Violence is Unacceptable as a Policy Debate Tactic
This post by Fred Steinmann
In my last blog I promised to talk about the specific approaches and strategies that typically comprise a comprehensive neighborhood and community economic development plan. If you would indulge me this one time, I promise to come back to the topic of neighborhood and community development in my next blog. For now, I’d like to briefly touch upon the current climate since the House of Representatives voted on healthcare earlier this past week. I first want to make it clear that these are my ideas and my ideas alone.
Over the past few days, since the passage of the Federal Government’s 2010 healthcare and insurance overall legislation, a small few have taken it upon themselves to express their opposition to the recent federal legislation with acts of violence, intimidation, and bigotry. As someone who has, over the years, become increasingly interested in public policy, I wanted to take this brief opportunity to express my disappointment in those that would use such atrocious tactics to argue a point.
Over the past year or so, I have tried to use this blog to express different policy options in the field of economic development. At times, I have argued in the positive for certain ideas. At other times, I have argued in the negative by pointing out certain practical flaws in the reasoning behind certain public policy proposals made by both community and political leaders. I have agreed and disagreed with people on the left, people on the right, and people in the middle.
Disagreement is healthy. Debate is healthy. But acts of violence, intimidation, and bigotry are decidedly not healthy. These acts do not, in any way, add to the civil discourse that needed and genuine policy debate requires. I understand and sympathize with those who feel frustrated and that their voices don’t count. At times, especially about my own ideas regarding economic development policy, I have felt equally frustrated. But I have tried to use means such as this blog to discuss and air-out my ideas. I, however, do not understand nor do I sympathize with those who allow their frustration to become irrational expressions of anger and hatred. Given all the challenges that we as individuals and as a civil society face today, we, as a society, cannot allow the small few who would steal away the attention from these important issues with acts of violence, intimidation, bigotry, and ultimately, cowardness.
As a community, as a state, and as a nation, we are struggling to find new and innovative ways to stimulate long-term, stable, levels of economic activity in order to ensure that the generations that follow us can enjoy a standard of living greater than the present one. A 21st Century economy requires 21st Century approaches. The violent and pointless approaches that a small and insignificant few have chosen to employ have no place in contemporary civil society. They should be left upon the trash heap of history – in the 20th, 19th, 18th and every other past century where all bad ideas deserve to rest in peace.
Fred,
I can’t express the depths of my gratitude for this post, and my pride that it would be posted on a University of Nevada, Reno, Business Services Group website. It demonstrates the value of an engaged and educated approach to an issue that affects everyone on our planet. I will share this with everyone I know. Keep the great work coming.
Our politics has gotten far too ugly these days when we have real and serious issues that need to be addressed through cooperation and compromise. The recently passed health care legislation would have been far better…and, I think, less costly…if it fully incorporated Republican ideas. But the Republicans were too busy holding their breath like some spoiled child to really negotiate in good faith, while the Democrats were looking for any excuse to not negotiate with them, or to not burn their own campaign supporters, like the trial lawyers. No wonder recent polls show a 17 percent approval rating for Congress. I’m surprised it’s that high!
I really wish they would both go away. I read an article somewhere recently that proposed something I really liked to help break the tyranny of the two-party system. What it proposed was that voters be allowed to rank their candidate preferences in order of preference. Then, actual vote counting would be determined by the top two candidates in the vote count, with the top two candidates getting the votes of a higher ranked candidate if they were next in line. I’m not doing a very good job at explaining the proposal, so let me give an example.
Let’s use the 2000 presidential election for our example, an election where many said Ralph Nader gave the election to Bush by taking away votes that would have been cast for Al Gore if Nader had not been on the ballot. Under the proposal above, say a person ranks Nader as his or her first choice and Gore as the second choice. Under this scenario, Gore and Bush accumulated the most votes of any two candidates, so the person above’s vote for Nader would have gone to Gore, the one next in line in the order of preference. I think something like that would help break the lock the two existing parties have on Congress and may give rise to more independent candidates, or maybe even a third party, not so beholding to existing special interests.
Voters would not fear “throwing away” a vote on a candidate they really believe in but they don’t think has a chance, or worse yet, throwing the election to someone they cannot abide…using the above scenario, Bush. If nothing else, I would like to see the merits of this proposal debated openly in the public forum because I like the idea, a lot. I think both Democrats and Republicans would see their public support erode significantly under such a system.
I also favor going national with the new system California has adopted to draw legislative districts, where a supposedly non-partisan citizen commission will redraw legislative districts after the results of the 2010 Census. That, hopefully…depending on how non-partisan the citizen commission really is…would break the lock of a Democratic- or Republican-dominated legislature drawing districts that only favor their party, making it almost impossible for another candidate outside the party to make a successful challenge.
I certainly don’t know all the answers, or even some of them. But I am certainly for trying different things until we get a government that is a lot more responsive and responsible. I am absolutely sick to death of partisan bickering, and politicians whose career is more important to them than doing the “right thing” for the country, no matter the cost to themselves or their party.
Fred, nicely written, as always. It’s hard to accomplish the basic steps towards a better society and economy with interruptions of juvenile behavior that has become a norm for some. It may be helpful if the media ignores the trouble makers and focuses more on the issues themselves perhaps!
Fred, nicely written, as always. It’s hard to accomplish the basic steps towards a better society and economy with interruptions of juvenile behavior that has become a norm for some. It may be helpful if the media ignores the trouble makers and focuses more on the issues themselves perhaps!