As someone who grew up in an area where getting a high school diploma was considered quite an accomplishment (and an area where the majority of my peers stopped their education at that point) this article tugged at my heart strings:
Franklin, who’s on the $100 bill, was the youngest of 10 sons. Nowhere on any legal tender is his sister Jane, the youngest of seven daughters; she never traveled the way to wealth. He was born in 1706, she in 1712. Their father was a Boston candle-maker, scraping by. Massachusetts’ Poor Law required teaching boys to write; the mandate for girls ended at reading. Benny went to school for just two years; Jenny never went at all.
Their lives tell an 18th-century tale of two Americas. Against poverty and ignorance, Franklin prevailed; his sister did not.
At 17, he ran away from home. At 15, she married: she was probably pregnant, as were, at the time, a third of all brides. She and her brother wrote to each other all their lives: they were each other’s dearest friends. (He wrote more letters to her than to anyone.) His letters are learned, warm, funny, delightful; hers are misspelled, fretful and full of sorrow. “Nothing but troble can you her from me,” she warned. It’s extraordinary that she could write at all.
Recently I was discussing politics with Marti, and he recounted an article demonstrating that it is in the best interest of conservatives to portray the government as ‘broken’ rather than otherwise, since their platform frequently claims to want to reduce or eliminate government (despite George W. Bush’s creation of the third largest federal agency, the Homeland Security Department). I think it is easy to forget that government can and should be a force for good.
If we go back 75 years or so and look at history, there was a time when people had great pride in a democratically elected government. Teddy Roosevelt and his monopoly busting, Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, Abraham Lincoln and many other leaders were a source of good in this world. Because of their policies and because of government intervention in private markets, slaves were freed, child workers were made illegal, we provided money for the elderly and the widowed and took our country out of the terrible conditions of the early Industrial Age and into the glorious post-war era where private citizens could own a car and a house and fewer mouths went hungry.
That era was not due to a private market. It was due to government influence (or interference, depending on how you would like to spin it). It made a lot of wealthy people unhappy but evened the playing field so more people could prosper. And, believe it or not, the more prosperous the general population is, the better it is for everybody — health services, trash collection, education, roads and other amenities we take for granted (and which are paid by government through our tax dollars) mean we don’t have cholera outbreaks; we don’t walk amongst filth in the streets; commerce moves uninterrupted and even a poor man can read his electricity bill (and have electricity!).
I am very proud of my country and I expect high things from elected officials and federal employees — of which I am a part. This year I saved the federal government close on $500K through using innovations and ‘outside the box’ solutions. I fully expect each and every other federal employee to do his or her best to do the same.
If they don’t, if we have $16 muffins, I think it’s appropriate to take a good look on how we can improve accountability and be more careful with tax dollars. I do not, however, think that is a good reason to paint every federal employee with the same brush, or to decide that government is broken and that we need to start over from scratch.
In my country, I walk clean streets, chat freely with my neighbors and post articles to my blog without fear of reprisal. Is this always true? Of course not, and I am well aware of the impoverished and criminalized areas of our country that need fixed. But overall, we have a country, and a government, of which we should be proud. The elderly get their social security checks, and I can send a letter in the mail and be pretty sure it’s going to get to the address I write on it (not true in a lot of countries). I can buy a modest house without needing a fence with razor wire, attack dogs and my own generator (not true in a lot of countries). I don’t have to go to a black or gray market to buy the necessities for my family (not true in a lot of countries). Just because 100% of everything does not work 100% of the time doesn’t mean we don’t have a lot to be proud of.
