Unveiling the Light

We seem to live in a time when appearance is everything and substance means nothing. Certainly this is evident in our popular culture where Paris Hilton continues to draw headlines. Other than looking beautiful, this is a woman of no substance, no redeeming qualities, and certainly no accomplishments. She is largely unemployed, known only for her partying and outrageous behavior, and can point to nothing in her life that has contributed positively to the society that idolizes her. Despite all of this, our culture cannot seem to get enough of her as is evidenced by the large crowd and numerous news media that gathered to witness her release from jail. Surely there are more important things going on in the world.

This phenomenon is very evident in our own government. One of the worst and most destructive fires is burning away in Lake Tahoe and the state’s governor is off in Europe meeting with foreign leaders who are themselves about to leave office. He is a governor, not the president. He has little influence on world affairs. He belongs in the state he is supposed to be running. Our state is experiencing a large exodus of the middle class due to the expense of living here, the ineffectiveness of our public school system, the deterioration of our health care system, and the overburdening of public services. This fire can trace its origins to Byzantine state laws that disallow us from thinning forests and managing our public lands. Locally the government that consumes a very large portion of our income in taxes is unable to provide lookouts to protect from fires and access roads that could help fight and prevent such disasters are decades behind schedule. All of this and our governor is off in Europe where, if possible, he is even more ineffective than he is while in the state.

Our lawmakers love to make laws that tell us how to live our lives, how to buckle up, where not to smoke, what not to eat, what speech is acceptable and even what thoughts are unacceptable (witness our hate speech laws), but are unable to provide us the basic services we require to maintain our society. Our traffic problems get worse, our police protection gets thinner, our schools eat up more and more money and become less and less effective, and all our legislature and governor can do is poise to look good and ride the latest wave of concern in the popular culture. Meanwhile, who is watching the store? Who is doing the serious work of making sure our society works?

What’s worse is that we have come to expect the worse from those who live off the public dole. We have come to understand that our state government is run by the public unions and recipients of state benefits and welfare. The working taxpayers find themselves largely ignored in a system run by those who earn from it. The best pay, best benefits, earliest retirements, and highest job security belongs to those who work for or receive benefits from the state. If you want to know why Nevada, Arizona and other desert states are booming it is because of the numerous members of the middle class who are fleeing our state to somewhere that offers them more opportunity and a say in their society. California quit listening to its middle class decades ago.

On the federal level we have government official trying desperately to sell us a new “comprehensive immigration plan” but nobody seems to believe what they say. The fact is that we don’t believe the rules will be enforced. We don’t believe that background checks will be made, we don’t believe that the border will be protected, and we don’t believe that illegal immigrants will not receive full benefits or be made to take on any responsibilities. The Senate can pass all the amendments it wants but we don’t believe they will be enforced. Why? Because recent history has shown that our representatives are more worried about looking good in the press than being effective. We have been burned too many times. We realize that this government has quit trying to be effective and is merely trying to buy a few headlines that will lead to re-election.

Its not that we don’t believe immigration is a problem. Most realize that the lack of progress by the lower middle class over the past few decades can be directly traced to the large influx of illegal immigrants. There was once a time when carpenters could earn a good living building houses. Today this is largely done by those barely making minimum wage, by a population of workers who are undocumented and thus unable to demand the wages such work should pay. The simple economics is that when you flood the market with workers, the wages decrease. Restrict the supply of labor and wages will increase and decent wages, and probably highly increased productivity, will follow. Immigrants don’t just take jobs others don’t want, although the attractiveness of these jobs they take may be reduced because of the plunging compensation caused by massive illegal immigration; they affect the entire strata of labor that is not bound to higher education. This is not a good situation. Those who are skilled and willing to work hard should be able to earn a good middle class income without going to college.

It just seems that everyone is worried about political points and style and nobody is looking to substance and towards improving our society. Somehow we have to get out of this self aggrandizement that treats every subject as a personal win/lose battle where each is out for themselves and get back to the business of building a solid society. We preach this and teach this in Church and it is our goal as a Christian people to be a people of substance who do not look just to ourselves but who look to what we can do for others. It’s just hard for our message to stay clear when there is so much clamoring by shallow, self serving politicians who only want our attention and approval and others who are only looking out for their own advancement. We need people that look to the real matters at hand and work for real improvement. Let’s stop the games, the posturing, and the poll driven shallow behavior and get back to real life. Real people, real children, and a real future, depend on us being a bit unselfish. The health and survivability of our society depends on us cutting through the noise and getting back to the business of life. We are better than this.