We Can Do Better

It seems that both parties have been parroting this message all through the 2008 campaign. While they are absolutely right that we can do better, I am not talking about 2008, the Bush administration, or any other recent phenomenon. As I have been reading Lies My Teacher Told Me I am seeing a glaringly obvious pattern to our nations history. Despite the fact that we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world (and we have been for two centuries even with our myriad faults) our history seems to consist more of opportunities lost and blundered chances for real greatness than it does of human excellence. It feels like this greatest of nations has been pushed to the pinnacle of world achievement against our underlying efforts to sink to the depths of human mistakes.

Our biggest blunders are universally centered on the human elements of our interactions with other nations and within our society. Since Europe first laid claim to this continent the Europeans refused to interact with other nations on equal terms. History books continue to perpetuate that crime by minimizing all non-dominant cultures. Thus we approach our endeavors from the perspective of dominance. I believe that mindset of superiority or cultural hierarchy encourages us to pursue homogenization.

The pursuit of homogenization causes equality to trump liberty. Instead of valuing the right of people to make choices and receive the consequences for those choices we begin to devalue all choice by attempting to make the consequences of all choice lead to the same outcome. The only possible result for that type of system would be to destroy everything of value. Trying to enforce an equality of outcome takes the shine off of anything with real intrinsic value. Without that shine illuminating things with real value we lose the incentive to choose that which has value because, whether the outcomes are the same or different, it is always easier to chose the lower road. If the easy way and the hard way end in the same destination many more people will always choose the easy way.

We have all heard the adage that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. What we need to realize that those who fail to teach history – to whitewash it and pretend that it consists of a natural progression – are steadily preventing the real progress that could be made.

If this seems like an underformed idea – that’s because it is. I am trying to synthesize a lot of information and I am still putting it into words and putting it into context. What I know is that, similar to the issue of the cost of health care and how to reduce it, most of the problems we face as a nation are larger, more complex, and more deeply rooted than we care to believe. As long as we do not see the whole problem we are at least as likely to make the problem worse with our solutions as we are to make it better.