Reaction to the 2004 Election

Following an event as significant as the general election on November 2, one tends to think about it. Below are my thoughts concerning that election and what it means for the future.

Obviously, it was a definitive enough victory for Bush that the left needs to start thinking about why they're not getting those votes. I happen to think that they aren't connecting with the people. I mean, how many of us can honestly say that they knew who John Kerry was and liked him? I thought he was a stiff. Sure, I felt like I knew where he stood on issues; nobody runs for president without telling you that. But I knew very little about him. The Democrats, if you will, need to run an intelligent but not condescending person who can run the country and be comfortable with people. Someone likable, someone interesting, someone awesome. Someone, if you don't see where I'm going, much more like me.

Think about it, folks. I'm charismatic, I don't have any skeletons in my closet, I'm a strong leader, I'm informed about the world around me, and I can multitask.

Toul for President!

Want to know where I stand on the issues? I'll run down the important ones here, in the order I care to write about them.

Gun Control

If you want a hunting rifle, good for you. Have a hunting rifle. Keep it locked in a cabinet at all times. Keep the ammunition in a separate locked container at least twenty feet away from the gun cabinet. If you want a handgun or any other firearm specifically made for killing people, too bad. These things are engineered to be good murder machines, and they work very well, making our nation less safe.

If you are a police officer or are in the military, you may also be issued a firearm. You can only have it with you when you're on duty. If you end up taking a life in the course of your duties, there will be scrutiny, so get used to it. You see, if nobody else has a gun, you had better have a really good reason to use yours. Deal.

Now to refute some common arguments on the subject. Many people assert their right to own guns by saying it helps them protect their family and their home. Think how much easier you could sleep if you knew that no one owned a gun. And your gun won't be much good to you when a stranger breaks into your home unless it's loaded and ready, which is far more likely to be fired by accident, harming you or your family, than at a burglar.

Others talk of their "constitutional right" to own guns. Here I'll quote from Amendment II to the United States Constitution:

AMENDMENT II. Right to keep and bear arms.
A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

This is a case of unfortunate wording on the part of the founding fathers. To me, this amendment says that the people have the right to keep and bear arms as a part of that "well-regulated militia." Why would the stuff about the militia be in there if they were just saying that everyone has the blanket right to own guns?

The Death Penalty

I almost subtitled this section "a.k.a. State-Sanctioned Murder." The only reason I can come up with for the death penalty is so that we who carry it out feel vindicated. It's a barbaric practice which appeals to the beast in all of us. In Europe, they are horrified at the thought of execution (which is, I'll admit, a tad hypocritical, especially in some cases [the French Revolution comes to mind]). The time for executions has passed. No human being or group of human beings should have power over whether another lives or dies. First of all, there's no way to be 100% certain of guilt.

Some say that the death penalty stands as a deterrant for potential criminals. For my answer, I'll turn to a wiser version of myself: tenth-grade me. The following is from a paper I wrote on determent of crime. (If you read the paper, remember that the prompt was simply to write about the best way to deter crime. Be sure you read the final paragraph, or you'll think I'm a wacko.)

It hasn’t been proven that the death penalty, supposedly the harshest of all punishments, deters crime. The United States allows capital punishment for first-degree murderers. Some states, however, have decided not to allow the death penalty within their borders. States that make use of the death penalty seem actually to have higher murder rates than states that do not. Additionally, the homicide rate of a given state does not seem to change following an execution. Confronted with this evidence, one cannot help but conclude that capital punishment, as administered in America today, is not a major deterrent to homicide.

Crime

If we fix the things about society, we can fix a lot of the crime. The underlying causes of crime include poverty, social tensions, stress, substance abuse, lack of education or vocation (basically the lack of a legal way to get money), and mental illness. There are ways to target all of these. Widespread social reform is the ticket, as I alluded to in the closing of the paper I indexed above. We must lift up the impoverished, give them jobs and education, help the mentally ill with medications, eliminate racial tension by teaching tolerance and not tolerating intolerance. It's not going to be an overnight change, but we'll end up with a more productive, less fractious society that has far less crime.

Education

Education is one of the most important jobs of government, and American schools, at least in the K-12 range, are failing. Standardization is not the way to make our children smarter. Standardization simply makes everyone the same. When everyone is the same, no one is very interesting. When all students across the nation must pass the same test at the end, they're going to learn eerily similar things, all of which happen to be on that test.

Our education system today has shifted the power away from the teachers and up the chain to administrators and bureaucrats. This is precisely the reverse of the needed trend. Our teachers need to be given the power, since they're the ones who have one-on-one contacts with the children. They should be given the power of promotion. They should be the first ones to report on student achievement. Sure, it's highly subjective, and some teachers will hold students to a higher standard. So what? Teachers are different; students are different. If we hire good teachers, they will hold the students to a fair standard. Yes, some of our students will be better at some things than other students, but that has always been true and it will always be true, and it's a good thing at that. Additionally, teaching shouldn't be considered an undesirable occupation; teachers should teach with pride, knowing that they are nurturing tomorrow's minds. One way to do this is to pay teachers slightly more than we now are.

Campaign Finance

This is a sticky one. I'm going to go ahead and say that there should be a $1000 cap on private donations to political campaigns, and neither corporations nor organizations should be allowed to donate at all. That $1000 cap applies to the candidate himself, too. In other words, if John Q. Public is sitting on $1 million, he can only spend $1000 of that on his campaign. He must get all his other campaign funds from other private donations (less than $1000). Certainly, this significantly limits the amount that candidates are able to spend. They should rely upon communicating their ideas instead of resorting to flashy special effects or scathing 30-second television spots.

The Internet

A splendid tool and source of information, the internet should be made available to every man, woman, and child in the U.S. However, I completely understand efforts to clean it up beforehand. The first reform will be the introduction of a new top-level domain, .xxx. It will be a completely voluntary extension for (you guessed it) porn sites. Browsers could be configured to warn users when they are moving into a .xxx domain. Most porn sites wouldn't mind the change; their biggest users will find them regardless.

To make the internet available to everyone, it would help to get computers into every library and school, and make a sincere effort to get them into every home, too. Institute tax credits for computer purchases. Make high-speed internet connections affordable, too, with government price regulation. Pretty soon, the nation will be wired.

Marijuana Legalization

Sorry, I won't support this one. I will, however, support making tobacco products illegal. As your president, I need to balance public health and public freedoms. Tobacco is one that you'll have to give up. Don't fret if you're addicted, though. There will be several years of affordable nicotine therapy, during which you are still allowed to smoke, since it takes a while for some people to kick the addiction. However, if you are still a smoker at the end of those years, get ready for some withdrawal symptoms.

Why, you ask, don't I just tack alcohol onto my list of prohibited substances? There are several reasons. First, it's been tried. Second, it's not an addictive drug for all people, and the vast majority of people who use it manage to use it recreationally and without endangering anyone around them. I do support punishment of those irresponsible drinkers who veer off the road and hit pedestrians, but I'm not sure it would be that easy to find a politician who did not.

Healthcare

Hmm...taking care of people. Who's going to say they're against that one? Seriously, though, healthcare bills have gotten preposterous, and the uninsured are often completely hosed. When my wrist broke, we got a statement from the hospital even though insurance was paying for it. The insurance company only paid 30% of the bill, and we didn't pay any of it. In other words, over two-thirds of the bill was left completely unpaid. An uninsured family, however, wouldn't be allowed to pay just 30%, not without ruining their credit. Essentially, uninsured people are required to pay significantly more for healthcare, and this double-standard is unacceptable. If private-sector healthcare cannot be made fair and affordable, then the government needs to step in with state-run healthcare like Medicaid.

If I had to choose, I would go for the Norwegian system. In Norway, when you break a leg or get cancer or whatever, the government pays for any and all treatment you receive, no questions asked. You don't have to beg them, you don't have to submit your claim thirty times, you don't even have to think about it. They just step in and either send you a check or they pay the hospital directly. They'll also help out if you missed work because of your injury. Basically, the government will step in and help you out whenever you feel like you could use a little help. Of course, everything comes with a price. If you travel to Norway, you'll notice that everything is 20-40% more expensive, or even more for luxury items. That's due to taxes, which fund the government healthcare system. Incidentally, if you're a tourist in Norway, you can get a credit back on those taxes when you leave the country if you save your receipts, since you won't be getting any benefit out of it.

Welfare

This one is related to the one immediately above. Welfare is important, but it should not become a crutch. When the government becomes the sole support for a family to the point that the family isn't trying to get any income, there's something wrong.

Certainly, it's important for the welfare recipient to demonstrate attempts to get a job as he receives welfare checks. If that doesn't happen, it seems heartless to cut him off, but I feel that it must be done, in order to conserve funds (see Fiscal Policy below).

As far as families with children go, special attention should be paid. Children need lots of things: food, clothing (more often than adults do, 'cause they're growing), shelter, school supplies, and love. All but one of these are purchased using money, and so parents, especially single parents, often need a little extra. This should be provided.

Environmental Policy

I think a lot of people would agree that we (humans) should stop hurting our planet. She's a tough old rock, and she'll get through it either way, but the manner in which she gets through it may just be by killing us all off. Global warming is a definite problem with the potential to end life on earth. Now, for a long time I though "how can global warming kill us? We're adaptable; give or take a few degrees and we'll be fine. Right?" Wrong. The main thing here is agriculture. Crops don't grow in the same numbers when they are forced to grow in less-than-ideal conditions. Of course, the melting of the polar ice caps would also be pretty catastrophic. According to people, that would flood everything below a certain sea level all across the planet. It would also make Santa's workshop an undersea adventure.

How to reduce greenhouse gases? Stop burning stuff! Fossil fuels are a limited resource. I learned in school (no idea whether these numbers are right or wrong) that our global supply of petroleum will give out, given projections from current use, by 2050. Coal will be gone by 2200. Something needs to be done, and we can't wait forever to do it. Certainly, hydrogen fuel cell cars make sense, as do electric cars. Anything else that uses a combustion engine, too, can be replaced by something cleaner. As far as electricity, hydroelectric power was my favorite option for awhile until it came to my attention that hydro plants kill fish, which reduces the amount of fish available for fishing and eating. This turned my attention to two of my favorite types: geothermal (Iceland) and wind-powered (Kansas). These are very geography-specific, however; a wind turbine outside my house might run a toaster if it was lucky. Nuclear power is fun, but it needs to be safely run. Chernobyls are unacceptable. Solar power sounds good, too, but I haven't heard any real numbers on how efficient it is. Could I run a small city completely off a few acres of solar panels? A house off of roof panels? If so, I think we've found the answer.

Of course, as a species, we create a tremendous amount of waste. This is unfortunate. We should try to ensure that we're using recyclable materials wherever possible. Have you ever felt wasteful just throwing away the box that your Cheerios® came in? What if you could recycle it, safe in the knowledge that it would be re-used as another Cheerios box in the future? Packaging, especially in America, seems wasteful to me, and I would be in favor of recycling it.

There's a bunch more about the environment, but I haven't taken AP Environmental, so I'm not very qualified to talk about much of it. Onward to...

Foreign Policy

If you asked me one area in which the United States has screwed up in the last few years, it would be foreign policy. I feel that we're far too aggressive on a global scale. I don't get how we can lecture places like Iraq, Iran, and North Korea about having nuclear weapons when we have 17,000 warheads (Source) just chilling in missile silos. It's a double-standard, like the father who tells his kid not to have promiscuous sex and then sleeps with a prostitute. Or something. I'd come up with a better example, but the point is that we should dismantle our nuclear program.

We should also butt out from time to time. The United Nations seems best used to do things that nations agree on. Action against the United Nations' wishes seems like it ought to be punished. Who are we to say we know better than everyone else? Why is our Western way better than their non-Western way? Why does every single country have to have the same political system as we do? History tells us that successful democracies always come from internal revolution, never set up by an outside hand. The exception is Japan, but the Japanese happen to be eerily similar to Americans, which makes compelling our political system upon them a little more likely to be successful.

Free trade. I confess that I am uneducated concerning this issue. I know only the basics: one side says anyone should be allowed to trade with anyone else; the other side maintains that tariffs and controls should be placed on international trade to limit it in certain ways, both to protect foreign workers from low wages and sweatshop conditions and to keep American jobs in America, so that we can employ more of our citizens. The second of these makes more sense to me, but I can understand the merits of the first, as well. When the government is run by the same multinational corporations who benefit from free trade, though, a disproportionate number of politicians seem to be in favor of free trade.

Fiscal Policy (how the hell I plan to fund all of the above stuff)

Same-Sex Marriage

Abortion