My father’s thoughts on the U.S. Government
I just wanted to share an interesting point of view on the U.S. government, which was offered up by my father in an email response to one of those typical "The U.S. Government Has Never Been Able to Run Anything Right" rhetorical messages. It's worth pointing out that my father is both a veteran (Air Force) and a first-generation immigrant from the Dominican Republic who has lived in the United States for five decades.
His thoughts were enlightening and made me feel proud to be his son, so I figured I would share:
I can’t just receive and ignore emails like this one without adding my sincere feelings about them. These messages must have been written by someone who, blinded by his political extremism or ignorance, decided to ignore the facts involved in the cases being mentioned. To say that the government can’t be trusted to run anything at all is ridiculous, and the writer’s selective amnesia makes him forget to mention the many successful programs run by our government.
What about the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, the Navy, the CIA, the NSA, the FDIC, the National Transportation Safety Board, the Department of Justice and many other programs?
Also, to say that the government can’t properly run any programs because of the present problems in some of them ignores the fact that most of these problems were caused by small and large corporations that instead of policing themselves, as they always claim they should be allowed to do, decided to commit frauds and abuses against those branches of government mentioned in this article, i.e.: TYCO, ENRON, the savings banks institutions in the 80’s, Blackwater’s excessive overcharging the Pentagon, the recent Wall Street debacle, the multibillion mortgage frauds committed by many banks, etc.
Suggesting that government can't run anything right just because some government operations are having problems, often caused by abuses done to them by private corporations (Medicaide/Medicare abuses) would be like saying that private corporations should not exist because of the great number of them that have failed or are presently having financial problems. This premise is absurd, and it can only be conceived by a mind that has been obfuscated by a lack of reason and logic, or by fanatical extremism.
The writer mentions people who expect to receive moneys from the government, money that they didn’t earn, as if ours was socialist country. I agree with him on this subject, unless it’s a bona fide case of well deserved humanitarian assistance. However, what the writer ignores is the fact that lately, many large corporations seem to have the same expectations. Case in point: Goldman Sacks, Morgan Stanley, the auto manufacturers, and many more banks and private corporations.
I think that the writer, if he has any integrity, should try to be more objective in his stance, because in my opinion, corporate socialism is no better than individual socialism.
