – not the feds!
You see, Dr. Owens, progressivism is not a deadly word. I know you may be scared that your “liberties” are currently being stripped – but give it a rest. Without progressive laws, opinions, like the ones you share in your weekly column, would be prohibited and the author jailed.
It is clear that you feel God has given you a unique gift and therefore you must share your opinions about the proper ordering of society with the rest of us. In these efforts to influence your readers, you want us to think that you are doing so in accordance with a view that the founding fathers and God (no less) would approve of. Clearly, you are delusional.
In the real “reality,” there are millions of Americans who do not have access to the same basic resources as you. Whether these resources are received from a paycheck, as a return in services supported through taxes or from organizations to which you belong – you are in a privileged position. You simply do not have to think about where your next bit of food will come from, how you are going to get to work or how your children are going to be fed. Therefore, you are free to “think” and disparage all those who are less fortunate than you are, and the politicians who believe in a society where all are given the same opportunities for advancement.
As you rightly said, people are different, but you fail to see how “progressive” legislation has established a society in which those with differences are able to achieve untold successes – remember Dr. Owens, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was wheelchair bound.
I pray, yes to the same God as you, Dr. Owens, that our society does not regress into one where the rights fought for by so many fearless advocates of social equality and justice are trampled upon in the name of smaller government.
If America goes along the path proscribed by Dr. Owens, it might soon be time to lay out the cots.
Alex Innes
Comments
Alex Innes misses the point.
To The Editor:
I would like to make some points about what Dr. Owens was saying that seem to have been lost on Mr. Innes.
Based on this “Without progressive laws, opinions, like the ones you share in your weekly column, would be prohibited and the author jailed.”, Mr. Innes seems to believe that our “rights” come from the laws written by “progressive” elected politicians. That is not the case and just by looking at the 1st Amendment of the Bill of Rights, you can see that. It starts “Congress shall make no law”, thus acknowledging that those rights already existed and that Congress could not take them away. Our rights exist because we are human, and government exist to protect those rights. When government steps on those rights, it moves toward tyranny. Can Mr. Innes tell me why I should have to give up my right to handle my own health care, a right that was not given to me by the government in the first place? This is one of many examples of where our government has taken rights from us, for the greater good, that did not come from them in the first place.
Yes, there are those that do not have the same basic resources as me, but on the other hand they have more ability in other areas then me. We each have our gifts and curses that we have to deal with. I have full use of my body, but Mr. Stephen Hawkins has a mind that is one of the greatest in the world. Should I be confined to a wheel chair and he be given a lobotomy so that we will be equal? Of course not, no we have both taken what life have given us and made the best of it. The problem with progressive policies is that it destroys the drive of those, that take advantage of progressive programs, to succeed.
I recently found out about a person that I greatly admire for what he accomplished. He started out with $25.00 and a 6th grade education and became a multimillionaire. By the way he did this during the Great Depression, and finally one last point he was African-American. His name is S. B. Fuller, and you will not find much if anything about him in the history books, because he would not toe the progressive line. He achieved not because of their help, but in spite of their help.
The question our society has before it is not between the Democrat party and the Republican party. It is a question between how much control over our lives we will give the government. I like, Dr. Owens, believe that government control over me should be limited, and the most stringent of those controls should be at the level closest to me. Others believe that people in far way cities that have very little contact with us, should have the most control over our lives and those closest to us, including ourselves, should have the least.
That is the question that our Founder's dealt with, and I believe solved that question by realizing that we should have the most control over ourselves, even if we fail. Because the freedom to fail is the necessary, so that we have the freedom to succeed. Failure and success are two sides of the same coin, take away one and you take away the other.