To the Editor:
You couldn’t help but see the title, “The biggest crisis I see in America right now,” in LCN letters recently, but we have crises everywhere.
I think we have ignorance (a crisis in itself) and misinformation more than anything else now, so maybe some things should just be said calmly and reasonably.
We have a big government because we have a big country with complex needs. In theory, our government exists to protect the rights of the individual. For example, what rights would an African American have if the states decided them? The Civil War and the Civil Rights protests answered that question.
Plato argued that the duty of government to provide for the basic needs of its citizens. Isn’t health care a basic need? Let us consider the consequences if a health care reform bill fails:
The health care industry will be empowered to keep raising their costs, drop patients for care, deny care because of pre existing conditions and raise the costs of prescription drugs unchecked,
A failure that allows the present state of healthcare in this country to keep this up is a sin of omission for all. We have a crisis in that citizens are willing to believe or not believe without searching for facts and verities, which can be substantiated or discussed.
Bizarre claims, associations and accusations are given equal time with raw data.
“Coloring outside the lines” has come to mean extending one’s expressiveness, but its gotten so far out of line that the lines are almost impossible to find.
It has become and national pastime to broadcast throughout the media. (almost as bragging rights) individuals making vile insulting degrading words and actions and lies against family, spouses and friends without any serious consequences or sense of shame to the conscience for those doing so. If those who are trusted in the highest positions of office have no sense of shame, how long will a moral foundation last?
What shall voters who elected those betrayers who ran on slates of ethical, religious, family supportive morals tell their children, that they are only humans, when in fact those who hold themselves to higher standards must be judged by those standards.
Where others see crisis, I see trends and warning signs to be aware of. We who care for and about each other must pass judgment on those who have no sense of shame about doing damage to those who do care.
The social and especially political current of lies and distortions, disregards of truths resulting from an end-justifies-the-means-mentality have become a whirlpool of fears sucking many into it. This whirlpool is getting stronger, It began years ago and it overrides civil discourse, civil respect, civil rights and compassion.
Shame on those feeding it who can look at themselves in the mirror.
Carl Scheiman, Walpole
