By Mary Fahnestock-Thomas-Thomas, Hamilton
Vote Democr…
Wait a minute. Is this a football game, where one side wins and the other loses? Where all the spectators go home either elated or disappointed but go on with their lives as usual?
Seems to me we’ve got two teams here, one that tends to have money and wants to spend it the way they want to spend it, and one that tends not to have a lot of money and that thinks there should be some sort of handicap to even the field, so that both teams can live their lives the way they want to.
And freedom comes into it. One kind says, “What’s mine is mine and I can do whatever I want with it.” The other says, “If I didn’t have to worry about food and housing and illness and accidents, I would be free to develop my gifts and educate my kids and maybe even somehow contribute to the world.”
Government is intended to even the field by taxing proportionately and supporting a good life for all of us. That makes sense to me, because I am quite sure that there are enough resources to enable all of us to live our best lives — not necessarily with private jets and yachts and multiple homes, but with food and housing and health care and education.
Bootstraps? A few have done it — pulled themselves up by theirs — but most have not and live in the context determined by the circumstances they were born into. But we are all God’s creatures, are we not? So don’t we all deserve kindness from one another?
Few sports are about life and death anymore, but this politics stuff can be. Please just think about it before you vote. And please vote.