Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Get a Rope!

I read an article on Fox News titled Dem Rep: Tea Party wants Blacks ‘Hanging’ on Tree, where Democratic Rep. Andre Carson, a black congressman from Indiana’s seventh district, told a Miami crowd that “the Tea Party movement would “love” to see black Americans “hanging on a tree”. He stated “Some of these folks in Congress right now would love to see us as second-class citizens…Some of them in Congress right now with this Tea Party movement would love to see you and me…hanging on a tree”. Here is the link to the video: LINK

In the same article, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California), also told a crowd that the “Tea Party can go straight to Hell.”

Wow.

My question is how can that be a part of the National conversation? That man actually gets paid by his community’s tax dollars to make decisions. Our California representative sits in the highest legislative body in the US, and she wants anyone associated the Tea Party to relocate to Hell. Someone also thinks it’s a good idea to pay her to make decisions that affect millions of people.

Really?

How can people try to shift conversation from creating value (and I mean real value in which there is net benefit, meaning the value outweighs the costs) to hate rhetoric?

The purpose of starting the Harvard University Tea Party via the Harvard Kennedy School, is to get national conversation and action going between relevant people on relevant ideas to the problems and environment of today. We have more debt than we have ever had. We have a more fragile economy than we have ever had, and we are divided politically to the point that we can’t perform the most basic function of any household – make sure the checkbook balances at the end of the pay period.

The Tea Party is an argument that about where the government creates value. It’s about how much power rest in the centralized few. It’s about defining what is responsible financial policy.

There is a place where the government operates better and is more efficient than private enterprise. There is an argument where sharing wealth from our country with others makes sense. There is value that the government can add that no other entity can add. It’s efficient, it can work, and it can raise the standard of living not just for those in our country, but it can also improve the standard of living around the world.

However, I don’t see how any of that relates to hanging black people, unless you are trying to cite that one people group will lose government benefits and welfare programs. If you want to talk about lose of benefits to a people group, I get that, but then let’s talk about what that means.

This time in our history has to be more than sound bites. If we continue to allow other people to think for us and take our education from sound bites, then we are responsible for our own deficiencies. No one can take that responsibility away from you. If you are a citizen, then you have rights. Where is the line where the increase of your liberties means my liberty decreases? Who decides that line.

The conversations we need to have are difficult, and they can’t be summed up in caustic speeches that seek to win support by polarizing people from one side to another.

Sure, it’s proven that in business people buy products because of stuff around the message, rather than the message itself. If you put pretty people having fun on a commercial, you will intuitively prefer that product to the same product in which you have not pretty people doing boring stuff. That’s marketing 101.

People, let’s get past marketing 101 in being a citizen. It’s our time to get past our parents politics. This squabbling is stupid. There isn’t another word for it.

Take 15 minutes to learn. Do it once a week. Find your opinion. Find your why. Understand your options. Talk to your neighbor. I’m going to try to make each entry something that is relevant and starts a conversation that will spark your own search for value. I’m not interested in telling you exactly where that value lies, but I will spend time looking at the input to the argument, and then let’s find the end value together.

It’s time we take the conversation up a notch. If we don’t, we might get lynched by our own apathy.

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