There are things that ought to bug us more than they do: that ought to be questioned, for which real answers, not just a lot of double-talk, ought to be demanded. Here are two of them.
We ought to be bothered by the fact that you go into Congress with a salary of $174,000 a year and come out a multi-millionaire. Our country’s founders never imagined public office to be so flaming lucrative. Look at Bernie Sanders: never did a lick of work outside of politics, and he’s got four houses. How do they do it? How do they get so fabulously rich at our expense?
And then there are the public schools. Why don’t the people who pay for the schools, the taxpayers living in the district, get to decide who teaches in those schools and who doesn’t, and what gets taught and what doesn’t? That was the way we used to do it; and Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting from France early in our country’s history, marveled at the overall literacy of Americans. But now, trillions of dollars later, our illiteracy is a cause for wonder. What would happen if people could vote on, say, whether unionized teachers ought to teach our children that America is a racist hell-hole and a boiling cauldron of injustice? How many districts do you think would vote for that?
Have we lost even the possibility of questioning such things, and demanding answers? Is the way it is the way it truly has to be? Heaven forbid.