Michael Swickard
The mainstream, national media ignore some important American core issues because the thoughts do not fit the political outcomes they desire. From objective reporting done when I was a child, some previously trusted media now take political sides and exclude “unpopular” debates.
I see six interconnected and unpopular issues we Americans should be discussing:
Global warming and cooling
First, our society is very conflicted over the issue of, “Manmade Global Warming,” which is really “Manmade Global Cooling.” Some people think the actions of mankind have increased the temperature of our planet and therefore other actions are needed to lower our planet’s temperature.
Said another way, these other actions will induce Manmade Global Cooling.
The point not discussed about Manmade Warming and Cooling: What is the “correct” temperature for our planet? Where is the point when our planet is cool enough and not too cold? Without a target temperature, how can we know when we have intervened enough or too much?
The cause of the financial crisis
Also ignored is the fact that the current financial crisis was directly caused by government rules and regulations. In his new book, “The housing boom and bust,” Economist Thomas Sowell writes:
“Because banks are regulated by various agencies of the federal government, it was easy to pressure them to lend to people that they would not otherwise lend to — namely, people with lower incomes, poorer credit ratings and little or no money for a conventional down payment of 20 percent of the price of a house. Such people were referred to politically as ‘the underserved population’ — as if politicians know who should and who shouldn’t get mortgages better than people who have spent their careers making mortgage-lending decisions.”
So, the same government that caused our financial meltdown is going to smart us out of it without suffering any scrutiny by the national media for being the ones who caused it.
Nuclear energy
Next, America’s need for energy independence lacks this core debate: Japan, France and Germany looked at all available technologies and concentrated their efforts into developing and bringing into production nuclear power generation. Nuclear plants have the ability to generate vast amounts of power reliably and at or below comparable fossil fuel costs.
Further, nuclear power is a three-fer:
• First, nuclear power plants run best near 100 percent, so they produce lots of power for consumption and can sell any excess power.
• Second, if not sold, excess power available at non-peak times can power water desalinization projects that are not time-of-day critical, thereby increasing national agricultural competitiveness.
• Finally, that off-peak power can make hydrogen fuel, “powering” a clean hydrogen economy.
If Japan, who has every right to be flinchy about anything nuclear, can embrace nuclear technology, why does America find it so hard?
The national debt
Next, the national debt does not obligate the next generation to pull money from their pockets. Rather, money used beyond current treasury receipts (national debt) is a consolidation of the wealth of the nation into less total wealth.
There is no plan to pay the national debt because the national debt has already been taken from the overall wealth of the nation.
Our defenders
Addressing national safety, what our nation should be debating but is not: Our enemies are completely ruthless in their attempt to destroy our nation and its people, and they are not restrained from using any or all weapons including, if they can obtain them, weapons of mass destruction.
When we, for political reasons, attack our own people who have been ensuring our safety, our enemies cheer more lustily than the partisans.
Further, those who advocate our use of “Marquess of Queensberry” type rules for fighting completely ruthless enemies may think it makes us a superior society because we do not fight as ruthlessly as those who wish to kill every American. The debate is this: If we must be as ruthless as our enemies or perish, should our nation perish just to prove we are (or were) civilized?
George Orwell noted, “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” For us sitting comfortably and safely in our homes, can we really hammer those people on the front lines of fighting because we think at a split-second here or there that they should have been more civilized in a sudden firefight?
Servants becoming masters
Finally, our servants in government have become our masters. When you look at how they live and how they operate, and then you look at how we citizens live and operate, there is no doubt who is master and who is servant.
Our masters do not live by the same rules. They have their own health care, some suffer no penalty for not paying taxes and they are defended by people with firearms while they seek to deny us servants the ability to protect ourselves and our family with firearms.
President Thomas Jefferson wrote about government often. Here are three Jefferson thoughts: “My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
The commonality of the above issues is that the media purposefully distorts and ignores them because they have desired outcomes. How sad it is that we cannot trust our mainstream media to present unbiased debate.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.
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