America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great (16 page)

I have heard it said that everybody harbors some degree of racism, but my own observations have led me to believe that individuals who are well-educated and who think deeply about matters tend to not base any biases on superficial characteristics. Such people tend to realize that it is the brain that makes the person who they are, not the external covering. People who are less intellectually sophisticated tend to allow their emotions to be affected by very superficial things, such as skin color. Unfortunately, basing one’s ideas and opinions on superficial traits is rather common in places where intellectual development is not highly rewarded or praised. I suspect that if
one did an in-depth study of people who arbitrarily engage in racial bias, they would find that such people were also attracted to visually appealing but unhealthy foods. They might be more inclined to go for the flashy red car than the dull gray hybrid that gets fifty miles to a gallon of gasoline. These people come in all sizes, colors, shapes, and socioeconomic categories, and rather than shun and castigate such people, our nation’s goal should be to educate them and fill in the intellectual gaps, which would improve their value both to themselves and to us all.

As an intern at Johns Hopkins in 1977, I was frequently mistaken for an orderly, phlebotomist, respiratory therapist, or some position other than a doctor. For most, it was an innocent mistake; however, it would have been easy for them to notice that I had a stethoscope around my neck. Or that I was in scrubs, or was wearing a white lab coat, which would have been extremely unusual for an orderly. When I would gently point out that I was a doctor, the majority of people were highly embarrassed and apologetic. I tried to alleviate their discomfort by letting them know that I was in no way offended and that I could easily have made a similar mistake. I never encountered anyone who made that same mistake twice. I helped eliminate their social ignorance, which I’m sure was beneficial to them in the long run.

Although much overt racism has been eliminated in America, there are still too many people who make sweeping generalizations about whole groups of people based on a negative encounter with a person of a different race. In order to resolve this problem, we must first admit that it exists even in our own families or ourselves — and African-Americans are just as likely to harbor racist attitudes as white people.

Just prior to the last presidential election, when the first African-American was elected president of the United States, I saw on television a segment where a reporter was interviewing African-Americans in Harlem, New York, about various policies advocated by candidate Barack Obama. All of the interviewees enthusiastically supported each policy discussed without knowing that they were actually the policies held by candidate John McCain. The most hilarious part of the interviews occurred when the people were asked what they thought about Senator Obama’s choice of his running mate, Sarah Palin. The answers were all quite favorable toward Governor Palin because she was picked, they thought, by Obama. Many African-Americans voted for Obama simply because he was a black man and not because they resonated philosophically with his policies. If the situation were reversed,
and white people were obviously voting for their candidate based on race and not political philosophy, shouts of racism would be deafening.

I do, however, understand the enormous pride African-Americans have because the president of the United States is a black man. I even know staunchly conservative African-Americans who voted for Obama even though they vehemently opposed his political platform. One individual told me that it wasn’t really racism, but rather just a matter of being overwhelmed by emotion upon entering the voting booth. But racism is a subset of hatred, which also is an emotion. I’m sure many white voters were overwhelmed by emotion several years ago during California’s 1982 race for governor, when they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Tom Bradley, who was the mayor of Los Angeles at the time and happened to be an African-American. All the pre-election polls showed Bradley far ahead of his white opponent, and it was a foregone conclusion that he was going to win and become California’s first African-American governor — but when it came time to cast votes, sentiment swung radically in the other direction. Voting for Barack Obama simply because he is black is just as irrational and racist as not voting for Tom Bradley because he was black.

As a nation, we must first admit that we have a problem with racism and shallow thinking, and we need to redouble our efforts to learn from the ugly episodes in our history and move forward — united — to tackle real problems.

Because President Obama is an African-American who believes in redistributing wealth, white people might wonder if all or most black people are like President Obama and want to redistribute wealth. However, I personally know many African-Americans who vigorously disagree with the concept of government redistribution of wealth. They love this country and have put forth a great deal of physical and intellectual effort to succeed in our nation. They share the same values as the majority of Americans and believe that they should be able to keep or distribute their resources as they see fit.

When the government becomes large and intrusive and feels that it has the right to as much of the resources owned by the people as it wants, then we have clearly strayed away from some of the foundational principles of this nation. What is truly amazing is how accepting most Americans are of this government intrusion into our lives and bank accounts. It is commonplace today to find large groups of people who believe the government has a
responsibility to take care of all the basic necessities of its citizens. Benjamin Franklin, however, wrote:

In this passage and in many of his other writings, Franklin makes it clear that kindness and charity are admirable traits, but that it is actually destructive to continually support the needs and habits of those who are lazy and irresponsible. By doing so, we only encourage the proliferation of these undesirable traits and the numbers of people who have to be supported. Samuel Adams went right to the heart of the matter when he said, “The utopian schemes of leveling (redistribution), and a community of goods (the government owns everything), are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the Crown.”
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These ideas he even called unconstitutional.

I believe we are in the process right now of learning that our government is far too big — and the bigger it gets, the more taxpayer money it needs to sustain itself. A gigantic, bloated government has to keep itself busy in order to justify its existence; hence, you have more regulations and meddling in the affairs of the people, whether they request it, need it, or not. Our government is now so large and expensive that each year our national debt grows larger. Currently it sits between $14 and $15 trillion — a number that is so large that it is virtually incomprehensible. That comes out to $50,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States.

It was obviously a mistake to allow our government to reach this size and to spend as much as it has, but it is not the fault of one party or the other. Rather, it is the natural tendency of government to expand if there is no conscientious effort to keep it under control. The Constitution of the United States was written in such a way as to restrain government growth and power if there was the will to adhere to it, but unfortunately many of our legislators feel that the Constitution is outdated and largely irrelevant to today’s society. They feel that we have advanced far beyond the understanding of the founding fathers and that through appropriate government, we can create
a better life for everyone. They may be right, but I doubt it. The reason I’m skeptical that we need a new government is that the old government worked so well. Our early, limited government provided an atmosphere that encouraged productivity and innovation, resulting in the most rapid expansion of a powerful middle class that the world had ever seen. It resulted in enormous economic and industrial power as well as an extremely educated populace. If you have something that works, why change it?

Is there a logical solution for controlling the size of our government and the resulting size of our national deficit? Currently the debate is raging in Washington between the Republicans, who have been largely co-opted by the Tea Party, and the Democrats, who are finding it very difficult to break out of their tax-and-spend mode. The Democrats accuse Republicans of draconian budget cuts that would take food out of the mouths of babies and shelter from the elderly. At the same time, the Republicans accuse the Democrats of having no concern for our future generations and no understanding of the concept of budgetary constraints. Who is right and who is wrong in this exaggerated tug-of-war is not nearly as important as how to solve the problem. The problem is our mistake of permitting a bloated government bureaucracy that requires unimaginable amounts of money to sustain itself. And our problem is magnified by numerous special interest groups advocating to protect their pet programs from a reduction in government spending.

As a nation, we have become so accustomed to ever-rising taxes that the fact that the government takes up to half of all one’s income does not really faze many people anymore. Our government would do well to remember that one of the major reasons for the Revolutionary War was excessive taxation. I will admit to making a very good living, and I am grateful to live in this country and to have been afforded the opportunity to obtain a first-rate education and pursue the career of my choosing. However, my biggest expense by far is taxes. Between federal, state, local, sales, and real estate taxes, more than half of my income goes to pay taxes. Since that is the case, you might say that I work for the government. This is certainly not the kind of situation that was envisioned by the founding fathers.

It is clear from the writings of our founding fathers that they disagreed with such excessive taxation to redistribute wealth. In the Annals of Congress (House of Representatives, 3rd Congress, 1794), President James Madison is documented as saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article
of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

We all want to be benevolent, of course, but as President Madison pointed out, there is nothing in the Constitution that entitles the government to use the money of their constituents for charitable purposes, no matter how noble their goals. His quote should be read every day to members of our current Congress, particularly to those who complain about restraining the sacred entitlements to which our population has become addicted. Again our goals should be to reinstill a sense of independence and self-reliance in all of our citizens while continuing to cultivate caring and compassion for our neighbors who cannot take care of themselves.

Thomas Jefferson, an incredible visionary, made it clear that the accumulation of huge debt by the government is not only unacceptable, but dangerous to the preservation of our nation. “I place economy among the first and most important virtues,” he said, “and public debt as the greatest of dangers. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”
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It almost seems as if he had the ability to look into the future and recognize the natural consequences of ever-growing and unrestrained government. “The principle of spending money to be paid by future generations,” he added, “under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
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Many voices today decry the accumulation of debt we’re passing on to the next generation, but their protests are falling on many deaf ears among our leaders in government. But it is this statement of his that is especially alarming given the stated goals of the current administration to redistribute wealth: “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
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I hope this quote shakes you to the core, as it does me, and that you will realize how far we have strayed from the ideas of those who founded our nation and set it on a course of unparalleled success.

Jefferson was not alone in his views, and even some of his political foes embraced the ideas that are paramount to protecting our liberties and the prosperity of our nation. James Madison said, “If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare…. the powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.”
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John Adams even appealed the matter to higher spiritual realities when he said, “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”
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Would applying logic help in solving this problem of taxation? Certainly there have been many different schemes devised by mankind throughout history to impose and collect taxes. There is, however, only one tax imposed by God and that is the tithe, which is one-tenth of your salary. Interestingly, God did not say if you have a bumper crop that you should give triple tithes, nor did he say if your crops fail, you are entitled to a reduction in tithes or need to pay no tithes at all. This means that there is fairness in proportionality; if you make $10 billion a year, your tax or tithe would be $1 billion, whereas if your income is $10 a year, you would pay $1. Some would say that the billionaire is not hurt by his $1 billion contribution as much as the poor man who had to give up a dollar. They would say that the pain is not proportional and that the government has the right to decide how much more the rich man should pay. But where in God’s law does it say that the rich man needs to give until it hurts? He just put $1 billion into the common pot, so why do we need to hurt him? It is this kind of thinking that has led to the proliferation of offshore bank accounts. If we had a proportional tax system, there would be no significant incentive for people to hide their money and they could spend more time concentrating on production, which in the long run would lead to even more money for the government. What about creating an atmosphere that encourages businesses to not hide their money, but to invest it back into the company to expand it and provide more jobs?