In the Name of Patriotism

What is patriotism? What is meant by a love of America? What is America? Do we define America by out longitude and latitude? A country is defined by its character, its ideals, and what it stands for.

We love America because of its ideals even though we often fall short. For example, we tout our guarantee of a free press but are ranked 47^th among nations when ranking nations by the degree of freedom of the press. We value education but are also ranked very low among international test scores and we pay our teachers a very low salary compared with the 40 some odd nations that provide better compensation for teachers.

Today, millions put aside our ideals and lay claim to practical thinking. Nazi Germany and many other nations made such a claim when they found groups to blame for every ill in the country. Although Jews and Gypsies may quickly come to mind, nations have blamed scores of other groups for their nation’s woes.

Today, we toss aside the ideal of welcoming the poor of the world. We break treaties, agreements and our own laws. We certainly ignore moral teachings and moral laws. We do this in an attempt to eliminate foreigners, the newest group to blame for our personal problems and those of our nation. Some will argue that it is only the foreigners who enter America illegally that they blame, yet they also blame the refugees who seek asylum and are protected from prosecution for being on U.S. soil without documentation. Our laws forbid the deportation of those requesting asylum if they have a reasonable claim to asylum. That is our law.

That law does allow people to withdraw their asylum request. So we take away their children, do not tell the parents where their children are being held, and coerce parents to withdraw their asylum applications, voluntarily so they may be reunited with their children. We do not even keep track of the children so that they can ever be reunited. We deport parents without their children. 

This is the not the character or ideals of the nation we love. 

This will be a darker chapter in our history than the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. This will be a darker chapter in our history that the Mexican American War. But it will pass. The arc of our history always bends toward justice.

Buy American!

Buy American!

I have no issue with the idea that when we purchase goods made in America, we help our country. More jobs with better wages can result if we buy goods made in America.

My issue is how we achieve our goal of buying American made goods. Taxing imports is not the path to take. Instead, we need laws that require businesses to pay livable wages and adhere to our environmental standards and employee safety laws regardless of where the work on items is done.

If companies know that it will cost almost as much to pay foreign workers or foreign companies as it would to hire American employees, millions of jobs would not be shipped to foreign countries. US companies remaining in other countries will force local companies to raise wages because they will be competing with American companies for workers. 

Fewer people will leave their home countries for better lives in America when they can earn a livable wage at home. More people in the USA and around the world will be able to afford American products.

Instead of companies being solely focused on their market price, they will become focused on higher quality goods, their relationships with customers and employees. The employees that generate the wealth of a company deserve a fair share of the profits.

My America (Why I long for action under Article V)

I recall standing in my 1st-grade classroom wearing a white shirt, and navy-blue tie and pants, facing the American Flag in the right corner of the room and pledging allegiance. Fort McHenry, the monuments and canon in Patterson Park and listening to stories of Baltimore during both world wars were also part of my life.

Today’s American is a different place, or maybe knowledge, education and lots of experience opened my eyes to the ‘good old days’ and how we came to be here today.

·     Gangbangers, cartel members in the USA, and drug dealers live every moment under the threat of violent death, so the death penalty is certainly not a deterrent.

·     Any criminal, insane person, or people looking to make some fast cash can walk into ‘gun shows’ and buy guns from ‘private parties’ without any background check. Of course, stealing guns that are legally owned is still in vogue.

·     People that fear no law have easy access to all the guns they want.

·     The media convinces us that our biggest problem is the police, using bad language, and finding men who behaved as was normal decades ago, and Hispanics entering the USA illegally. That’s it. Nothing else is a ‘big deal’. After all, most shooting victims are Black and that doesn’t matter unless a White person is the shooter. After all, most victims are involved in crime, except for the innocents slaughtered in the cross-fire.

Like trained seals, many people blame parents, a race, or a religion. Many otherwise sane people say that refugee children torn out of their mothers’ arms, shipped to an unknown location and put into chain link cages have a better life than they did with their parents.

Many Americans honestly believe a wall that can be scaled with a homemade ladder is the solution to problems caused by the 70-thousand pages of our immigration laws.

We abandoned participation in the U.N. Human Rights Council, the Paris Climate Pact, and criticize France, Great Britain, and Germany while we embrace North Korea, Russia, and China. We break international agreements instead of working to improve those commitments. We continue our war on poor people in the United States instead of a war on poverty. We decrease health care for our most vulnerable citizens.

This year, both Houses of Congress exceeded the president’s enormous request to increase defense spending and continue to buy weapons that even the Pentagon told Congress they do not want. As we invest in more weapons and bombs, we do nothing to raise our investment in education, leaving us at number  22 in the amount of money nations around the world pay teachers. (Our education rankings and the treatment of teachers is embarrassing in every category).

Millions of Americans are weary of our dynastic presidencies. We did not want another Bush or another Clinton. Millions are fearful of the tremendous cultural changes due to immigrants. Millions are tired of the political correctness that goes so far as suspending little children for using words found in the Christian Bible deemed to be hate speech. In fact, a grade school principal marched a student from the school cafeteria because she was reading the Bible. That principal threw the Bible into the trash and said it was filled with hate speech.

F

or all these reasons I wonder if we could actually use Article V of the U.S. Constitution and have our state legislatures call for a Constitutional Convention. Twenty-eight states have already requested such a convention and that means we only need 6 more state legislatures to make a formal request to meet the two-thirds majority that would require such a convention. Although the states have different Amendments in mind, once a convention is called for any specific purpose delegates at the convention can consider any number and any variety of changes to the Constitution. An Article V convention, in this fashion, could be a vehicle for a comprehensive rewriting of the Constitution, even for an altogether new Constitution.

Since most Americans know very little about their Constitution and their government, it could take a decade for such an event to occur. What is more likely is that the Congress would begin actually doing something to resolve the thorny issues of immigration reform, the right to bear arms, Social Security, and our bloated military budget.

Still, it is fun to think about a new Constitution or significant Constitutional changes to deal with the times and the issues of today, instead of operating as if it is still 1789.