With the Iowa Caucus beginning today, the first Republican Primary has finally arrived. After nearly a year of debates, punditry and maneuvering, conservatives in Iowa will take to the ballot box to decide which of the GOP hopefuls will face President Obama in November. From all the reports from the Hawkeye state, one of the latest statements from Gov. Romney peaks my interest more than any other. According to Jon Ward of the Huffington Post, in his article: Bold, Romney declares we’re going to win., the former governor of Massachusetts stated:
"I think President Obama wants to make us a European style welfare state, where instead of being a merit society, we're an entitlement society, where government's role is to take from some and give to others. What I know is if they do that, they'll substitute envy for ambition, and they'll poison the very spirit of America and keep us from being one nation under God,"
Within his statement, lies a few claims that are quite misleading to the American people, I would like to address two of them. First that the economic plan of the right is "
merit" based, which is far from the truth. Finally, that the President’s plan is
"poisoning the very spirit of America and keeping us from being one nation under god." In my opinion, these two claims show how out of touch Mitt Romney is with the solutions America needs.
The first statement I would like to address is the "merit" based claim of Gov. Romney. The Economic theories of the right might claim to be merit based, however, that claim is far from the truth. In fact, the great irony of supply side economics is that it forces the United States further down the road of becoming the "European welfare state" by abandoning a great many Americans in the pursuit of profit.
Meritocracy is an ideology that asserts that if you work harder, you are more skilled, you will rise higher. Oh if it was just so simple, all you had to do was work harder and your advance would be limitless. Gov. Romney would like you believe that all Americans need to do is work hard, cut taxes, embrace the free market and we will succeed as a nation. We have been told for generations that the American dream requires nothing more than hard work, and Americans sure have been working hard. According to a January 2010, study by the center for American Progress entitled: The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict; The Poor, the Professionals, and the Missing Middle,
“The typical American middle-income family put in an average of 11 more hours a week in 2006 than it did in 1979.” (http://www.americanprogress.org/...).
The work ethic is obviously there as middle-class Americans are working longer hours, however, the merit economy isn’t. According to G. William Donhoff, Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz:
“A whopping 94% of wealth generated from 1983-2004 went to the top 20%, which of course means that the bottom 80% received only 6% of all the new financial wealth generated in the United States during the 80’s, 90’s and early 2000’s.” (http://www2.ucsc.edu/...)
All the hard work of twenty years, led to 6% of all the wealth generated in the United States over that period. The reason Americans have needed more Government assistance is due to the so called “merit” based economy of the 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s that Mitt Romney touts as the solution for the current economic problems we face today. Furthermore, while many American have been left behind do to this concentration of wealth Republicans have been pushing for more cuts to the Government programs that have tried to address one in six American in poverty. Governor Romney’s desire to return to the insanity that spiraled out of control in 2008 is not the answer for America.
Finally, we reach one of the most ridiculous statements that President Obama's plan is poisoning the American spirit and turning us away from being one nation under God. We cannot be turned away from something the founders never intended. While the founders of our nation were Christians, they never intended for the theocracy of the old world from poisoning the liberty of the new. In Thomas Jefferson’s Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, he stated:
“that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.” (The Portable Thomas Jefferson: Peterson, 252)
If we are to be one nation under God, which God are we to be under. Since, the United States is a multi-cultural nation, full of various religions which one are we to be under. Is America to be one nation under the God that Mitt Romney has faith in, or the God of another American? What if you do not believe in God. Furthermore, in Professor David Greenberg’s article for Slate entitled, The Pledge of Allegiance; why we’re not one nation “under god” he states:
“In fact, the founders opposed the institutionalization of religion. They kept the Constitution free of references to God. The document mentions religion only to guarantee that godly belief would never be used as a qualification for holding office—a departure from many existing state constitutions” ((http://www.slate.com/...)
If you read the article further, you see that a motion by Benjamin Franklin to have the founders pray daily before the meetings at the constitutional convention was defeated and “in god we trust” wasn’t our national motto until 1956.
The former Governor of Massachusetts, as with the rest of the GOP field has the same quintessential vision for the American future. We must remove extension of health care that the President has proposed. We return to the free market ideals of the 80’s, 90’s and 2000 that led to the spiraling out of control of the US Economy in 2008. We must limit Government from intervening on behalf of the consumers and regulating businesses, in fact we must let businesses do what they deem necessary to ensure profits. We must turn back to God, even though the founders turned away from that theocratic style of government when this nation was founded. While, I might not have all the answers, I know the furtherance of 30 years of expansive inequality is not the future America needs and while I personally accept Christ as my savior, I don’t expect the rest of the population to do so.