Tearing down our institutions

(11/2023) Just because it’s 8:30, doesn’t mean I hate the clock.

These words were spoken by a friend while chatting about personal experiences with the institutions that impact our lives. We live by the structure of institutions, from the federal government, on through our everyday network of schools, medicine, and neighborhood businesses where we shop. The best institutions enhance our quality of life.

Some institutions stand out because they are unfair or out of balance. Institutional organizing of our government, schools, religious denominations is meant to bring order and prosperity to us individually, and society as a whole. Life often isn’t fair.

In our chat, the topic was how compensation is handled in different organizations. In the US work force there are huge differences in how employees are paid. Wages don’t have to cover the cost of living just because you have a job. At some point many people, but not enough, get ahead in their work life, get that big promotion, or become a successful entrepreneur. With a big leap to an affluent stage in life, comes a memory loss of how life was before one got there. It’s as easy for a person of good will toward all to forget how it was when they were coming up the ladder, as it is for one who is self centered. Institutions function with people standing on every rung of the ladder. If you work for one that you believe in, you can go to work, be underpaid, and still get excited to go to work everyday.

Asked about working in an underpaid job that they loved, my friend noticed the clock on the wall was at 8:30, and said, "Just because it’s 8:30, doesn’t mean I hate the clock."

In other words, just because an organization doesn’t always work for me as it should, doesn’t mean I quit.

Just because the Congress doesn’t do everything I want, doesn’t mean I quit America.

Our governing document, the Constitution, provides guidelines and guide rails for governance and public support. I love our Constitution. I think and write about it a lot. But our founding document is the one to look to in this time of lopsided non-governing.

The Declaration of Independence.

To paraphrase, this document states that our purpose as a country is to give freedom to the individual to pursue the blessings of life as they see fit.

Some quotes from the Declaration to consider in relation to how events are playing out today:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,…"

I interrupt this quote to point out that we all know what "all men" meant in the 18th century, and decades beyond. By now, due to the Emancipation Proclamation and Voting Rights for Women, this phrase means each of us.

"that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

In pursuit of property rights, the Republican majority is ignoring guard rails created in support of our Declaration of Independence, as they have been codified by our Constitution and two centuries of Amendments. They are coming close to removing them while insisting it’s okay to deny Americans the right to living life as they wish.

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes"

Here is where the country splitting into factions hits a jersey wall of historical comparison. Today’s factions have been created over petty grievances, and fueled by opportunism. Under King George it was taxation without representation. Today, now that we have representation, if someone doesn’t like the voting outcome, they simply deny that it is real.

Republican members in Congress have put forward policies to lower, or end, Social Security. The population voted for Social Security decades ago because enough people needed them. We have used our votes to implement a social safety system, which is meant to help everyone regardless of personal opinion or behavior, and is exactly how to serve our common purpose, as mandated in the Declaration of Independence.

Perhaps the biggest impact of our system of government, is the flexibility each citizen has to live an independent life. Sure, there are trade offs. Having to pay taxes is a challenge, but getting the necessities of modern life with them is the pay off. We had a joke that when we came home from Pennsylvania, we knew that we were close because the roads improved at the Maryland line.

It is being said that authoritarian governments around the world can look at the United States of America, right now, and say to their population, "Democracy doesn’t work. Follow me." Let’s prove them wrong. Stand up, defend, and vote for the principles that define us.

Meanwhile, back at the Congress where a new House Speaker has been sworn in.

Just because the current crop of legislators is run by a group who act on goals that leave many Americans behind, doesn’t mean I have lost faith in our founding principles.