Government cannot fix everything
I'm not quite sure how to explain this, but life matters. Some might say it’s a gut feeling. Others may say it’s that inner voice. You know, the one that just tells you something isn’t right before any signs even appear. Others may call it a sixth sense, or instinct, or intuition. In fact, Albert Einstein once said that intuition is our most valuable asset, but one of our most unused senses.
So, yeah. I’d say my intuition here is making this very difficult to write because my mind knows that government is not the solution to our problems, but that it is the problem. Yet my intuition tells me that to fix what is happening in Chicago, we need more government involvement. So, let me explain.
You see, if you are like me, you believe that government cannot “fix” all things for us. That government cannot make us content, make us feel respected or accepted, confer achievement upon us, build our self-esteem or eliminate life’s inevitable ups and down.
Like me, you may know that no matter how much politicians care about others, they cannot keep anyone from experiencing tough times, mainly because our happiness (or unhappiness) is an inside job, and it depends on our own actions, and not the hopes or wishes of any government bureaucrat. That’s regardless of how many laws they pass to make sure everyone is “happy.”
And you know that “fixing” our problems by being politically correct, or being all things to all people, has not worked either. Maybe if we stopped trying to “fix” everyone’s problems, we could solve our most important ones for good.
But while I know these principles to be true, I also know that as I write this, the murder rate in Chicago continues to climb, and a family is crying out in the middle of the night because of a loved one taken too soon.
You see, if you are like me, you believe that government cannot
‘fix’ all things for us. That government cannot make us content, make us
feel respected or accepted, confer achievement upon us, build our
self-esteem or eliminate life’s inevitable ups and down”
Our government (yes, our government) can no longer stand by and collect the bodies each night of our fellow Americans – someone’s son or daughter, a child’s mother or father – whose lives are being extinguished so needlessly.
Like the pregnant woman killed last month in Chicago, who was eight months’ pregnant and had already picked out a name for her baby. Or the eight people killed on just Christmas Day alone.
Last year was the deadliest in Chicago in two decades, but the number of homicides so far this year are even higher than they were last year at this time. And this is why President Trump has said that he will “send in the Feds” to deal with what he called “the horrible carnage” in Chicago.
And he’s absolutely right.
Yet, the mayor of Chicago seems stuck in the past of political bosses and smoke-filled backrooms. His ideas to solve the killings are simply to call for more federal funding of programs like summer jobs, or increasing the minimum wage, or taking the time to call a press conference to offer his opinion on transgender students using whatever school bathrooms and locker rooms they wish.
Meanwhile, people are dying in the streets, literally.
He should be talking about the importance of fathers in the lives of their children instead and supporting the institution of marriage. He should be asking parents to stop leaving the parenting up to the school system and to stop electing candidates that are more interested in promoting themselves than in their community. He should be talking about about how principles matter more than party and how to avoid being so politically correct in this country that we end up with a watered-down, blurred line between what’s right and what’s not.
The bottom line is this: Regardless of whether you are in Chicago or Cleveland or New Orleans, we can no longer afford to just “know” the right thing to do, but fail to do it, even if that means “sending in the Feds” as President Trump has suggested he would do to stop the carnage.
Yes, I know that government is not the solution to our problems. Arguably, it’s government that got us here, in the first place. But with this administration, it may be only government that can get us smoothly out of the ditch – including the issues in Chicago – and that’s much more than just a gut feeling.
Louis R. Avallone is a Shreveport businessman and attorney. He is also a former aide to U.S. Representative Jim McCrery and editor of The Caddo Republican. His columns have appeared regularly in The Forum since 2007. Follow him on Facebook, on Twitter @louisravallone or by e-mail at [email protected].
