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Dave's
Soapbox
This is my place to ramble on about social issues of interest to me. It wouldn't be appropriate to put this in a prominent spot, lest I detract from the feel of my Lake site, but on the other hand, since this site is sort of community service on my part, I figure I'm entitled... I say "sort of" as I'm in real estate and the site has brought me some business, so it's not entirely noble.
Here are my two most recent editorials, printed in all
the local newspapers, plus a few large metro papers around the country.
I hope you'll agree with me, and if not, that's okay too... sort of
:)
National Health Care
A national health care plan for the United States is long overdue. All of Europe and virtually every other democratic nation have grown to provide such programs for their citizens, with the overall results being a healthier populace.
Opponents insist there will be new problems.
But that is no argument at all, for there always is with change.
The point is: For 50 million Americans the improvement will be like night versus
day.
The issue is a matter of general principle and about our national character. When a nation as great as the United States has 50 million citizens that face bankruptcy in the event of serious illness, then the greatness of that nation is in jeopardy of being in the past.
Other democratic countries have come to understand that its citizens comprise a family, to use an analogy. As such, they extend certain guarantees to every member. Even the youngest children, who contribute nothing to the upkeep of the home, are extended basic minimums. Or put another way, have you ever known a good neighbor that didn’t provide his loved ones with at least basic health care.
Many Americans earn millions of dollars each year, and they do it with our help, directly or indirectly. In light of this, simple fairness dictates that the wealthy should pay a higher percentage of taxes so that every regular citizen can live without fear of poverty caused by the cost of a serious illness.
It’s a national disgrace that the United States is the only democracy on earth whose highest leaders have voted themselves free health care, but not those they govern. Our politicians, elected the parents of our national family, so to speak, have betrayed our trust, having cared for themselves while abandoning their guardianship of the children.
And it’s also an international embarrassment, for the entire free world sees this American injustice for the selfishness and self-righteousness that it is.
Dave Gresham
August 29, 2008
Ahead of His Time
Thomas Paine began his exemplary life of community service after immigrating to Colonial America in 1774. A gifted writer, he accepted a position with a Philadelphia newspaper and circulation soon skyrocketed as Paine wrote one visionary article after another. These included some of the first American articles against slavery, in favor of social security, and about equal
rights for women.
His first book was titled Common
Sense. In favor of American independence and democracy, it promptly sold
500,000 copies. Incredibly, that equaled one book for every family in America!
And Paine donated every penny of his massive profits to the cause!
During the conflict, Paine was the leading voice to persevere, fearlessly writing over a dozen public letters of support. Each of them spread like wildfire throughout the Colonies, printed in every paper in America, then in England and France, as well.
After American victory, Paine
declined political appointments and settled down to life as an inventor. A
creative genius, he worked on a number of projects, including smokeless candles,
the forerunner to central draft burners, and then bridges, realizing iron, not
wood, was their future.
Unable to find funding for his project in the States, Paine returned to native England where he obtained financial backing and built his bridge there. Naturally, he also immersed himself in their struggle for democracy, and it was here he penned his second political masterpiece,
Rights of Man, which immediately became the fastest selling book in the history of England. The king was irate and Paine had to flee the country to avoid being hanged.Escaping to France, Paine received a
hero's welcome. The French Revolution had blossomed with the overthrow of the
Bastille and he was beseeched to join the new National Assembly to help
establish a French democracy and constitution. Influential at first, Paine was
slowly pushed aside by envious members who portrayed him as an outsider, (he
needed a translator). When he protested that executing the deposed king was
beneath the ideals their Revolution sought to embody, they labeled him a traitor.
Shortly afterwards, the king went to the guillotine, Paine went to jail, French
democracy stalled, and Paris plunged into insanity with over 18,000 political
executions in a single year! The new government even banned religion! And it was
here, in an effort to stop atheism, that Paine wrote his most profound book,
Age of Reason, Part I and II.
Like his previous books, Age of
Reason was a phenomenal best seller, but it also became the most
controversial book in history, a distinction it held for 60 years (until
Origin of the Species).
In his book, Paine tells why he
rejects atheism and believes in God. But he also explains, in stunning clarity,
why organized religions like Christianity are a sham, perverting what can only
be a personal matter between each of us and our maker. This rebuke, from
America’s most respected writer, was not only humiliating to the practitioners
of priestcraft, but a grave danger to their income and influence,
especially since France had just abolished the “God business” completely.
Organized religions responded by
savagely attacking Paine until the day he died.
What a tragedy, made all the more
shameful since Paine admired Jesus greatly. In fact, he said no one ever
exceeded Jesus’ wisdom! But words like "love one another" carry with them their
own authority, and no miracles or prophecies are necessary for honest people to
obey such maxims.
Paine wrote (I paraphrase):
"If there was such a man as Adam, he was certainly a Deist. The only religion that was not invented is pure Deism. But Deism does not answer the purpose of despotic governments, for men cannot lay hold of this religion as an engine of power since they cannot make their own authority a part. Neither does Deism answer the avarice of priests, who incorporate themselves and their supposed functions with a religion and become like a government. Deism teaches us without the possibility of being deceived by others. The creation is the Bible of the Deist. He reads there, in the hand-writing of his Creator, the immutability of God’s power, and understands that man-made Words of God are forgeries."You can read Thomas Paine’s books by simply searching his name online. Find out why Thomas Jefferson loved him like a brother, why Abraham Lincoln said, “I never tire of reading Paine,” or why Thomas Edison proclaimed, “We never had a sounder intelligence in this republic.”
Dave Gresham
October 14, 2007
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