What do you believe to be the most challenging (whether domestic or international) facing the United States right now? Try to think beyond the surface here, for the apparently down-and-dirty and ephemeral nature of presidential politics cannot be separated from broader questions of national purpose and identity. Behind disputes about particular policy questions there are often differences of political first principles concerning who we are, what our purpose is, and what direction we should go in as a nation. And behind those questions reside questions concerning what each of us thinks the ultimate Good (if we think there is such a thing) and human nature are.
Feel free to post your thoughts in the comments below!
Monday, January 21, 2008
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2 comments:
The biggest threat to the good of this nation is the nation itself. We can see that Washington has and continues to favor big corporations instead of the majority. Lobbying is an important democratical freedom that like any other freedom can be misused. That is the number one problem that infiltrates all other policies. The greed of the rich suppresses the poor and gives this nation a bad image. This influence from big corportations can be seen in Iraq, the FDA, and a number of other places. Americans need to regain their voice and show Washington that we are not willing to be cast aside.
As an aside, the following comments here by Andrew Sullivan and Rod Dreher on the depth of the crisis facing America right now may be of interest to readers of this blog.
Leviticus19_2, I agree with you that lobbyists and corporate power have an inordinate influence upon our government. However, I'm not sure that this is against "the majority" right now, for two reasons. First, while Americans certainly may be concerned about disparities in the distribution of wealth, on the whole they seem averse to critiquing capitalism's economy of unlimited desire, which props up corporate power and indeed to some extent goes in tandem with the out-of-control deficit spending plus tax cuts promoted by our present Administration.
Second, I don't know that there is much of a cohesive group we can point to as "the majority" of the American people. Our society appears to be awash in fragmentation; while I wish there was a majority who perceived the problem, I simply don't see them right now.
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