(Host)
Commentator Bill Schubart writes about many aspects of life in Vermont –
from potholes to politics. And as the primary season rolls on, he’s
troubled by the quality of the debate – so far he sees it as consisting
of superficial answers to mostly the wrong questions.
(Schubart)
Life is a balancing act. Complex truths are easily overwhelmed by
simplistic ideologies and yes-no answers. The currently popular debate
that pits free-market capitalism against shared responsibility for our
community’s wellbeing makes for juicy, gladiatorial media bytes but
obscures the known fact that it’s always in a capitalist democracy’s
best financial interest to support strong communities. If you don’t
believe this, consider the alternative.
As communities degrade
and finally collapse, the costs in healthcare, corrections, deferred
infrastructure maintenance and remedial education skyrocket. Then the
debate shifts to whether or not to spend ever more collective wealth
managing the ills of a broken society on top of the costs of preventing
further collapse. Preemptive investments have always proven more
cost-efficient than the cost of managing disorder. An equitably shared
commitment to maintain a rigorous public education system, accessible
physical and mental healthcare, a blind criminal justice system and
public infrastructure goes a long way towards maintaining social and
economic order. Just as prenatal care costs less than postnatal illness,
a strong military defense has always been cheaper than waging war.
People
under stress in a collapsing society resort to expensive though often
profitable anodynes to dull the pain of dysfunction like
over-medication, over-consumption and over-stimulation, all of which
contribute to further dysfunction.
It’s fashionable these days
to argue that personal freedom should trump investments in community.
But neither individual freedom nor community is paramount and both need
our vigilance.
There is reason for our popular distaste for big
government and its astronomical costs. But in our ardor for easy
solutions, we hoist everything up on the same petard. We’re unwilling to
parse out truth from myth, separating graft, corruption, greed, and
waste from the social and economic benefits that good government can
provide. We’re arguing about whether government is good or bad when we
should be discussing how to make it better.
The discussion we
should NOT be having is whether capitalism and individual freedom are
more important to our future than a shared commitment to community
wellbeing. The discussion we SHOULD be having is how one contributes to
the other and how we can enhance the prospects for both. But this takes
candidates willing to engage in a debate of depth and substance, instead
of promoting partisan ideology.
We face some very complex issues
as a nation, such as whether or not it makes sense to prosecute two
questionable wars – with a third on the horizon, whether to lower taxes
on job creators who have not created any domestic jobs, and whether to
keep 2 million plus Americans behind bars instead of in classrooms.
Truth
needs to be sought out in personal experience, history, art, science,
philosophy, and the wisdom and experience of the elders we sequester in
nursing homes.
As a nation, we’re addicted to easy answers. Oh, if only life were as simple as a candidate debate!