Americans Who Threaten our Leadership Are No Different than Al Qaeda

I see extremism these days as not just an Al Qaeda problem. We also have a domestic problem. I have seen it in comments on this blog--and in the protests of last summer. When someone says that our leadership should be "hanged as traitors" for the "crime" of supporting social security, that is a threat against our own leadership--and wrong. Who made them God? That is Tim McVeigh thinking. That is Al Qaeda thinking.

We have different extremists, and really more dangerous ones than the guys who can't figure out how to set a trigger on PETN. Tim McVeigh didn't even care that he was blowing away a day care center, his hate was that blind. How American is it to suggest that taking care of Americans is outside the Constitution of our great country? Cars didn't exist when the Constitution was written--so do we not drive cars?

How is it un-American to suggest that providing Medicare to aging Americans is an outrage against our charter? Logic would suggest that a great country does more, not less, to help its citizens, just as others have. I just saw a TV story on an American who went to Mexico to get a new hip, because he couldn't afford the $80,000 to $200,000 it was going to cost him here in the U.S. He had never been to Mexico, but it was the chance to get a new hip that he couldn't get here.

We have had too many people saying too many crazy things about our current government which inherited the mess they are trying to fix–-they didn’t create the mess. Let’s put things in reality.

Bush inherited a $50 billion surplus, a shiny new car; he left Obama an Exxon Valdez piled up on the reef, leaking oil. Lehman’s collapse froze all credit. The economy went off a cliff not seen in 70 years.

Now the crew that put our ship of state up on the reef is complaining about the cost of repairing the damages and cleaning up the mess. The Obama administration inherited the Homeland Security system which had a flaw--lists are not cross checked. That is another inherited problem that became evident on Christmas Day. Fixing TSA is another leftover problem to add to the “to do” list. The Senate could help by approving a new TSA administrator instead of letting one Senator hold it up. We don’t need leaderless security positions!

We need to improve our air security system GLOBALLY, by getting full body scanners in use in FOREIGN locations--like Nigeria and Amsterdam--that feed air traffic to the U.S. Having them everywhere is the solution. Technology has to keep up--and focus on explosives.

Improving our health services is also needed--rather than not changing a broken system that ranks No. 37 in the world. This makes sense for our future prosperity--and our humanity. With many Americans overweight and eating high artery-clogging foods--and moving into retirement age--there will be a huge and growing demand on medical services like never before. As we age, medical care will become as vital to each person’s life as air.

Our founders would have embraced this because they too were visionaries that wanted a better life for Americans.

We don't build a future based on hate. We build a future and prosper only if we are focused on leading the global technology race--and improving our system and the lives of our people.
Mexico is doing a better job than we are in providing medical care for an annual fee of $300/year. Their surgeons have the same instruments used in the U.S. To improve, we need to change what we have been doing.

That includes not tolerating threats against our leadership by domestic sources. If we are real Americans, then we don’t advocate violence against our own government leaders. That is what makes us better than Al Qaeda, who even kills other Muslims in their hate.