What Should the United States Be?

The United States needs to remake itself. We need to change our outlook on what government services it is going to provide to its citizens as we go into the future, and how we will provide them. We need to make some very critical judgments about our defense spending, how it is being spent, and the nature of procurement, as well as consider whether our foreign adventurism as of late has helped or harmed us. And we need to change our foreign policy outlook, including how and what foreign aid consists of. We have serious questions to ask ourselves. Can carry on a serious public discourse to provide the answers we really need?

Unfortunately, right now the answer is: probably not. Vindictive, politically-motivated positions, appear to be the name of the game in politics today. Our political system may need to changed in certain ways, whether to the electoral system or the system by which we pass laws. To create a serious public discourse will also require personal responsibility. It will require people to be critical of what politicians are telling them.

The United States seriously needs leaders with vision. We are thinking 15 minutes ahead right now--about as far as the cable news cycle. We need to be thinking 1-5-10-50 years ahead right now. I think it may quite literally be impossible to bring to the floor of the Congress something that deals with an issue that is several decades out. An example from Alaska appears to me to be a perfect example.

Several northwestern Alaskan coastal villages are literally falling into the sea as the Bering Sea relentlessly pounds the shore, removing more and more of the coast every year. These communities have always been coastal, but had never had to deal with these erosion issues because permafrost (frozen soil) helped by acting like a cement and hard-fast sea remained frozen to the coast in spring when the most powerful storms lashed the shore. Now, with permafrost melting, to some extent, everywhere in the Arctic, and no more hard-fast spring sea-ice because of a retreating Arctic ice-sheet--itself due to a global rise in atmospheric temperatures--these villages have no defense. Attempts by the Army Corps of Engineers to hold back the pounding surf have failed in the face of the power of Bering Sea weather. This is forcing these villages to relocate.

Yet Alaska's only congressional representative, Don Young, and the former Alaska governor-cum-2012 presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, both continue to deny the fact that there is climate change is occurring. And thus they are fighting any attempts to try to forestall these climatic changes by branding research into the issue as voodoo science. They suggest just doing nothing. They say that people trying to deal with climate change are trying to take away your jobs.

Perhaps climate change is a controversial topic. But if this is the sort of response that one gets when trying to deal with an issue that many people can show you hard evidence for, how are we supposed to talk about large reductions in the military.

It is obvious the Tea Party is not serious about its one long-term issue--the deficit/national debt. They are unwilling to touch defense spending, nor social security, medicare, or veterans entitlements, the main aspects of spending in this country. The Tea Party is not going to provide the long-term thinking that we need. It is supported by angry people, who are acting in the heat of the moment in response to the 2008 economic crisis.

The Centrist Front wants to nurture a new, constructive, dialogue about the serious questions mentioned at the beginning of this post. To get there, we will need to step back as a nation and take a collective deep breath.