My vision of the US has evolved from my early days of blind belief.
Experience, history and my scrutiny of nontraditional sources have taught me that when it comes to my government the issues it stands for are not clear moral choices but a series of interests that need to be met.
Whose interests are being met is really at the heart of any issue the US has ever stood up for.
1776 was the year of the declaration of independence; it was the colonists' needs that were being addressed and the British that were undermining them.
During the Civil war, I was taught that the war was fought for two reasons.
The first was to preserve the union of north and south; the second was to free the slaves.
This view is rather simplistic but it made sense to me in 8th grade or whenever it was that I was educated about the civil war.
Yet in reality it really wasn't that simple.
At east the second reason cited isn't really the reason, it was a by-product as to why the war was fought.
Doesn't it make more sense that the war was fought because an increasingly industrialized north needed a larger market to sell its mass produced goods to? Today we joke about earning slave wages; the reality is slaves were invaluable to an agriculture-based economy like the south by providing the cheapest source of labor possible.
This was utterly useless to an industrial based north that relied on wage earners to purchase their goods.
The needs of two economic systems clashed and then we have the civil war.
It certainly is more pc to allude to the first two reasons; is it honest though? I believe that this is the problem that we all face politically in this country today.
We pay attention to the party line fed to us but we as a people don't dig deeper and really look at the real root of the problem.
The problem of dealing with a problem superficially is that it'll always come back to bite you in the ass.
Or in the case of just buying into the party line is that you run the risk of not addressing your actual needs.
"Fiscal Conservative values", "mission accomplished", "Made in the U.
S.
A", "No Child Left Behind", "Jobs Growth Opportunity", "Access, Affordability"; these are all tag lines or writing on the backdrops used by President Bush during his speeches.
Are these truly honest? Does a fiscal conservative spend billions on nation building (something Bush promised not to do)? We are still in Iraq with more soldiers dying and being maimed everyday.
I'm not asking anyone to switch party alliances because they both play the same game.
What I am suggesting is that we hold them more accountable by questioning the real reason as to why something is being or not being done.
The most obvious example I can give is Iraq.
The President has flip flopped more than California beach goers have the named item as to why the Iraq war is being fought.
The final reason given is that we are there spreading democracy.
If this is really our reason we aren't we in North Korea where we know they have weapons of mass destruction and people are oppressed.
How about going into Iran that has admitted to having designs on creating a nuclear program.
How about the Sudan where there is an active program of genocide being implemented.
I don't believe we are an evil people; gullible is what I see.
Just like in our every day lives we tend to question everything.
Why not when it comes to our political leaders.
As far removed from Washington as we may be it is still our responsibility to old them accountable to our needs not theirs.
No is the time to start doing this at every level of government.