Friday, January 13, 2006
"What are the Democrats doing?"
My uber liberal libertarian/socialist brother asked me this last night while I tried to convince him that legalizing weed--while a good idea--would be a huge waste of political capital, at the moment. Fortunately, I didn't have a chance to answer, because I'm really not sure I know.
Sure, we want to repeal the Patriot Act and No Child Left Behind and get out of the Iraq, but that's not really "doing" something, that's undoing. Once we clean up the mess made by Bush, where do we want to take the country?
If we can accomplish the goals set out in the post below, it will be a proud moment for the group, but no one joined the NU Democrats because they want to see 50 people in a meeting. The reason we all joined is because we want America, Massachusetts, Boston or somewhere else to be a better place. We only control a tiny part of the process, but we are still working towards that goal, otherwise there is no point.
So please post in the "comments" below your answer to what we--the Democrats--are doing. Here are a few of my ideas:
1. Working towards better education. According to my high school history teacher, the United States spent more money on education in the 1920s than the rest of the world combined. Tom Brokaw says that the result was "The Greastest Generation" and would wouldn't lie to us, would he? To me education is the answer to nearly every one of our problems. We need to trust local school districts again and shift the focus from holding educators "accountable" to giving them the tools they need. Education should be our first priority and we should fund it accordingly.
2. To paraphrase my boy Howard Dean, if Costa Rica (not to mention nearly every "first world" nation) can have universal health care, why can't we? I'm far from an expert on the subject, so I am not worried about the means of insuring everyone, just that it gets done.
3. As someone from Vermont, I know first hand that racism is still alive and well in many places, and as someone who went to high school I know that homophobia is too. I'm tired of the racist "jokes" that nearly everyone I know makes and I am tired of people using "gay" as a synonym for "bad". If you ask me, the way to change this is through education, but I'm open to suggestions.
Sure, we want to repeal the Patriot Act and No Child Left Behind and get out of the Iraq, but that's not really "doing" something, that's undoing. Once we clean up the mess made by Bush, where do we want to take the country?
If we can accomplish the goals set out in the post below, it will be a proud moment for the group, but no one joined the NU Democrats because they want to see 50 people in a meeting. The reason we all joined is because we want America, Massachusetts, Boston or somewhere else to be a better place. We only control a tiny part of the process, but we are still working towards that goal, otherwise there is no point.
So please post in the "comments" below your answer to what we--the Democrats--are doing. Here are a few of my ideas:
1. Working towards better education. According to my high school history teacher, the United States spent more money on education in the 1920s than the rest of the world combined. Tom Brokaw says that the result was "The Greastest Generation" and would wouldn't lie to us, would he? To me education is the answer to nearly every one of our problems. We need to trust local school districts again and shift the focus from holding educators "accountable" to giving them the tools they need. Education should be our first priority and we should fund it accordingly.
2. To paraphrase my boy Howard Dean, if Costa Rica (not to mention nearly every "first world" nation) can have universal health care, why can't we? I'm far from an expert on the subject, so I am not worried about the means of insuring everyone, just that it gets done.
3. As someone from Vermont, I know first hand that racism is still alive and well in many places, and as someone who went to high school I know that homophobia is too. I'm tired of the racist "jokes" that nearly everyone I know makes and I am tired of people using "gay" as a synonym for "bad". If you ask me, the way to change this is through education, but I'm open to suggestions.
