Be careful what you ask for when you vote
Reading the pages of this newspaper, it seems to me that the issues most troubling to those who write are the very issues troubling all of us. Following are just a few:
Parents should, and I believe do, have the right and obligation to direct how and what our children are taught, what they read, how they learn. I personally was never denied the right to view, monitor, or guide that process by private or public school teachers or boards, so I am unclear why we need to over-legislate rights we already have.
The issue for me is: Should other parents and legislatures direct what our child learns? If rules and laws can be enacted on local, state, or federal levels to ban or limit access to information we do not care for, the very information we do value can be banned, as well, because someone else does not care for it.
It is troubling to me that laws are being crafted right now, in anticipation of the mid-term elections, which threaten our individual federal rights under the 14th Amendment. These include equal protection under the law, the right to privacy, and the use of contraception. At least one Supreme Court justice has recently recommended that courts consider removing those rights under federal protection. Some of our current and possible future legislators agree.
I don’t know what happened to the Republican Party. Today it is surely not my parents’ Republican Party, nor mine. At one time it had a reliably strong platform touting less government interference in our choices, but it has become the party of legal limitation, spiritual dictation, and boundless lawmaking restricting the rights of employers, parents, teachers, individuals and partners in the privacy of their homes. These are our federally protected rights under the Constitution.
Of course it’s about the economy, and understandably so. The deficits in the federal budgets increased our national debt by nearly 30% during the Trump administration, and thus far more than 8% during Biden’s. According to FiscalData.Treasury.gov, however, those increases were largely due to the Covid pandemic and its aftermath. This burden was not Trump’s or Biden’s doing, and is not unique to the U.S.
The same is true of our current inflation. It is not the Republicans or Democrats — it is a worldwide problem, and is much, much worse in most of Europe and the rest of the world. Similarly, staggering gas prices are governed by OPEC, oil production, and demand, not by Republicans or Democrats. Our politicians know this, or should. Instead of telling us the truth, they are finger-pointing for political purposes.
Anyone who tells us now to vote a straight ticket, red or blue, grey, green, gold or orange, is insulting us as voters. They are assuming that we are too ignorant to make sound choices, and boasting that they do not have to do anything to earn our vote but wear a hat.
Surely if we believe there should be laws that restrict privacy, reproductive, voting, educational or spiritual rights of others, we will vote for those who agree, but let’s not be one-issue voters. We need to be careful what we ask for.
Bobbie J. Worth lives in Whitefish.