Let's grow out of this parochial mentality
When the country urgently needs to deal with our messy health care system, when we should focus our minds on serious issues of economic crisis, like how to shrink the threatening deficit or how to reform entitlement programs or how to create jobs, it is sad to see a politician like Todd Akin divert our attention with his totally unintelligent remark on a “bigger issue” like abortion and “legitimate rape.”
Can’t our politicians have a larger vision of the country instead of fixing their eyes on a woman’s uterus? Can’t politicians rise above their own personal preferences and follow the golden rule of live-and-let-live? Can’t they stop trivializing politics?
If we expect to climb out of this prolonged economic downturn, we must first grow out of this parochial mentality.
Suzanne Conaway
9 months agoYeah, Sister. It’s time ALL politics got out of a woman’s uterus — especially since the ones who seem most concerned are mostly men!
Tom Ryan
Crossroads, Kansas City
9 months agoIn his last and only filmed speech on December 10th 1968 at an interfaith conference in the suburbs of Bangkok Thailand, Thomas Merton argued that we can no longer rely upon institutions, for they have become entities prone to destruction at a moment’s notice. Institutions are irrelevant. He urged his audience to learn to stand upon your own two feet; an insight he gleaned from recent discussions with the Dalai Lama.
Politics is becoming irrelevant for many reasons. What is becoming relevant in its place is arguably questionable. You’re your best judge of that. Politics is virtual now. Democracy is being outrun, out-sourced, replaced by systems like autocracies (China is a good example); management models capable of turning policies on a dime. We really ache for efficient accountable city management not leadership. We need not vote for a city manager. We merely need to conduct a thorough hiring interview.
The body politic of the United States, such as it is, given the small percentage of it that casts a ballot or three at intervals, was never a body to begin with. It was an interesting cover to Hobbes’ Leviathan, perhaps. Listen and view the political rhetoric emanating from your digital devices. Relevant? Meaningful? While some throw up their hands in frustration, disgust, and desperation, my recommendation is to consider Merton’s prophetic urging.