Craig's Fire

A society or economy or country built entirely on the ethic of survival of the fittest simply will not work. Here are some examples…

A talented and strong employee stays employed due to his experience and capabilities. But what if he falls off a ladder next week, hits his head and loses a good part of his cognition? Would we then tell him to become homeless or that he does not deserve a job?

A trend in this country which follows the exact thinking of many who is that of getting rid of older workers. This is a regular thing! It doesn’t happen because they are less productive…exactly the opposite sometimes! But when you can get someone who is more of a slave (behind the eight ball, has a couple kids, under the gun) to come in and work…..and many in management and executive positions prefer their employees to be younger than they are, and when health insurance costs more to cover older people……we throw our elders on the scrap heap.

I picked up an interesting book in the store today – should have bought it! The author was deconstructing the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson and other historical figures by taking their famous words and putting them in our more modern form of English. One of her points was the word “Happiness” used in the preamble of the constitution and elsewhere. She claimed that our present outlook on “selfish and personal” happiness (I this, I that) was far from the definition of it at the time!
That’s easy to see in TJ’s words themselves:
“The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of good government.”

Hmmm, this would certainly put a modern interpretation on our perceived lack of “right” to basic health care! And, it would make it strange that our government sows seeds of unhappiness through policies which lead to high unemployment, outsourcing, predatory capitalism (slavery or even the modern equiv.).

To me, what he and the founders were saying is the ENTIRE and ONLY idea that we call America is to make EVERYONE as happy (not smiling, but contented) and healthy as possible…NO EXCEPTIONS.
This is far from the ideas I get from my con and neo-con friends and others who seem to say “I got mine, screw you…stand in line if you were not blessed with my intelligence, drive, ambition, physical strength, birth parents, skin color or whatever other advantages I have.”

It would have been so easy for the founders to write into the constitution that the ideal of America was to allow the Robber Baron to steal as much from illiterate people as possible…or allow bankers to take as much advantage of us as possible…..whatever they could get away with under the law…
BUT THEY DIDN’T. WHY?

I think one of the main founders, John Adams, said it best in this way:
““The best government is that which communicates ease, comfort, security – or in one word – HAPPINESS, to the greatest number of people and to the greatest degree.”
John Adams, Founder – USA.”

IMHO, the policies of Reagan and Bush and even to a large extent Clinton (who obviously had to govern with a heavily GOP Congress) do not live up to this maxim.

I think it is a very basic difference. It appears that a new definition of America in the corporate model has taken hold. I just wish that one of my more conservative friends could point me to the founders vision of that….so I can understand if it has any basis in our Republic….or is it just a selfish world view?