There was a phrase, now lost to antiquity and inconvenience, that President John F. Kennedy said during his inauguration speech in 1961 that galvanized a country into action:
“Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
To me, that meant that both the people and the federal government were pulling in the same direction to not only make the country a better place, but also to secure the rights we all enjoy. It also meant that it wasn’t the government’s place to pander to every whim and perceived need.
It also presupposes that we all understood that the government was focused on the interests of the people at large, and did not create divisions that were then pitted against each other to fight for scraps from the boss’s table.
Sure, there were racial tensions, but I believe that we could have pulled together — as a country — to defeat that nonsense. Three years later, the Civil Rights Act was passed, which shows what a country united can do.
Since that time, it’s been a slow, inexorable reversal of that sentiment, culminating in what Sen. Bernie Sanders claimed Emergency Backup Candidate Kamala Harris doing — saying and doing whatever she has to in order to win.
Regardless of a $34 trillion debt and a country that has operated without a budget since the Clinton administration, regardless of the limits of government ensconced in the Constitution, candidates are promising the people, in ever-shrinking interest groups, the kitchen sink, with the sole intention of maintaining power.
Want EV mandates? We gotcha. Don’t want EV mandates? Sure thing! Think fracking is terrible, no good and awful? We’ll ban it! Or not, if you really think that we shouldn’t. Want cheap labor to pick your crops? OK, the border is open. And so on.
Any group that comes forward to make claims on the government, either for actual items and funds or for protection and recognition, will get that, essentially getting the country to do for them instead of doing for the country.
No longer is there a sense of pride in the country — the immigration debacle is evidence of that. Politicians claim that we are a nation of immigrants, and that we should provide amnesty for anyone that crosses the border, regardless of whether it was done legally or not.
Even if this were true, though, once here, and once made a citizen, shouldn’t that actually make us a country of citizens? All people, cut from so many different cloths, making up one quilt of citizenry?
And if that’s the case, shouldn’t elections be about moving the whole country forward, not just certain aspects of it? Shouldn’t candidates speak to the betterment of our nation, not about what giveaways that will keep power in the right hands?
Our Founding Fathers wanted people to be in charge and wanted those people to respect individual rights while the government kept us safe. It never was about what the country can do for us, because Washington, D.C., is not the North Pole, and Uncle Sam isn’t Uncle Santa.
Tony Farkas is editor of the San Jacinto News-Times and the Trinity County News-Standard. He can be reached at [email protected].
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