Love It or Leave It

Welcome to the New Year – 2012. We have new hopes, new aspirations, New Jersey, New Hampshire and New Delhi. I’ll have a roast beef on rye. Unfortunately, as a country, though we have lots of new stuff, we still have a lot of the same old problems.

I’m a bit uncomfortable thinking of myself as a citizen of the United States. I like much better to think of myself as a citizen of the world. I live on planet earth. I am a citizen of earth. Interestingly enough, some people would argue that point. Not me. I was born right here in the good old USofA, at St. Vincent’s hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I have the birth certificate to prove it. Not to worry about my candidacy for the Presidency. I’ve got plenty of other skeletons in my closet and choose not to be vetted. The question I have is, does it really matter which plot of land the building was occupying when my mother gave birth to me?

I guess it does matter but no one consulted me. No one has a choice of their country of citizenship, which strikes me as unfair. I’m a citizen of the United States of America totally by accident; a matter of the luck of the draw of birth; lucky me.

I’ve checked it out. Would you believe that most countries have very similar policies concerning birth and citizenship? It seems that for most countries, if you were born there, you can stay. If you’re not born there, well, you can visit, but you can’t work and you have to leave after a short period of time. They won’t let you stay or live or work there but you can shop all you want. That attitude is pretty universal.

Not being allowed to emigrate is very puzzling to me. People live their lives and at some point may decide they want to live somewhere else. They choose not just a different neighborhood but an entirely different country. They choose to work and set up a life in this other country. Choosing to live in a country would seem to me to count for more than being born in a country. Immigrants become illegal aliens who need to be thrown out of the country even though they’re working and paying taxes and adding to our society. Really? That’s the rule? Isn’t there something wrong with this equation? And it’s universal?

Okay, so if I can’t leave my country, why are some people with carmine napes telling me, “America; Love it or leave it?” Isn’t one of my rights in this country a freedom of expression? I think they call it “Freedom of Speech”. So why would anyone want to throw me out of the country for saying the United States should change? I’m not yelling “Movie!” in a crowded firehouse. I’m just trying to tell others about the things I’m not very fond of – like NIMBY.

Ahhhh…..NIMBY you ask. It’s the acronym for “Not In My Back Yard”. What are some of the things that qualify for NIMBY? Homeless shelters, rehabilitation clinics, and prisons to name a few; for prisons to be in the NIMBY category is really confusing to me. I would love to have a prison built in my back yard. I would think that prison neighborhoods would be among the safest in the country. When a prisoner escapes, I don’t think they’re going to be hanging out in the neighborhood. Even prisoners have the common sense to get as far away from that prison as possible.

Maybe every state should just have a NIMBY neighborhood. We can build all the homeless shelters, rehabilitation clinics and prisons in the same neighborhood and let them do their work.

Back to the illusion of freedom of speech; a lot of folks want the government to get out of the way. Government should not tell us where to build things or how to build things or basically how to live our lives at all - accept for some things. People like rules that say don’t murder or steal at the risk of incarceration. I do too. They also like the government having regulations on things like airlines. They don’t want airplanes falling out of the sky because they didn’t have enough lug nuts or something. And cigarettes too; regulate where people can smoke because I don’t want to smell other people’s smoke in public. I want to be with people but I don’t want to have to smell them. There are probably a few more laws and regulations people want but you get the idea.

Oh yeah, there are other things people agree that government should do besides laws and regulations. The government should supply the police force, fire department and military. Those are must haves for any society. Let’s not forget an infrastructure. Roads are pretty important to commerce so we really need that too; then there’s the post office so we get our mail; and a Motor Vehicle department; and a justice system along with prisons; and an immigration system…..and maybe some education too.

Our education system seems a little bizarre to me. We make it so that kids have to stay in school until they’re 16 years old, all for free, but as they start to get smart, we begin to charge them for more education. It really makes no sense. The socialists are fine to run the schools until high school but we tell the capitalist to take over when the kids reach their late teens. Forget about the benefits we derive from having a better educated population. It’s more important to make a buck than to educate our future workers. Why would we want to invest in the future when we can make a few bucks right now?

Speaking of money to be made, we let capitalism run the healthcare system too. Why not make a few bucks on the sick. They’re sick! They can’t do anything. The sicker you get, the more we charge. If you can’t pay, we throw you out of your home. After all, there’s money to be made in them there hospital rooms. How long before we give the prisons to capitalists? I’d like to see the brothels run by the capitalists but that’s a different screed.

Wow….where does it stop? We need a government for all these things and we’re supposed to agree on how to get them too? When I disagree I’m told, “America, love or leave it!” Really? Well I’ve got sayings too. Some of them say what to do with and where to put that type of attitude. One of the cleaner ones is, Americans, can’t live with them and can’t live without them!