How to save the world, or at least fix up or our corner

How to save the world, or at least fix up or our corner.

The Preamble:

    We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

    I have a novel suggestion (or set of suggestions) to make life for all (or at least many) Americans better.  It involves “promoting the general welfare” and “providing for the common defence” as well “establishing Justice” and “insuring domestic Tranquility” while making this “a more perfect Union”.
    My suggestions involve healthcare, education, foreign relations, crime control and prevention, and universal suffrage.

    It seems to me that some of the main reasons for the great disparity in the standards of living throughout the United States are lack of money, inequitable access to health care and education, disparate interpretations of justice, and radically different interpretations of personal, individual,  municipal, state, and federal responsibility.  We could address all of these issues domestically while making the world a better place by enacting a few new and novel ideas that rarely (if ever) see the light of day or get discussed in our country.  These proposals may, at first glance, seem imprudent and unrealistic, but thorough  analysis of our current situation clearly shows that things need to change.  Too many Americans are uninvolved and disillusioned with our government and society to the extent that they don’t vote and don’t believe that voting can have any sort of meaningful impact on anything.  Other Americans are, by law, prohibited from involvement in the democracy we so proudly revel in while others are too ignorant and uneducated to pay attention.  A 30% voter turnout in an election is considered good, which suggests that 70% of the people are not involved with defining what type of country and civilization they live in and laws and policies they live under, which helps to explain why so many people are in prison in our country and so many others have criminal records.
    It’s extremely easy to break a law or a rule that you are unaware of.  It’s also very easy to violate laws and rules you don’t understand.  The phrase, “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” is a common refrain that most of us learn very young even though we never learn of or understand most laws.  A person can, purely through accident and with no malice, be arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned in our country for a variety of reasons that seem to change from one locale to another.  Once convicted (of a felony) a person is prohibited from voting, thus eliminating the possibility for them to ever participate in our society at a fundamental and important level, that being determining the nature of society itself.  Who is better suited to comment on the rules and laws of our society than the people most affected by those rules and laws?  Felons should not only be allowed to vote, felons should be required to vote.  Compulsory voting should be required of all citizens regardless of criminal history, and felons should be required to vote as a condition of their freedom and right to exist in our country without undue restrictions.  This would, hopefully, result in a government and set of laws that more accurately reflects the will of the people.  Speaking just for myself, I have serious problems with many laws, and the current prison population in our country and our overburdened court system suggests that I am not the only one.  America has enough people in prison to make a decent sized country.  According to wikipedia (which is always suspect) the United States has approximately 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prison population.  More people are alleged to be behind bars in the U.S. than in any other country in the world.  And we pride ourselves on being the home of the free.  
    Thus, the first tier of my plan to bring prosperity and advancement to the U.S. involves changing the laws about voting.  Everybody should vote, especially felons.  Eligibility for any sort of government programs should hinge on a person’s participation in the democratic process.  No food stamps, no social security, no loans, no grants, and driver’s licenses for people who don’t vote.  It doesn’t matter who they vote for or even if they don’t vote for anybody, they should simply be required to vote, even if their vote is an abstention. 
    Secondly, education should be mandatory.  Nobody should be allowed to skip out on learning about their society and laws which govern it.  Like voting, education should be tied to eligibility to participate in society to the fullest and eligibility for government aid.  Nobody would be allowed to receive food stamps, drive down the street, receive federal aid, or go to prison unless they have some education.  Idiots are a fact of life and if a person is too stupid or stubborn to better themselves they have no place involving themselves in the institution known as society.  Genuine idiots and incompetents should be made wards of the state and the stubborn people who refuse to participate in the educational process and society should be locked up and or killed.  Either you’re part of the problem or you are part of the solution.  Idiots and incompetents don’t insist on being on a burden to society but stubborn folks do.  Full citizenship and rights should be accorded only to those willing to be a part of society.
    Many of the problems in the U.S. are said to be caused by lack of money.  The government simply does not have enough money to take care of people, and a very popular notion is that it is not the government’s responsibility to take care of people or provide handouts.  Yet, ironically, we seem to have enough money to prop up countless countries and societies around the world.  I may be wrong, but I suspect the U.S. spends more on foreign aid than it does on college grants.  I wonder how much we spend on feeding our own people compared to how much we spend on feeding the rest of the world.  Hunger, malnourishment, and starvation are not uniquely African problems and aren’t unique in any one part of the world, yet you rarely hear about efforts to feed hungry Americans.  A hungry American is usually said to be too lazy and morally corrupt to take care of himself, yet a hungry foreigner is invariably the product of famine, corruption, or indifference by their own government and wealthier nations.  A hungry man who is caught stealing $5 worth of food in America ends up costing society far more than $5 once the wheels of justice are done turning.  Wouldn’t it be better to simply give the man the food and prevent him from becoming a criminal?  I realize that life has no easy answers, but something is wrong with spending money on prosecuting a hungry person for being hungry.  I don’t see us routinely blaming or prosecuting the masses of hungry people in other countries for being hungry, yet being hungry in America is somehow considered to be a failure of character on the part of the individual.  There seems to be different standards at work here. 
    The U.S. could greatly increase its available capital by cutting off foreign aid.  Foreign countries are not truly contributing to the United States’ GDP.  Rather, they are consuming resources that, once consumed, are no longer available to benefit the U.S. or U.S. citizens.  We give the money away and then complain that we don’t have enough money to pay our debts, feed the hungry, run schools, or fund libraries.  Various city and state governments have had to completely shut down at various times in past years because they didn’t have enough money to operate, yet we never fail to help other countries that don’t have money to operate on their own.  We spend money helping others while we neglect our own people.  I agree that charity is a noble and important human trait, but charity should begin at home and not in foreign lands far removed from our own people and our borders.  I realize that one rationale for the enormous amount of foreign aid the U.S. provides to the rest of the world is, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”  I fully understand and recognize the validity of the sentiment but I feel that it’s time for U.S. to recognize that the same notion applies within our own borders.  Producing ignorant, malnourished, disenfranchised people is not doing us any good.  Most Americans pay taxes and an obscene percentage of that money is not spent in or for America.  We need to start spending money at home and stop spending it abroad.
    Terrorism and national security become concerns here.  Many people maintain that failure to address issues abroad will result in resentment against America and more people (terrorists) out to do us harm.  I contend that the opposite is true.  Spending money in other countries makes the people of those countries more acutely aware of us and, as is the case in the U.S., some people get help and some people don’t, which ultimately leads to yet more resentment against the U.S. and greater division in those foreign populations.  By helping some and not helping others the U.S. only widens rifts in those foreign societies and often simply prolongs the suffering of suffering people.  Is it right to feed a hungry man who cannot feed himself one time and prolong his suffering and turn him into a dependent, or is better to let nature take its course and allow populations that have depleted their food resources to die a natural death of starvation?  Of course the same thing could be said about people here in America, but here in America we are talking about American citizens who have a real potential for achievement and contribute to the American bottom line in the form of paying taxes, even if those taxes they pay never go beyond sales taxes.  We aren’t at the mercy of and enthralled by egomaniacal chieftains, warlords, despots, and religious fanatics.  Americans, as a general rule, don’t swear fealty to individuals with murderous self-serving personalities.  We don’t practice tribal warfare, genocide, or government endorsed segregation.  As far as I know it’s been a damn long time since our government enacted any sort of legislation that declares any one group of people (based on their sex, ethnicity, body type, or beliefs) as being less human than any other group.  Our society is built around the notion that all people are created equal, while many of the governments and societies we fund (at the expense of American citizens) openly discriminate against people on the basis of their sex, name, language, religion, political leanings, appearance, and, of course, their wealth (as well as a variety of other qualities).  Thus, American money is spent to support and help countless people who are openly (and totally) opposed to the basic precepts of American life while Americans are prosecuted and imprisoned for violating laws they are unaware of, don’t understand, or don’t agree with and believe they have no way to change since they’ve spent their entire lives living in a country that lies to them regularly.  We feed our enemies and our detractors while we starve, imprison, and marginalize our own people.  I feel that America needs to cut off all foreign aid, even if we do so for only a year or two.  The amount of money we could save and then spend in America on improving the lives of American would be phenomenal.  Everybody’s standard of living would increase.  Talk about trickle-down economics.  If everybody had more money more money would go into circulation.  I’m no economist, but I suspect that everybody having a little more money to spend would put money into the economy, and (I think) that would a good thing. 
    So now we have compulsory voting, mandatory education (with higher educational standards), and cessation of (at least temporarily) of foreign aid.  Now we can deal with the idea of security for (threats to and attacks against) our country.
    We need to stop using slingshots and small arms to hunt for pests and predators.  You can shoot a wild animal with a slingshot or a .22 and you might take him down, but if you hit it and don’t kill it you end up with an enraged wild animal.  You can shoot that creature with a .50 rifle or a 10 gauge shotgun and the likelihood is you will take it down or simply obliterate it.  Half measures are a bad idea when hunting, and half measures are what we’ve been using for a long time.  We need to stop hunting for terrorists with small arms and start using bigger weapons.  We have the greatest manufacturing and military technology in the world, yet we still hunt for rats with slingshots and let them cause tremendous damage to our society.  Along with cutting off the money for awhile we need to adopt a new stance where terrorism is concerned.  If a citizen of a different country is known to have attacked and harmed the U.S. or American citizens we need to hunt for him with a large bore shotgun in the form of a tactical nuclear weapon.  Make clear to wherever they are from and wherever we think they are that the person in question is wanted and that we will obliterate any place we have reason to believe they are or get assistance from.  Give warning if it makes people happier.  Announce that a given person is wanted and suspected to be somewhere.  Advise the authorities and people of that area that they have a very limited period of time to turn over the individual in question or face attack with nuclear weapons.  Announce that we have no interest in harming innocent people and that we hate to render land unusable, but that we are not going to hunt for our enemies with half measures.  I suspect that if we had taken this stance several years ago Osama bin Laden would have been located and caught long ago.  We could demonstrate our sincerity by nuking someplace.  We could then inform the government of Saudi Arabia, where Osama and his money come from, that they are targeted because they fund him.  I bet those Saudis would find him real fast.  We could tell the same thing to Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Whoever we believe is providing material support and protection for our enemies would be targeted.  I suspect that the world would protest very loudly, but what could they do?  If we cut off everybody’s free money they would be much less capable of striking back at us.  If we actually did demonstrate our sincerity the world would become a very different place.  Countries would have real incentive to keep their people in line.  Suicide bombers might think twice if they knew that after they die every single person they ever cared about while growing up would die in a storm of fire.  That every person from their home country would curse them, their name, and their family (for having produced them in the first place) until the end of time.  I really believe that such a stance would bring about real change in the world. 
    One can argue (and really should) that innocents should not die for the crimes of the evil.  Innocents are already doing that and nobody seems to care.  The destruction of the World Trade Center was an unprovoked attack for which nobody responsible has been held accountable.  Politicians frequently say that drugs and drug money fuel terrorism.  I believe that American money abroad and Islam fuel terrorism.  In the overview of it all it could be said that religion in general fuels terrorism, but I’m not aware of anybody killing 3000 people in one fell swoop in the name of name Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Wicca, Scientology, or Hinduism (at least not recently).  I’m not aware of any belief system other than Islam that routinely produces murderers in religious schools.  I’ve never heard a proponent of any religion other than Islam openly and publicly call for the death and murder of the followers of other faiths.  If a god (Allah, to be specific) is so powerful why would he (or she, which is sure to infuriate any Muslims who read this) need measly humans to kill other measly humans?  I don’t call for children, dogs, or insects to kill others of their type in my name, but then I’m not a god so I can’t understand the motivations of the divine.  But this piece is not meant to discuss the validity or merits or any religion and proclivities of it’s proponents, this piece is intended to outline ways to make the world a better place starting right here at home. 
    Think of all the good America could do if all its citizens were healthy, better fed, and educated.  I realize that America is, by and large, the fattest country around, but I still see skinny people begging for food everywhere I go.  There was a time when I routinely visited a food bank to keep myself from going hungry.  I’ve never been genuinely fat and most of the people I know are not fat.  In addition, I don’t have a college degree.  It’s not that I’m too lazy and unwilling to work for one and it’s not that I don’t want one or don’t understand the need for one, it’s a matter of not being able to afford it.  Education is expensive, and one has to have priorities.  My priorities included having a roof over my head, food to eat, and drugs to keep me sane.  I value education highly, but a dead man doesn’t need to know anything if he dies in the pursuit of education.
    This piece is not intended to be a critique of any one religion.  The fact that Islam has produced more successful sociopaths than any other religion in recent years is the only reason it figures so prominently.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not singling out Islam.  I think any religion that encourages people to go out and kill people in the name of their faith is flawed.  I’ve had many a heated discussion with Baptists, Catholics, and other Christians.  At least with them I can have a discussion and not be killed for disagreeing with them.  Maybe that shows a lack of character of the part of today’s Christians, but whether it does or not I don’t think the Inquisition is much different from Islamic jihad.  They are (or were) all irresponsible small minded zealots with bad cases of intolerance.  Nonetheless, back to the matter at hand.
    Some (or many) people will counter with suggestions that taking a hard stance with the rest of world (cutting off foreign aid, threatening entire populations to get individual criminals, requiring voting and education for all Americans thus making Americans more competent and competitive in the labor market, etc.) will have negative effects in the form of our supply of foreign oil being cut off, food shortages, shortages of raw materials, loosening of our criminal code and the mass release of convicted criminals from prison causing unemployment and rampant crime.  I disagree.
    One of the first things we need to do is start a massive public works program of converting our country to biofuel.  Part of that includes legalizing cannabis.  Cannabis and various types of typically unwanted plants (usually weeds, sunflowers, and other, often edible, plants) could be converted to biofuel, plastic, paper, and textiles.  Another thing we need to do is start recycling.  The rest of the world may get pissed about us cutting off their free money and all the food we supply and may cut off our supply of steel and other important resources; we have enough stuff sitting in junk yards, back yards, and landfills to handle our material needs for a long time.  Nonviolent drugs offenders who’ve done time usually have no interest in doing more time.  All people convicted and accused of the nonviolent possession, importation, or sale of cannabis should be granted amnesty.   A lot of people will walk out of prison and a lot of law enforcement resources will be freed up to attend to other things.  I suspect the overpopulation of the nation’s prisons may cease to be a problem.  A lot of criminals will be out of business.  I don’t think law enforcement will suffer that badly in that we have plenty of other laws which people love to break for which they are regularly prosecuted and convicted.  We can still keep our obscenely large prison system and our huge law enforcement infrastructure can remain intact.  The other industries which you don’t normally think about which benefit from the continued prohibition of cannabis will survive as well.  The pharmaceutical and petroleum industries both have a lot of money and will survive.  The petroleum industry can retool without suffering that badly; they’ve made some pretty good money over the years and have more than enough cash to build a whole biomass industry which would ultimately prove profitable.  The pharmaceutical industry would be free to create a whole bunch of new drugs with cannabis and cannibanoids.  Besides, we wouldn’t have to cut off all contact and trade with the rest of the world, we would just stop giving away free money, food, technology, and materials.  Everything would be on a pay as you go basis, and the U.S. would thrive.  We would have more money at home to spend on Americans and trade with the rest of the world would continue to thrive.  If the rest of the world couldn’t afford to do business with us it just shows that the current economic situation worldwide is a farce and that the United States is the most (if not only) important country on Earth.  We are regularly cited for using a disproportionately large portion of the world’s resources but we are the unquestionable leader when it comes to producing food, technology, and culture.  You may not like pop music, McDonalds, and Starbucks, but they are American and they are culture.  We produce a disproportionately large percentage of the world’s most popular music, movies, and celebrities.  American cars, while traditionally sneered and laughed at by various European car companies, are more common worldwide than anybody else’s except perhaps the Japanese.  The worlds most common computer operating system in an American product.  And the list goes on.
    What’s the worst that could happen if the United States angered the rest of the world by cutting off all foreign aid?  The rest of the world could declare war on the U.S. but I find that unlikely in that we still have a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and very likely the most robust missile production capacity on the planet.  How about cutting off all trade?  Again, very unlikely in that the U.S. is such a big customer for a lot of countries that their economies would fold if we stopped buying stuff from them.  How about terrorist attacks?  Well, we face that possibility already and a lot of the people that mean us harm now would be thrilled to pieces and stop trying to hurt us if we stopped propping up so many of the world’s governments, and besides, once we closed our borders and stopped letting people in haphazardly, people who are out to hurt us might have a hard time inserting more agents of harm, assuming they still wanted to hurt us after we removed their primary reasons for hating us.
    Many people will accuse us of ‘”abandoning” Israel and our “obligation” to support and protect it.  Don’t forget that assaults on U.S. citizens will be viewed as attacks on the U.S. itself.  We have a lot people in Israel as well as other countries.  If our people are attacked we will do as we do now....investigate, figure out what happened, and then affix blame.  Only instead of hunting for criminals with small arms and media campaigns we’ll hunt for criminals with nothing smaller than Tomahawk missiles, maybe even with nuclear weapons, always with the public acknowledgment that we hate to use overkill to deal with our problems and regret any unintentional loss of life, but like our enemies we have been forced to acknowledge that the occasional death of innocent people is an unavoidable consequence of pursuing our goals, specifically protecting ourselves, our people, and our interests.  We could advertise in every medium what we planned to do.  We could be slow and methodical about it.  Give the innocent (and the guilty) time to leave a targeted area.  And then nuke it. 
    Yes, I believe this foreign policy stance would radically change the world’s perception of both terrorists and the U.S..  Many people appear to feel that annoying the U.S. is an acceptable risk as long you don’t stay in one place where you can be found.  It seems that many people in the world recognize that the U.S. traditionally doesn’t punish the innocent for the sins of the guilty and that U.S. missiles and military operations are normally well aimed and executed.  If we stopped trying to shoot bad guys with small arms and started using big weapons that are known to cause tremendous damage to everything even remotely close to where they are aimed people would soon become unwilling to shelter terrorists.  I suspect that terrorists are often shielded in local populations because of sympathy and fear.  Sympathy in that locals sometimes agree with the terrorists, fear in that locals often realize that the terrorists will kill both them and their families if the locals turn them in to the U.S. military.  People have different levels of attachment and value different people and groups to different degrees.  There’s got to be a level at which people would decide that the potential repercussions of shielding people wanted by the U.S. from the U.S. is no longer worth the risk.  I feel certain that nuclear weapons would be at the level, but I hope we don’t have to find out.  If we need to start using nukes to protect our interests....well, let’s just hope that never happens.