Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Why did we stop building things

I am confused by the Republican/Conservative world view.

It has become a mantra of Republicans/Conservatives that not only should government not do things, that government can't. This belief that government can't accomplish anything and probably shouldn't even try has become a core tenet of the Republican/Conservative meme.

I don't recognize their America.

My American government built the Panama Canal, built a railroad from the Omaha to the Pacific and in doing so American had more miles of track lain than the rest of the world combined. My America put men on the moon, build the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge. My America built the Interstate Highway system. My America builds the most powerful and complex machines man has ever built.

My American government spends less than 5% administrative costs in administering Medicare, a single payer health insurance systems serving about 10's of millions of Americans.

Anytime there is a disaster anywhere in the world, my American government dispatches aid and logistic assistance to help people whether we like their government or not.

My American government paid the bills to send millions of our WWII veterans to college helping to create growth that lasts to this day.

Yet somehow the modern Conservative/Republican insists in believing in the incompetence of our own government.

Conservatives/Republicans ignore the benefits that the country as a whole has enjoyed because of these things that my American government did. My American government built the infrastructure that the greatest and strongest economy in the world runs on. My American government has sent or helped send millions of young adults to college which has always been a major factor in the success of our economy.

It is an easily provable fact that if kids are well fed they will do better in school. And if they do better in school they are far more likely to be law-abiding productive citizens. So it makes sense, to me at least, that my American government helps millions of kids from poor families get at least one or even two good meals a day. That kind of investment in our kids pays dividend in our future. So Conservatives/Republicans want to cut funding for school lunch programs.

What are they thinking?

Its amazing to me that Republicans/Conservatives seem so willfully ignorant of our history and the role my American government has played in making this country great.

And now Conservatives/Republicans are sooo opposed to the government doing the things that it has done so well for so long that our infrastructure is crumbling. Governor Christie of New Jersey shutdown a project shut down a project to build new transportation links into New York cause it might cost too much, ignoring both the immediate employment benefits of such a project and the long term economic benefits of that kind of infrastructure development. Two other governors have made similar choices shutting down high speed rail systems.

We used to build things

Great things

Things as big as our country itself

Thanks to Republicans/Conservatives it appears those days are behind us.

Thanks for nothing!