Madness In Our Policies, Danger On Our Roads

Upon leaving office, President Eisenhower was asked to name his greatest accomplishment; he cited the Interstate Highway System. This vast network of safe and well maintained roads has spawned a $623 billion trucking industry that, among the many goods and services it transports, has enabled Americans to enjoy a greater variety of fresh foods at lower prices than are enjoyed by virtually any other nation on earth.

Unfortunately, the White House has recently implemented a provision of the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) that will allow up to 100 Mexican trucking companies, and an unspecified number of their trucks, to use our roadways to freely haul their cargo anywhere within the United States. The policy of allowing unsafe, unregulated, low-paid truckers onto our roads threatens an American industry, American jobs, the quality of American life, and the health and safety of all Americans.

Because of enormous opposition at the time from American trucking companies, the Clinton Administration had the good judgment to put a hold on this NAFTA pilot project. This year the U.S. House of Representatives has overwhelmingly voted on multiple occasions to prohibit this onslaught of Mexican trucks.

The Teamsters Union and the Sierra Club have also opposed the project in federal court. Yet despite the overwhelming opposition of a major American industry, the overwhelming and bipartisan opposition from Congress, and even before a federal judge ruled last month to permit the project, the Administration began granting Mexican truckers the unrestricted access to every roadway in the United States.

At a time when our nation is spending billions of dollars fighting a war on drugs, when millions of Americans are demanding that our border be secured because of the legions of illegal aliens already here and the very real threat of terrorists crossing our unprotected border, when so many once-vibrant American industries and jobs have been exported to foreign countries -- one has to wonder what drives such thinking and policies as this. Is the Executive Branch of our government even concerned what our Constitution says and what the people think, or has it become beholden to powerful transnational corporations that have no allegiance whatsoever to our United States?

Our highly regulated trucking companies will find it difficult to compete with foreign companies paying their drivers a fraction of U. S. wages. Further, Mexican drivers, unlike their U.S. counterparts, have no restrictions on the number of hours that a trucker may actually work, and Mexico keeps no data on the criminal and driving records of its truck drivers!

While American companies will be offered reciprocal access to Mexico, most American companies refuse to send trucks into Mexico because some Mexican police are as likely to rob and extort bribes as Mexico’s vibrant crime syndicates are.

At a time when the Administration is continuing to neglect border enforcement, do we really want to provide more people more ways to illegally enter our country? And what assurance do we have that those low-paid Mexican truckers will not be bribed to transport illegal drugs or illegal aliens or materials of mass terror?

When trucks that do not have to abide by the same pollution and safety standards as American trucks injure or kill Americans on our roadways, what protections and guarantees do Americans have that the perpetrator will be insured and will face the same penalties as an American trucker.

Consider a policy that erodes U. S. sovereignty, threatens a major American industry, is likely to export even more jobs out of our country, threatens the health and safety of Americans on our roadways, and could facilitate moving more illegal drugs, aliens and criminal activity into our country. This is not a policy in the interest of the people of the United States. It’s time for Congress to terminate this fool-hearty project that is increasingly undermining our sovereignty and the best interests of we, the people of the United States of America.

September 11, 2001: A Remembrance and a Resolution

Today we mark the sixth anniversary of one of the most somber and shocking days in American history. On this day we remember over 3000 of our countrymen who left behind wives and children, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters; we remember the brave firefighters, police, and emergency service personnel who gave their lives trying to rescue others. We must never forget their noble sacrifices or the support and help of all Americans who rushed to New York and Washington, D.C. to assist with the rescue and clean up.

Like the attack on Pearl Harbor sixty years earlier, the terrible events of September 11 will “live in infamy” and should never be forgotten. In both attacks, ordinary citizens were going about their daily lives, posing no threat or challenge to anyone. Yet both of these attacks on our countrymen marked the beginning of long, difficult, and costly struggles for the actual survival of western civilization and for the lives, rights, and freedoms we enjoy and often take for granted.

Since that awful September 11, which powerfully underscored the danger of militant Islamic terrorism, more than 5,000 identified terrorists have been captured or killed, and many deadly plots and catastrophes have been averted. Nevertheless, Islamic terrorists still have managed to carry out thousands of deadly terror attacks against an array of targets in the western world.

As we pay tribute to all those who have died at the hands of hate-inspired enemies of our faith, civilization, progress, and of mankind itself, we must never forget that we all have a role to play in this ongoing struggle. This struggle is by no means over, and it is likely that there will be other attempts to kill Americans and destroy all that we cherish.

Many Americans will be called upon to make extraordinary contributions and sacrifices in the years ahead. Sadly, some will give their lives in this struggle. All of us need to pray and lead lives of gratitude for God’s blessings and protection of our country. The Bible speaks to our day when, in Ephesians: 6:11-13, it commands:

Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Let’s not wait for another attack. Let’s avail ourselves of God’s offered protection now.

Equal -- and Free to Reach for the Stars

Americans rightly believe the “self-evident truth” proclaimed in our founding document, “that all men are created equal” and “that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.” In proclaiming these truths, our founding fathers were affirming the right of every person to be equal before the law and to freely pursue life, liberty and happiness without needing any special privilege, or having any penalty imposed on anyone. This has been the animating struggle of American history.

However, there is perhaps no American ideal that has been more poorly understood and more frequently misinterpreted than the very American idea of equality.

In the past century we have seen the ideal of equality misinterpreted to mean that all must be equal. Brutal regimes in the Soviet Union, Cuba and Cambodia spoke of equality, but theirs was a forced leveling-down that defied human nature and natural law. Taken to the extreme in those countries, it has meant the persecution and death for those who would excel, the redistribution of wealth, and the making of individuals to be slaves to the collective.

In speaking to an American audience about the true ideal of equality, Margaret Thatcher once said:

"The pursuit of equality itself is a mirage. What’s more desirable and more practicable than the pursuit of equality is the pursuit of equality of opportunity. And opportunity means nothing unless it includes the right to be unequal and the freedom to be different. One of the reasons that we value individuals is not because they’re all the same, but because they’re all different. I believe you have a saying in the Middle West: ‘Don’t cut down the tall poppies. Let them rather grow tall.’ I would say, let our children grow tall and some taller than others if they have the ability in them to do so."

The leveling-down that occurs in our schools, in our tax code, in our bureaucratic rules and regulations, in our union contracts, in the culture of our workplaces, has promoted a notion of equality at odds with what our founding fathers intended, at odds with human nature, and one that encourages, at best, the mediocre and average instead of the excellent.

The mistaken notion of what equality means has led to schools where students are socially promoted even though they fail to master what they should be learning. School administrators frequently complain that because of regulations it is impossible to fire an incompetent teacher, and tenure policies guarantee employment for life, regardless of performance. Businesses, too, are often faced with regulatory obstacles and costly lawsuits when they attempt to remove an incompetent employee.

Americans see the unfortunate result of this misunderstood notion of equality every day when they face incompetence and attitudes of indifference at the supermarket, at the bank, at fast food restaurants, in the post office, or in trying to ensure better education for their children.

It is part of human nature for people to be competitive, to want to excel and win, to seek something better for themselves and their family. But when we give excellence the same rewards we give to the average and the mediocre, each of us, and our nation, is cheated of not only what the “best and the brightest” could offer, but what we could otherwise accomplish in a nation that would truly reward excellence. After all, a nation that has gone to the moon should always reach for the stars.