"Getting It Right" by Ed Martin

If you are blessed to have little kids, as my wife and I are, your life becomes infused with all sorts of fictional characters. Some are favorites that most people have heard of - think Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Dora, Diego or Batman/Robin and superheroes - while others are new characters that I have created in stories I make up for our children - "Uncle Jimmy and Me", "Michael and the Magic Monk", and other bed time story characters.

The great thing about fictional characters is that children believe in them; kids know these characters as real and like their own developing personalities. The kids recognize Big Bird as polite and Oscar as funny (and grumpy). Diego and Dora are their resourceful playmates. And my kids think that think that Uncle Jimmy is the toughest and smartest cowboy/soldier and that daddy and Batman (these two are not the same) is the bravest man in America. All these characters are there to serve (save) the children.

I pray often that the kids never outgrow their belief in the characters that dominate their lives... but I know that they will someday (and soon, I bet). Their awe at what the characters do (and who they are) will transform into an adult understanding of what is possible and what is not; that fictional characters are good for stories but that each child has to live their own life. I guess this called "growing up."

Which brings me all the way around to the current state of affairs here in America. It seems that we Americans need to grow up and realize that we have to take care of ourselves. Too many of us have come to the point where we believe that someone should save us from all that ails us - whether money, or health, or sadness, or whatever. And mostly, we think that one thing that can save us is our governments. We have a vision of an all-serving government - whether the President, the Congress or the courts - that can provide everything from a roof over our head to food on our plates to a climate that is like Goldilock's porridge ("not too hot, not too cold, just right").

This belief in government is naive and is as fictional as Batman, the Magic Monk, or the Tooth Fairy. The truth is that government cannot help us like we want to believe it can. You see, government has tried.... Recently, it has bailed out auto-makers who have failed. It's bailed out banks that have failed. And now, our government has given billions to Medicaid and welfare. And still unemployment rises and our schools fail too many kids. Crime soars, out of wedlock pregnancy skyrockets, and the quality of life - for too many Americans - is declining.

Too many of our low income folks - mostly black and brown, by the way - have been told (primarily by the Democrat party) that government can provide health care, welfare, and education. This is the Great Society that President Lyndon Johnson promised. The truth is that for decades now generations Americans have been sentenced to lower class status by a dependence on government handouts that did not save but rather sentenced. Poorer communities have health care that is subpar with education and job opportunities declining.

Both political parties have become shills for their special interests - Democrats for liberals like education unions and socialists while Republicans have rolled over too often for big business. Both parties have fallen for the fiction of "free trade" that has led to our jobs heading overseas faster than a speeding bullet.

Which brings me to this conclusion: we must throw the bums out. I believe that we should have term limits for all members of Congress but, until a term limits amendment is on our Constitution, we should vote every incumbent out of office. They are all failing us by continuing to build an American government that spends too much money and does more than it should and poorly.

We need to grow up. Friedrich Nietzsche said that "maturity consists in having rediscovered the seriousness one had as a child at play." It is time for us to group and realize that we need to get serious about our lives and our nation... before it is too late.