Category: The Priorities

The bedrock principle needed to bring our country back to greater harmony and capacity to work together is the principle of equality.  We are all equal as citizens.  The needs and views of each citizen are just as important for the country as the needs and views of every other citizen and should carry just…

To bring greater peace and harmony to our society, we must first acknowledge our belief in the fundamental equality of all citizens as described above.  If we truly believe in this equality, it means that no citizen is any “better than” any other in their worth and value as people.  You cannot be truly equal…

Democracy is ideally a system of gathering the equally valuable input from all citizens and then fashioning the best solutions possible at the moment for each and every problem.  Democracy should not be about who can “win” and force everyone else to do as they direct; it must be about making the best compromises possible…

Truth has had a rough time lately, with post-modernist philosophy pushing the idea that every view and belief that we have is tainted by our selfishness and our belief that we have the truth, and politicians pushing “alternative facts” rather than being willing to agree on whatever reality we can find. It’s true that human…

It is natural for people to band together to seek their goals, but the Republican and Democratic parties have become stand-ins for the eternal battle between liberal and conservative political views.  They do not put forth alternative visions of the kind of society they wish to build but spend most of their time fighting and…

We need a change of attitude about taxes.  Our taxes are not what some king or dictator takes from us to support his or her reign.  They are what we, through our representatives, decide to spend on the welfare of ourselves and all other citizens (like roads, our military, our elections, grants for cancer research,…

Right now our elections are about popularity and not competence.  Candidates tell you as little as possible about what they think and believe and what they would do if in office.  Their campaign slogans are useless since they promise things that they could not deliver, because our tri-partite government (legislative, executive, judicial) provides checks and…

People feel good about contributing something useful to the welfare of themselves and their families, as well as to the welfare of the nation.  In other words, people feel good about having a job that they can be proud of.  Every person contributing to the good of the country should be able to feel good…

Many people encounter considerable difficulty in trying to discuss political issues with others who have different views.  This is not a new difficulty, as illustrated by the maxim to not discuss politics or religion at the dinner table or at family gatherings!  The two major sources of these problems are that (1) the discussants are…

Our immigration system is a mess, and I intend to clean it up.  It is absurd to admit people to the country with no hearing for four years before we decide whether they can stay!  I will lead the process of revising our immigration policies and then paying for a humane system of immigration.  Congress…

All human beings have the same basic goals and motives in life:  to survive, to have minimal or at least tolerable physical and emotional pain, to have some times of feeling positive emotions (which can be achieved mainly through feeling good about ourselves and feeling secure and not afraid), to have sex and raise children,…