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Back to the Forum Archives In my last essay, I declared for president and outlined how you can expect me to behave when I take office. In this essay I want to look at some of the issues we face and prioritize them. It should be clear to everyone that what we call international terrorism must stand above everything else in any priority list. If we do not deal with that, nothing else we do will matter. Currently, I think the American people, encouraged by the president's attitude, have taken this much too lightly. We treat is as an inconvenience rather that a threat to our very survival. I think it is time we got clear on that. There is a small but very determined group of madmen in the world who fully intend to destroy not just America, but all of Western civilization. These are truly insane religious fundamentalists. They are not true Muslims or any other faith. They are deranged madmen who have stolen the cloak of Islam to cover their evil activities. Unless we stop them, they will continue until they have achieved their goals. So long as we sit on our hands or waste resources attacking false targets, time will be on their side. They have forever. In their madness, they see themselves as warriors in a religious war that has been going on since the ministry of Jesus Christ. To them it is the ongoing war of Islam against Christianity. Of course that is deranged nonsense, but it is very convincing to the desperate kids they victimize as martyrs. Those kids are people without hope who are quite easy to con and there are a lot of them. Once we eliminate the current threat, one of the followup things we must do is give those kids cause for hope. We can do that by helping them create democratic governments. First, however, we must eliminate the imminent threat. The United States should be full mobilized for action against real terrorism. We should be making war on terrorists, not on tin horn imperialists. To do that, I will propose to congress that America must spend what it takes to be fully mobilized for war. Instead of talking about being at war, we must really prepare for it. This is not an inconvenience we face. It is a deadly threat. So here is what we need. First of all we need a universal draft to bring our military up to its full wartime capabilities. We do not need a few thousand people under arms, we need at least as many as we had in WWII. As to this draft, I will propose a universal draft. In that, all Americans between the ages of 18 and 30 will be required to serve at least three years in one capacity or another. It is no longer acceptable to victimize one part of our population and spare all others. Some will be acceptable for military service. Others can be used in other ways. Here is just one of the ways they can serve. America needs a domestic disaster response capability. This will be a highly mobile specially trained quasi-military command ready to deal with floods, forest fires, and other domestic disasters. There are several other areas of need where we can use our young people. I will outline these in the Gaffer's Philosophy series when I get to it. We must begin to plan and prosecute this war against these madmen immediately. We cannot wait until we are full mobilized. It's too late to moan and groan about the fact that we should already be mobilized. The fact is, we are not, but we must begin anyway. For that, I will work with our military leaders and those civilians who may have necessary knowledge and skills. I will ask them to serve and if necessary, I will draft them. Now, there is a lot more to this war on terrorism, but this is the essence of it. I will flesh out the details in the Philosophy Series. In my list, the next highest priority needing our attention is our children. That is the highest priority beyond defense. We must see to the future of our children. Everyone says that, but I intend to live it. Everything we do about education now is wrong and has to be changed. I have written an entire set of essays in my Philosophy series about the way we mistreat our kids. It is a national tragedy that must be addressed. Child abuse must be stopped, completely. People who abuse children must be reeducated and, when necessary, punished and isolated from kids. In addition, our primary education system must be completely restructured. We must stop beating our kids over the head with rote and conformity. We must start encouraging independent thinking and creative behavior. There are other issues that I have not yet prioritized. One is the very nature of our society. I will cite my standards for a decent society. I have presented these before. No one should ever be afraid. In particular, no one should be afraid of their government. No one should ever go to bed hungry or cold. No one should be naked. No one should have to choose between food and medicine. No kid should ever be made to feel ashamed of himself. I will repeat myself. If we can't do that, we ain't worth spit. We must restore the rule of law in America. To me, this means repealing all laws which contradict the constitution. We need to vigorously enforce the Bill of Rights for all Americans in all states. In health care, we must overhaul the corrupt dishonest system we now have. We need a few key laws to do that. The government need not take over health care, but we must do a more honest job of regulating it. I have written on this in "The Gaffer's Shorts" and will address it again in my Philosophy series. We must also see to th cleanup of Corporate America. We must disenfranchise the corporate thieves and punish them severely. We must take away their power and put them in hard time prison. We must clean up the environment and protect it against the profiteers. Our environment is becoming a disaster because of exploitive corporate behavior encouraged by permissive laws and regulations and an understaffed enforcement capability. I do support the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). That will eventually create the largest free trade zone and market in the world. That is good for everyone in the long term. It will be stronger than Europe's trading partnership by far. I am willing to look at it to see if it is fairly written, but I want everyone to quit whining and get on board. For those corporations that flee their responsibilities and abandon American workers there is a solution. It's called a boycott and the government need not be involved. American citizens can do it. Those scumbags like Electrolux should be shut out. After all of that, I am also for a balanced budget. I think we can do that. For sure, we need to raise taxes, not cut them. I have always been against using tax monies to buy votes. It is completely unethical. Instead of pandering for votes we need to tell the truth. America and Americans need to do some major belt tightening. Hedonism must be set aside. We have a major crisis in our hands. Finally, when we have the terrorist threat under control and we have our own house in order, we need to look at how we can go about democratizing the world. I think that is the only way we can make the world reasonably safe. We need not rule the world. That is a difficult and thankless task. What we need is to have a large group of cooperating democratic governments wherein all people will have hope for a better life. Hope will do more to neutralize the terrorist threat than any other single thing. It will be very difficult to convince a person with hope to kill himself for the glory of God or any other bad joke. In my follow up essays I will deal with some remaining issues
including some that I consider to be fringe issues and pseudo
issues.
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