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Exceptional America should not be forgotten
Michael Swickard
Our duty to the generations of Americans who follow us is to help them understand what it means to be an American.
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” – John Kennedy, September 12, 1962
President John Kennedy spoke those words 50 years ago. A hundred years from now those words will still be ringing, even as most of everything else is forgotten from this time in American history. For a brief moment our country was truly exceptional. We were exceptional in ways that no other country before or after has shown.
Sadly, just 10 years and three months after Kenney’s speech our Moon project was done. But what a splendid 10 years it was in our country. Young people today have very little understanding of that time. Yes, they know we landed on the moon, but little else. Some know more about Apollo 13 than Apollo 11 because the trials and tribulations of Apollo 13 were shown in the movie of the same name.
Our duty to the generations of Americans who follow us is to help them understand what it means to be an American. Therefore, it is important to talk about American exceptionalism in action. The founding of our country was truly exceptional. We were one of many countries who had slaves, but we gave that up. We are now a country truly without racial bias. That is exceptional.
Our leadership in World War II was exceptional and arguably the very best moments so far in this country were in our Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. We need to make American exceptionalism a core aspect of our public school curriculum. For one thing, around 400,000 people worked on the space program, so there are plenty of people who still remember when America was leading the world.
It was a hot summer night in Las Cruces 43 years ago on July 20, 1969, when my friends and I sat spellbound watching man’s first steps on the Moon. I was a sophomore at college and even though I was not in engineering, I was quite aware of the enabling of this great feat by the American system of education. Yes, some of the initial work was laid by the Germans in World War II, but it was an exceptional moment as Americans constructed the methods of going to the moon and returning safely.
It was not without cost. Before our first steps on the moon, our Astronaut core lost eight members, none in space itself, but eight men lost their lives while part of this grand adventure. We spent $ 24 billion going to the moon, but it was spent in America. It was spent by Americans on Americans for America. It was the best $24 billion we have ever spent.
Yes, we Americans continued to go into space above the Earth, but the last trip to the moon was 40 years ago. There are fewer people each year learning to fly airplanes. Fewer of them are thinking about being astronauts than 40 years ago. We have lost our identity as explorers.
Every school child should have the opportunity via a flight simulator to learn how to pilot an airplane. Some say we do not have time for them to do something as splendiferous as that, students must sit quietly at their desks getting ready for the accountability tests so that the teachers can be judged. No sir! Let students do things that challenge them and their curiosity.
The success or failure of public schools is not during the year that students are in school, it is how they live the rest of their lives. Teach American exceptionalism, make the public students of today part of that quest and point the students toward worthy challenges, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills,” as Kennedy said.
Make America truly exceptional.
Swickard is co-host of the radio talk show News New Mexico, which airs from 6 to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday on a number of New Mexico radio stations and through streaming. His e-mail address is michael@swickard.com.
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We are so fragile as a species. Humanity, much less Americans, are no exception to the laws and forces of nature and nature’s response to our presence. Humility is a virtue and pride is a vice.
NASA | Best of “Earth As Art” — Top Five
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Tq88dRFokgg
I’ll be looking forward to Swickard’s denial comment on racism in America!!
It can be extremely comforting for a caucasian male to propose that advances in social standards have significantly affected the deeply divisive problems of racism in America. In fact, considerably more so than one might reasonably expect from persons of color, especially those whom are poverty-stricken, uneducated, recently immigrated, and/or female.
Multiple precise references in my previous post regarding the exceptionally violent history of the American government towards those of other nations and races were completely disregarded by Mr. Swickard… and therein resides the inherent hypocrisy of promoting the ideal of “American exceptionalism.” Teach everything except the embarrassing details?
To refuse acknowledgement of historical realities, so that one may promote artificial ideals only brings about delusion and damage to a society. Such a practice is even more problematic in a nation that required the deaths of over a million people in order to bring about the end of legally accepted human bondage. The descendants of the dead do not forget, and many of them still choose not to forgive.
One cannot simply put a smiley face over the wounds created by the COINTELPRO-sponsored slaughter of the Black Panther Party, or the vile and inhuman tortures of the Tuskegee syphilis project. While the U.S. government may have been spending billions of dollars on NASA, at the same time it was financing the brutal torture of more than 80,000 Vietnamese civilians, and executions of more than 25,000 of these individuals during the Phoenix Program. These events were all contemporary.
The statistics and details of the operations conducted since 1973 are even more disturbing, and indicate a government with a continuous refusal to abide by its own laws and the Geneva Conventions… especially in regards to those of other nationalities and races. The one significant change in policy is that under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, the average American caucasion male is now subject to the same cruel and vicious extremes of the U.S. government as everyone else. Perhaps its time for caucasion males to start waking up.
OK, then my apologies for taking some of the comments personally. I still would like to consider the changes in our society since I was a boy in the early 1950s that have, in my mind, thrown off the yoke of racism in our society. I will do so in a column directly addressing this point. Thanks to everyone for reading and caring.
Michael,
This site doesn’t allow name calling, but I don’t see that here. What I see from Bernie is someone who is trying to make sense of your comments, asked a question about your agenda, and then wrote what it appears like to him… While perhaps edgy, I don’t see it as name-calling.
As for Durablebrad, all he accuses you of is endorsing a concept of “force feeding the concept of blind allegiance to an ideal.” Then he writes that such a concept is “how the Nazi Party rose to power,” but he doesn’t accuse you of supporting Nazi racism or being a Nazi.
That said, I do require comments to be respectful. Let’s tone it down a bit, everyone.
Heath – I accept disagreement with my opinions every week. Upon being challenged I backed up the opinion in that one sentence with a great quote from Dinesh D’Souza. I could have added more data, but it is an opinion piece really about the moon landing 43 years ago.
This site is allowing name calling and I find that reprehensible. Connecting me to the Nazi movement? I am the one saying our country stepped away from racism. The respondents instead have brought out the Nazi label. The Nazi regime was racist. America has moved past that point.
Bernie says, “…one begins to wonder why Mr. Swickard would make such a totally unsubstantiated and false assertion. What is his agenda, that he would make a claim that is completely and totally without a shred of truth? It reeks of the same despicable comments of those who deny the Holocaust, intended to plant the seeds of doubt in what is as clear a fact as daylight.”
Durablebrad says, “Force feeding the concept of blind allegiance to an ideal rather supporting the pursuit of critical thought based upon the examination of all evidence available, is precisely how the Nazi Party rose to power in the first half of the 20th century. In my opinion, it would appear that Mr. Swickard endorses the former process from the tone his comments.
Allowing personal attacks on your site is unbecoming. These respondents took one sentence in a column about the moon landing 43 years ago and have not tried to see the truth in what I said; instead, they are trying to use it to personally attack the writer. What is the policy on comments because these seem beyond an analysis of my ideas? Much like the TEA Party, as I wrote in my last column, was mistaken to put the Confederate Flag on their float because it would not be taken historically, likewise, in today’s world when Nazi comes out, it is always a personal attack.
Force feeding the concept of blind allegiance to an ideal rather supporting the pursuit of critical thought based upon the examination of all evidence available, is precisely how the Nazi Party rose to power in the first half of the 20th century. In my opinion, it would appear that Mr. Swickard endorses the former process from the tone his comments.
Blind acceptance that somehow our nation is unlike any other, is exactly what led to the horrific crimes of the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny. The most staggering example of so-called “American exceptionalism” is the fact that not one single American citizen was charged with war crimes for the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian casualties caused by atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. The U.S. will not be found guilty… that is the exception.
The entire context of American history, including the dozens of illegal invasions, coups, and attacks begun by intelligence agencies and military forces under the control of the American government for the past 120 years must also be part of the education process. If not, our children will continue to fall prey to manipulation by those, who like the Nazi’s, merely wish to use a catch-phrase in order to propagandize the state into a modern ideological Potyomkin village, where corporate feudalism renders the citizen an impotent slave.
Failing to admit the existence of racial bias, gender discrimination, overt prejudice based upon sexual orientation, nation of origin, and religious preference, indicates of an intellectual predisposition to overlook the obvious in order to promote a narrow worldview exhalting this nation as the ultimate system of government… while continuing to deny such inconvenient facts.
Michael- Nice try. No cigar. You are still trying the “straw man” approach. You are claiming falsely a position I have not taken. I never wrote or implied there was racial bias in laws, business practice or policy. If I had I’m sure you would be able to point to that easily. Can you? Can you quote the text where I said there was racial bias in laws, business practice or policy? No, because it is a falsehood. It is not true. It is a lapse of intellectual integrity to claim someone has taken a position which they have not and then attack the position. You are dishonest in that respect. Your integrity is not intact if you continue to insist I have said something or written something I have not. Your honesty is quite compromised for having done so. I’ll challenge you again to quote or show where I have said there is racial bias in our laws, business practice or policy. You cannot do that and your dishonesty simply grows. I will again quote you: ” We are now a country truly without racial bias.” You did not mention laws, policies or business practices in your column. Had you said we no longer have racial bias institutionalized or codified you would be correct. You didn’t say that and you did not mean that or you would have made it clear. You said we are a country without racial bias and that, again, is patently absurd and you are making a futile and intellectually dishonest run at walking back what you wrote and what you meant. You did not qualify your statement, either. You made a blatantly false statement and you haven’t the courage to stand by it, rather you are now trying to shift the facts and defend a statement you did not make and you are accusing me of saying something I did not. Again, if you cannot quote what you are claiming I wrote or said you are intellectually dishonest and you owe me an apology.
Swickard: “Our society is not systematically racist.” Not entirely true. We can see this in significant public policy efforts having to do with voter i.d. laws that suppress voting, and immigration policies that allow racial profiling.
Mike Lofgren keyed in on this issue in his article in Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult, 3 September 2011.
“Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in Wisconsin, Republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in Democratic constituencies while at the same time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies); by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may disenfranchise university students.”
“This legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the Middle Eastwas a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically, they don’t want ‘those people’ voting.”
The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, the corporate backed organization with members such as Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, and AT&T, and many others, has supported and pushed voter i.d. laws across several states that hamper registration and voting among minorities, the elderly and students.
“Voter suppression has had a long, racist and ugly history. It was at its worst in the South after Reconstruction, with African-American voters kept from the polls through poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, violence, intimidation and fraud. While this disgraceful situation ended in 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act, its modern counterpart began in 1980 when right wing extremist Paul Weyrich told a group of conservative Christians, ‘I don’t want everybody to vote.’ Voter suppression laws have since been devised by a Weyrich-founded group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).”
http://www.examiner.com/article/republicans-continue-voter-suppression-tactics
No Bernie – you are still wrong. You can loudly proclaim all you want but the United States is a country without racial bias. If you think there is racial bias in our country, please show it to me? Show me where in policy, where in law, where in our business practices our nation is racially bias.
Worse, you will not admit you are wrong about the USA being a country of racial bias and you continue to talk our country down. I am not moving goal posts, you are. My intellectual honesty is intact; you are still trying to make a case for something that is not true. Show me where there is one law in our land, show one company, show one university that shows racial bias. You cannot do it.
Michael- Go back and read exactly what you wrote: ” We are now a country truly without racial bias.” Nowhere in your column did you refer to institutional or systematic racial bias. To now move the goalposts and argue that there is no systematic racial bias when you never stated that in the first place is outright false. If you cannot muster the intellectual honesty to defend what you actually wrote and instead are going to try and shift to defending something you never even mentioned we can end the discussion right now. Worst case for your defending something you never wrote is that intellectual dishonesty is now your standard, and the best case is that you are sloppy in your writing. When you write that our society is not systematically racist and that I am wrong you are falsely attributing to me that I have made that statement or claim. I have not. You are not only dishonest in your argument you have falsely attributed to me something I have never written or stated. I believe you owe me an apology for so doing.
Bernie writes: “Mr.Swickard displays in Technicolor his ignorance or, more likely, his need to turn a blind eye to the current racial bias infecting our country… Racial relations are far improved from the past, no doubt. That there is no racial bias now is absurd. So absurd, in fact, that one begins to wonder why Mr.Swickard would make such a totally unsubstantiated and false assertion. What is his agenda, that he would make a claim that is completely and totally without a shred of truth? It reeks of the same despicable comments of those who deny the Holocaust, intended to plant the seeds of doubt in what is as clear a fact as daylight.”
Dinesh D’souza in “What’s so great about America” (2002) writes: “As an immigrant, I am constantly surprised by how much I hear racism talked about and how little I actually see it. When one examines the policies of universities, companies, and the government, one finds that they actually discriminate in favor of African-Americans and other minority groups, and against white males… There are specific incidents of racism and specific victims, to be sure, but the very fact that we can identify them proves that they are not typical, and the ensuing outcry shows the degree to which racism has become stigmatized in American society.”
Yes Bernie, there are episodic racial incidents, but there is no longer systematic racism in our country. That is what is exceptional about America, we went from the racism being systematic clear up to desegregation to where racial abuse is the exception and we all pay attention if it happens. Systematic describes what happened in the Holocaust, a systematic killing of a people. I do not see any connection between the systematic extermination of people and the episodic abuse that occasionally still happens. Our society is not systematically racist, you are wrong Bernie.
An article in U.S. News presents a more factual account of Kennedy’s taxation policy:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/01/26/the-myth-of-jfk-as-supply-side-tax-cutter
Wrong again, J
When we are all just distinct and separate constituencies to pander to, there is no common good to even identify.
If you refuse to recognize that different groups have different interests you’re just denying the obvious. The Republican plan calls for eliminating Medicare as we know it and reducing taxes on people making $1,000,000 a year in income. If you can’t see that people who depend on medicare and live on Social Security plus a half time minimum wage job might feel that this doesn’t help them as much as it helps a person getting a gold plated health care plan from his employer and making $500,000 a year – well, you’re not living in reality.
As Paul Eichhorn said:
We’ve been letting our public education system go to hell. We’ve been cannibalizing our nation’s infrastructure until it is literally falling apart. All to feed the false religion of trickle down economics. It’s a scam. It’s a sin. While the income of the top 1% has quadrupled, income for working people has remained flat while health care and energy costs have skyrocketed.
He’s right. Since Reagan we’ve been helping the very rich at the expense of everyone else, redistributing wealth upwards. To now say that we should ignore the fact that we’ve been helping the few at the expense of the many is simply to argue that we should go on helping the few – including particularly you, who by your own claims is getting far more in benefits from the government than you’re paying – is just to try to mask your greed in the clothing of the common good.
Government capture by the rich, and a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich is something we’ve seen before. It wasn’t good then, it isn’t good now, and it’s the obvious failure mode of a democracy.
To mask our increasing ignorance, increasing poverty, increasing xenophobia, increasing ill health, continuing racism, and decreasing median wealth by claims of American exceptionalism is delusion.
And Kennedy may have been correct that reducing taxes on the very wealthy to something below 90% might be good – but that hardly means that keeping the marginal income taxe rates on the obscenely wealthy at 35% instead of 39% is also a good idea. To imply that Kennedy thought that tax cuts were always and in all circumstances a good idea is a lie. And, of course, maybe he was wrong at the time, too.
Presently, the most complex and cutting edge scientific instrument on the world is not located in the United States. It is the Large Hadron Collider was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN. This colossal project is located on the Swiss-Franco border. It is the instrument used to find the Higgs Boson, God Particle.
While the United States is squandering all our energy and resources on wars, China has the latest and greatest manned space station. China is a growing primacy in space industry and exploration.
” This year the nation launched its first space station test module and conducted its first in-orbit rendezvous and docking. Though these spacecraft were unmanned, Chinese astronauts are expected to fly on a subsequent docking test flight in 2012.
The Tiangong-1 module, launched Sept. 29, is still in orbit. The robotic Shenzhou 8 mission launched Oct. 31 and met up with Tiangong-1 multiple times before returning to Earth in November.
The next docking missions, which will further develop this critical skill for building a space station, will be Shenzhou 9 and Shenzhou 10. At least one of them will be crewed, Chinese officials have said.”
Judging from this link, the United States is not exceptional, but is a part of human endeavor around the globe.
http://www.space.com/14040-2012-spaceflight-anticipated-missions.html
This setting our nation apart as different or exceptional is a falsehood. We, as human beings all share common needs and desires. From the teachings of the Dalai Lama, we have the concept of essential unity. Focusing on differences causes divisiveness and suffering. We all are essentially the same in that everyone wants to be loved, to be happy, and not to suffer. In understanding essential unity, concern for well-being of others arises almost by itself. Most people naturally understand this in relation to their own families and their friends. It is important to extend this understanding to other communities and nations, for these no longer exist in isolation.
This description of the New Frontier in Wikipedia tells it all about what Kennedy thought about taxation:
“Under the Kennedy Administration, the most significant tax reforms since the New Deal were carried out, including a new investment tax credit.[6] President Kennedy said one of the best ways to bolster the economy was to cut taxes, and December 14, 1962, Kennedy stated at the Economic Club of New York that:
“The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system; and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes to be enacted and become effective in 1963. I am not talking about a ‘quickie’ or a temporary tax cut, which would be more appropriate if a recession were imminent. Nor am I talking about giving the economy a mere shot in the arm, to ease some temporary complaint. I am talking about the accumulated evidence of the last 5 years that our present tax system, developed as it was, in good part, during World War II to restrain growth, exerts too heavy a drag on growth in peace time; that it siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power; that it reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking.”[13]
Kennedy specifically advocated cutting the corporate tax rate in this same speech. “Corporate tax rates must also be cut to increase incentives and the availability of investment capital. The Government has already taken major steps this year to reduce business tax liability and to stimulate the modernization, replacement, and expansion of our productive plant and equipment. We have done this through the 1962 investment tax credit and through the liberalization of depreciation allowances—two essential parts of our first step in tax revision which amounted to a 10 percent reduction in corporate income taxes worth $2.5 billion.” President Kennedy went on to say he favored tax cuts for the rich as well as the poor:
“Next year’s tax bill should reduce personal as well as corporate income taxes, for those in the lower brackets, who are certain to spend their additional take-home pay, and for those in the middle and upper brackets, who can thereby be encouraged to undertake additional efforts and enabled to invest more capital.”[13]
On the same evening, President Kennedy said the private sector and not the public sector was the key to economic growth:
“In short, to increase demand and lift the economy, the Federal Government’s most useful role is not to rush into a program of excessive increases in public expenditures, but to expand the incentives and opportunities for private expenditures.” President Kennedy told the economic club the impact he expected from tax cuts. “Profit margins will be improved and both the incentive to invest and the supply of internal funds for investment will be increased. There will be new interest in taking risks, in increasing productivity, in creating new jobs and new products for long-term economic growth.”[14] ”
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whaussamen said (I think, it is in italics): “If only we (citizens and politicians) could return to dreaming and acting more for the common good we could return to a time when we were more exceptional as a country.”
True, but is unfortunate today we have some left wing political leaders in charge in the White House and in Congress who continue to try and point out all our differences and seperate us based on ethnicity, socio-economic class, education, etc. I am still waiting for that “no red or blue states just the United States” to emerge from all that fluffy rhetoric of 3 1/2 years ago. When we are all just distinct and separate constituencies to pander to, there is no common good to even identify.
The times of the 1960′s and even into the 1970′s were exceptional in many ways. I too was an NMSU sophomore working on a remote mountain in Arizona and without television on the day of the moon landing. It was an exceptional feat made possible by dreams and hopes of Americans striving for a better society for all and political leaders that shared and supported those dreams.
Kennedy also said: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country,” and “If a country cannot save the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” John F. Kennedy, inaugural address, January 20, 1961
In those exceptional times we dreamed and acted more for our common good and benefit. We were more focused on righting wrongs and helping our fellow Americans. Our leaders enacted legislation to treat all Americans more equally, to protect the natural environment for everyone’s health and benefit, and to generally improve our society for all. We all paid higher marginal tax rates to support these dreams as well. I don’t know if anyone saw the potential benefit to the world society that would emerge from Kennedy’s dream of going to the moon. But, because of that dream we enjoy a worldwide communications system that we now cannot imagine living without.
If only we (citizens and politicians) could return to dreaming and acting more for the common good we could return to a time when we were more exceptional as a country.
Mr.Swickard writes: “We are now a country truly without racial bias.” Totally predictable. After publicly coming out of the closet in support of one of the most racially-biased events in this area’s recent history one could easily imagine Mr.Swickard simply declaring that there is no racial bias in the entire country. Recently, ABC news did a remarkable piece based on a prior documentary filmed in the ’60s called “Booker’s Place”. One of the segments was of whites responding to the question of race conditions. The typical response amidst the church bombings, lynchings and drownings of civil rights workers going on at the time was “our blacks like this culture”. Mr.Swickard displays in Technicolor his ignorance or, more likely, his need to turn a blind eye to the current racial bias infecting our country. His hollow patriotism and nostalgia for the ways things used to be ring quite false. Racial relations are far improved from the past, no doubt. That there is no racial bias now is absurd. So absurd, in fact, that one begins to wonder why Mr.Swickard would make such a totally unsubstantiated and false assertion. What is his agenda, that he would make a claim that is completely and totally without a shred of truth? It reeks of the same despicable comments of those who deny the Holocaust, intended to plant the seeds of doubt in what is as clear a fact as daylight. Will Mr.Swickard next proclaim there is no poverty and we don’t need to proceed with any wasteful anti-poverty programs? Or that there is no HIV-Aids and those concerns can be put to rest? Perhaps Mr.Swickard can announce to the world that cancer has been cured and we needn’t fret about that anymore. Or, more likely, Mr.Swickard has run out of cogent and intelligent subject matter on which to opine and has decided that the outrageous model of Hannity, Limbaugh and Beck are his new standard.
The most revealing quote from this article is the following: “A hundred years from now those words will still be ringing, even as most of everything else is forgotten from this time in American history.”
So I say again: The truth is the opposite of everything they tell you.
“The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society. And we are as a people, inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings. For we are opposed around the world, by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covet means for expanding its sphere of influence, on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine, that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published; its mistakes are buried not headlined; its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned. No secret is revealed. That is why the Athenian law maker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people. Confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: Free and Independent.”
-John F. Kennedy
35th President of the United States of America
https://sites.google.com/site/erikhawkes/Home/identification-and-proof-of-health-insurance
https://sites.google.com/site/erikhawkes/Home/how-ppps-really-work
When President Eisenhower launched us toward having the greatest public education system in the world, the top marginal tax rate was 91%. This was key to building our space program. He built our super highway system and paid off the massive war debt. Under Kennedy, the top tax rate was 74%. but a lot of the tax loopholes had been closed. The research started to complete the space program launched everything in our modern technological marketplace. Under Johnson we started medicare and medicaid. These were all wonderful programs and made us great.
Sine Ronald Reagan we’ve drastically cut the top tax rate. We’ve been letting our public education system go to hell. We’ve been cannibalizing our nation’s infrastructure until it is literally falling apart. All to feed the false religion of trickle down economics. It’s a scam. It’s a sin. While the income of the top 1% has quadrupled, income for working people has remained flat while health care and energy costs have skyrocketed.
If you want to be exceptional again, it’s going to cost you. These things don’t come for free. Tax the rich. Pay the people for their work and make sure they have gainful employment. Reinvent the public education system. And for God’s sake, let’s put an emphasis on science and research again. Our problems are huge. We need to back the people with big brains.