Congressional Chronicles

Last fall I took a class focused on a senate simulation where we all played U.S. senators as well as newspaper reporters and lobbyists. I played the sexy senator from Wisconsin, Russ Feingold and wrote the following op-ed piece for the class newspaper, "The Congressional Chronicles." While I was technically writing it as if I was him, I was really speaking my own mind...


In last week’s issue of The Congressional Chronicles, Senator Thune wrote an op-ed about the American Moral Crisis. Thune wrote, “More dangerous than the economic meltdown and the instability of healthcare, I contend, is the rusting of our nation’s moral compass” and went on to talk about the perils of pornography and menacing postmodernism. Senator Thune is
correct, America is facing a moral dilemma. Yet, I argue the direction of his compass needs a bit of resetting.
I would like to argue that the economic meltdown and what Thune called “instability” of (I would put it more like “the travesty that is”) health care, are two of the iron oxides contributing to the rusting of our moral direction. We live in a country where the very rich have been getting richer and the very poor are becoming even poorer with the top 10% of American incomes collecting 48.5% of all reported income in 2005. We have become a nation that tells its citizens they have to pick themselves up from their own bootstraps...even if they don’t have boots at all.Thanks to the disastrous Bush tax cuts, the overall tax burden has been shifted from the wealthiest Americans, to a struggling middle class.
A financially strained middle class as well as pretty much the whole country has also been plagued with rising health care costs, something Republicans never made a substantive effort to fix when they were the majority for 12 long years. Current attempts by the Democratic majority to actually reform the health care system have been met with Republican yelps of “socialized medicine” and “government takeover.” Where have we heard that battle cry before? Oh yes, 44years ago, when Republicans were complaining about the creation of a little program we like to call Medicare, a program millions of senior citizens now rely on for healthcare needs. Similar howls were heard with the creation of Medicaid and Social Security.
Senator Thune also complained about how our culture has been hijacked by devilish ways and pangs of immorality. According to Mr. Thune, the more tolerant society has become, the thinner the line between right and wrong. I wasn’t aware that teaching tolerance meant sacrificing basic moral behavior. If anything, I find tolerance to be one of the most moral-
inducing virtues. What’s more moral than accepting someone for who he or she is? Look up the word tolerance in a thesaurus and words such as “acceptance,” “open-mindedness”, and “understanding” blanket the page. Are these really nouns that harbor deviant behavior? Then again, this idea is coming from someone who voted in favor of taking away a basic civil right
from 10% of the population because of his own personal convictions. I ask you Senator Thune, during the part of the Pledge of Allegiance where you say, “with liberty and justice for all,” are you secretly crossing your fingers?
I understand Senator Thune is passionate about his beliefs and that’s something to be admired. I don’t mean to be harsh with my words, I simply mean to be direct. There is a moral crisis in America and it’s a little more dangerous than a copy of “Debbie Does Dallas.” What’s immoral is 46 million Americans without health care. What’s immoral is millions of Americans
sleeping on the streets. It’s time we take real steps to redirect the moral compass and move it towards progress.