My Story, My Vision for America

I have recently graduated with a Bachelors degree, and I was able to do so because of the financial aid I received from Pell Grants.  These Pell Grants are aid from the Federal Government that help in need students afford college.  During the Debt Crisis in 2011, these Pell Grants were under fire, but thankfully the Obama administration fought to keep the funding for these grants and actually increase them.  Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress fought to eliminate Federal Funding for college education. 

I am now a grad student at one of the most prestigious universities in the country.  I fought hard during my undergrad years taking on extra courses and completing an honors program, and maintaining a GPA at a level high enough to graduate with honors.  But I am now struggling with my schooling for different reasons.  Due to the Republican opposition of Federal financial aid for education, the only way to keep Pell Grant funding was to give up subsidizing federal loans for grad students.  Now, instead of the interest on my student loans starting once I graduate, the interest compounds while I am in school.  This alone costs me $50.00 a month, per semester, while I am attending school (total cost to me will be about $3,000 paid to interest alone by the time I graduate in two years).

Republicans in Congress, and presidential candidate Mitt Romney, would rather I struggle to pay this $3,000.00 of interest payments, than to have the tax cuts on the nation’s richest people expire!  This is their view of America?  Students struggle to pay for higher education, but the rich pay less taxes?

Over the past four years I have seen great steps to realizing my vision for this nation—a vision of Equality and Fairness under the law.  Some of my closest friends can now serve our country without having to hide who they are.  And they can now take pride that they have a president whom believes that they should have the Legal Right to Marriage, along with the legal benefits that follow marriage.  I now know that my girlfriend, sister, and mother have protection under the law to receive Equal Pay for Equal Work.  I can remain comfortable that my female friends continue to have the right to choose what it right for their own bodies, and that God forbid they are sexually assaulted, they will not be forced to live with that tragedy because Republican congressional candidates want to ban abortion even in the cases of rape!

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney wants an amendment to ban Equal Rights to Marriage.  He wants to eliminate federal funding to higher education.  He has publicly disapproved of the Obama administration’s first act to sign into law Equal Pay for Equal Work.  He has publicly endorsed congressional candidates that oppose abortion even in the cases of rape!  His answer to the sacrificing the Equal Rights and Fairness in Society… he will take away regulations of Wall Street and lower taxes for even the richest people.  He will raise funding for a military that already out spends the next 10 largest militaries in the world.  This is his answer to our sacrifices.

I have a vision for an America that promotes Equality and Fairness under the law.  Not a country that keeps the middle and lower classes down because they cannot afford higher education to get better jobs.  Mitt Romney believes in an America that protects the Aristocracy of the wealthy and negates the Civil Rights measures for the past decades.  His answer to higher education funding, borrow the money from your parents, and if they don’t have it, borrow from the banks and go into debt.  And if you can’t handle that much debt, don’t get a college degree.  Do you want to get out of poverty and become a doctor or lawyer, well too bad, because grad school will now cost even more after the monthly interest payments…

That is not the vision for a middle-class America.  He is not the vision for Equality of gender, race, and sexuality in America. 

Tomorrow, we must march to the polls! 

Tomorrow, we must show our government and the world, that we want a Equal and Fair America!

Religion and America: He Without Sin…

Growing up in a household consisting of an Irish-Catholic mother and Scottish-Presbyterian father, religion and faith was no small matter in my life. I was raised by the stories in the Bible, taught lessons on life from anecdotes of religious history and faith practices. But as I grew older, I began to understand that other people did not live the life I had.

America is a country that is blessed by a diversity among its people and its faiths.

This country was created based on the principle of religious freedom—freedom for people that could not live their faith in the native countries of their birth. At the time of America’s inception, other countries had official religions that often held prejudice over the opposition beliefs. America was to be the safe haven.

Out of the ashes of the Enlightenment came America, a country based upon founding principles of Liberty and Freedom. In the First Amendment, it says boldly that this nation will not endorse any singular religion, but rather it would not prevent anyone from the practice of their own faiths. Toleration was no longer strong enough of a message, America went further. Religious Freedom.

America was (and is) a nation filled by people of faith. But it was not and is not a nation that is to be governed by those faiths. For it is in this nation, that we have the Liberty and the Freedom to live our own faiths. Just as I have the Liberty to live with my faith, others duly have the Freedom to live with the absence of their faiths. This nation was created with an understanding that Faith and Governance should not be mixed. And it seems to me that certain people are pressing ever so loudly to close that gap.

Republican presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, has made many speeches over the past few years stating his belief that there should not be separation of Church and State. And yet, he so ferociously states that “government shouldn't be dictating to people what they do.” How then, can a man distinguish between the right of the government to tell its citizens that they cannot have equality in marriage, women’s rights to choice, and this whole business of Contraception Gate (whether birth control pills should be mandated on health care coverage)?

I am a Christian man, but I am also an ardent supporter of the founding principles from that this country was created. Liberty. Freedom. Equality. I believe strongly in my faith, but it is not to me to force others onto my path. Whether homosexuality is a sin or not, does not cede proof that they are not to enjoy the same Rights as any other citizen. Marriage is an Inalienable Right that all people deserve. And it is not to me to tell others whom they should marry, whether I personally believe in it or not. I cannot be blind to the obvious fact that this country is filled with people that do not share my beliefs, and as such, it should not be governed by the standards of my faith. It cannot be that my beliefs supersede those of another. It is antagonistic to the principles from which this country was founded.

In the light of recent events in the news, I am reminded of the story in John 8: 4-7

When a woman was brought to Jesus, condemned for her adultery, her condemners reminded Jesus that according to the Law of Moses, she must be stoned to death. And they ask him what he thought…

After a pause, Jesus answered.

“He, who is among you that is without sin, may cast the first stone.”

Slowly the men disbursed, the Elders before the rest.

Rush Limbaugh, this is a message to you, sir. That when a woman speaks out for her right to choose how she lives her life, let one who is without sin be the first to cast out names at her. She has the right to live her life by her own beliefs, as you do with yours. If birth control is mandated to be with all government health insurance offerings, that does not force all women to take it, but only just allows for those who wish to take the option. It is the woman’s right to choose. And she should be able to choose for such without being called a “slut” or “prostitute” by someone that is surely not pure.

God teaches us that it is not for us to judge, but only for God alone. Those that judge cannot be any better than the one that is being judged.

This nation’s principles on religious freedom must also recognize the freedom of not having religion. As others cannot force us to believe in another’s religion, so too must we not force non-believers to adopt our beliefs. This nation was built on a morality that transcends the lines of faiths, and we must remember this—that all people have the Right to Liberty and Freedom, to live their lives as they see fit, so long as no harm be done to anyone else.

Whether homosexuals get married, a woman chooses to have an abortion, or to take birth control—these are not issues that bring harm to me or anyone else. But to bring a nation into war, to allow tax systems to widen the disparity between rich and poor, to maintain raising tuition rates while cutting funding to students seeking higher education… these are the issues that harm others—countering the teachings of Jesus Christ.

A Return to the American Idea

I have been a student of history my entire life.  As long as I can remember, I have always loved learning about American history.  I needed to know about the country that my family had come to.  A country they came to for a new beginning, to give their children a chance to have a life that they wanted for us.  My mother, an immigrant from Ireland, and my grandparents on my father’s side coming from Scotland, they all came here with a dream of a promising future, based on the history they had learned of America’s past.  America’s story is as rich as any other country, even though we have had such a short one in comparison with so many other nations.  However, the contents of our short story can be compared to none other. 

My compassion for America’s history begins with its inception.  Not within its birth do I mean—the Declaration of Independence—but with its creation through the idea of what America was.  During the Colonial Era, our land was inhabited by a wide array of people from all types of livings.  Colonials hailed here from countries all over the world, skin colors were as plentiful as a rainbow, languages and accents were as bountiful as the fish in the sea.  There was the affluent as well as the poor, the studious as well as the illiterate.  Religious institutions were a choice, instead of a mandate.

Whether our fore-bearers were conscious of it, or oblivious—they were a part of an amalgamation of something great, something that the world had not seen yet.  The American Idea was brooding out of the society that so closely resembled it.  Borne out of the philosophies that shook the world in the Enlightenment, America catapulted these notions into practice. 

Individualism borne from liberty.

Equality borne from justice.

Responsibility borne from self-government.

These ideals pushed the colonials into a self-realization of the void of difference between themselves and the foreign rulers that slowly lost their control over them.  Thomas Paine chose his words carefully when he spoke of America having a chance to do what rarely had been done before… to create a new world.  America’s history books do not teach the American Revolution in the way that would do much justice to the event that transformed the world.  The war was one for Independence, the Revolution was in the materialization of the inception.  A country of Equal Rights, Liberty, and Individualism… Freedom is the word we know it as, today.  And Since that moment, our history has been a story of our nation’s struggle to bring that notion to fruition.

The great society of freedom has had a checkered past, most would argue, and I would not fight them on it.  Our nation has had its highs and lows without doubt.  The Civil War preceded the Reconstruction.  Our fight against Nazism preceded the Civil Rights Era and the Vietnam War.  One could say easily that our country has followed a direction of taking two steps forward, only to take one step back through most of its history. And it is time that we change this habit now.

Our nation created a society that banished hereditary aristocracy, only to allow it to build a plutocracy in its stead.  We speak of being a government of the people, by the people, for the people—but we currently hold a government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich…

Our nation created a society that strives for equality, only to continuously withhold Equality from its people and not hold others to Justice.  In a time when sex, race, and sexual orientation hinder people from Equal Rights, money and celebrity-ism allow others to act without regard for laws and consideration for others. 

Our nation created a society that promoted Individualism, only to consistently fight to take it away.  America fought for Independence not only for itself as a nation, but for the independence of its people to choose the lives they wished for themselves, to choose the beliefs they felt belonged to themselves, to possess the Individualism that true Liberty provides.

And the promise that was provided in this country was simple.  If you work hard in this “Land of Opportunity” you will achieve the American Dream.  But how true does this promise hold? Unemployment rates skyrocket while corporations send jobs away from our shores.  Tax systems exploit the middle class while the mega-rich pay a fraction of what would be a Fair Share.  Every year, the amount of families in poverty continues to grow, the amount of families considered in “low-income” levels increases, creating new records surpassing the previous record from the year before.  Meanwhile, America continues to break new records every year in the amounts of millionaires and billionaires.

But there is no wonder to why we possess a government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.  One only needs to look to the voting habits in this country…

Of eligible voters making $150,000 or more a year, over eighty percent voted in the last election.

Of eligible voters making less than $50,000 a year, less than fifty-seven percent voted in the last election.

The rich make their voices heard, even more so today with their ability to donate unlimited sums of money to PAC’s through their own wealth or by the company’s profits.

We need to get the voices of the people heard once again, as it had been when this country began.

We need to bring this government back to being of the people, by the people, for the people.

100 Million must march!

March to the Polls and demand a Better America!

Reignite the Passion of the Revolution

Our founding fathers created this country based on a set of ideas borne from the Era of the Enlightenment.  They strove to create a model nation where all people had equal worth in society.  At a time when peasants were trodden upon by aristocracy, where kings ruled with iron fists, we were to be a nation of equals.  At a time when social classes were blocked into an impassable hierarchy, we became a nation emblemized by the American Dream.

            

We live in a nation borne out of the ideology that allows a person to think for themselves, may worship any faith without intervention or promotion by the government—a nation that allows all people to choose the path that they wish for themselves.  Liberty, to put it into a single word.

            

But these ideas have faltered.  America is not the ideas that it once so promisingly strove for.  We are taught in our schools that we are the Free Nation, that we are the Beacon of Light throughout the world, but we only need to look out onto our town’s streets, our city’s sidewalks, into our neighborhoods, and even within our families.  America is no longer that Beacon of Liberty that it once promised to be.  Once a nation symbolized with Progressive and Transformative idealism and practice, we have slowed in our progress and we have lost the path of our transformation.  But we cannot lose hope.  Our nation had been created in the light of institutionalizing change for progress of liberty and justice, and it begins with the voice of the people.

                Let our voices be heard in the most powerful way. 

Let our voices be heard so clearly that our representatives hear us. 

Let us reignite the passion of our founding ideology and make America

the Beacon of Light once again.

It begins with a pledge.

One-Hundred Million people must march—march to the polls and

demand a Progressive Future for America!