Where have all the Moderates gone?
While reading the letters to the editor a few months ago in my small paper, I wondered if our government would be able to write and pass the Constitution today. Would it be possible in today’s political environment? What if the left-wingers, right-wingers and radicals that run our government today had been responsible for writing that historic document? There are more than 101 groups who give 4 million dollars or more to various campaigns 1. Today, the Constitution, a document balances competing interests nicely, would not pass out of committee.
The balance of competing interests leads me back to the letter written to the editor. The Alabama State Senate had voted down a bill that would allow college students to carry guns to class. The writer of the letter felt arming college students was a measured response to the horrible shootings at Virginia Tech. I was a college student four times and I can tell you, without a doubt, I had no business with a gun, period. I especially did not need a gun on campus. The average radical Second Amendment supporter thinks the answer to gun violence is more guns. You arm everyone to the teeth so that suicidal maniacs and criminals would be deterred from shooting people. They continue the circular logic with statements like,” if you allow lawmakers to outlaw ______ (fill in the blank-anti-tank weapons, howitzers, 50 caliber machine guns), your squirrel gun will be next.” I own guns. I would like to go to the local range occasionally. But, I can’t join the NRA (a requirement for the range) because they seem to want the United States to be an armed camp. Besides, I am not sure my five year-old has a place to store her Uzi at the daycare sandbox.
Proposals for Uzis on college campuses are just a symptom of what may be a larger problem. Today’s all or nothing political mentality deters legitimate debate. Name any issue and you will find radicals who want everyone to be forced to see it the radical way. The problem with this approach is there will be no compromise. Abortion, climate change, healthcare and immigration have little chance of being settled because there are too many well funded groups on either side of those issues. The moderate middle becomes silent in the shouting match that ensues upon any discussion of most difficult issues of our day.
The way we discuss things in this country is also a problem. The 1st Amendment gives us the right to say most anything we see fit. However, when the amendment was drafted, they were still tacking handbills on trees. With today’s mass media, a few million dollars can reach every person in America. What’s more, that kind of money can make a lie become the truth. We are to a point in this country where truth equals dollars. The more you say it, the more it sounds true and the more money you collect. The vicious self-perpetuating cycle goes on and on.
This cycle of ineffective government can be broken. First, the money must be taken out of the political system. To do this we have to amend the First Amendment. The First Amendment should not include 16 million dollars in campaign contributions by the National Rifle Association 2 to make sure I have to carry an AK-47 to Wal-Mart. This is not free speech. The second thing that must happen is that the silent center must speak up. The kind of compromisers that wrote the Constitution should wake up take back our government. These all or nothing radicals don’t speak for most of us, so we shouldn’t let them.
Bibliography
1. Federal Election Commission Data, October 29,2007
2. IBID