Do You Believe?

The easy part is now complete: Barack Hussein Obama has been elected the 44th president of the United States. Now he must make good on his promises.

A correspondent in Maine says “Maybe Obama will institute something like the Peace Corps, only for service within the US. It couldn’t be like the old CCC or WPA, though. Nobody today will even pick up a shovel, let alone do any work with it.” I’m not so sure this is an accurate assessment.

On Election Day, I had half a dozen high school seniors (“Youth at the Booth”) who worked as machine judges. Granted, we had no shovels and they got the day off from school. Instead of a 6-hour school day, they worked 14 hours and they must write a report that describes their experiences.

Every single one of them was conscientious. If a voter leaves without pressing the “confirm” button on the screen after pressing the “vote” button, we have a “fleeing voter”. If we don’t catch the voter and bring him or her back to the machine, all we can do is cancel the vote. In this election, we had several fleeing voters and the high school kids caught every single one of them. We didn’t have to cancel even one vote.

These kids had various political perspectives, but every one of them was interested in the process and I think that each of them would be willing to volunteer for a public works program. It’s true that these were special students because they volunteered, but I think they’re not alone.

Give someone a reason and you’ll get a volunteer.

So, yes, I’d like to see a WPA or CCC, or even more emphasis on the Peace Corps, in the Obama administration. If everybody sits around waiting for somebody else to do something, nobody will do it.

Young people today are not what many of us older folks think they are. They are connected. They are interested. They do want what’s best for the country. At least, I hope that’s the case. If not, I fear for the future.

Changing Our National Attitude

I’m not a particularly religious person and I’m more or less certain that at the end of our lives, we simply cease to be. No afterlife. No heaven. No hell. No reincarnation. Everything just stops. We sleep. Done. And I’m no fan of organized religion because organized religion has brought us such delights as the Crusades and the Inquisition. But I do feel that spirituality is important.

Alun O. Jones was the pastor at the Presbyterian church I attended while growing up. I remember one of his sermons. It was about The Dead Sea. It’s called that because nothing that flows in is ever allowed to flow out. The lesson we were to learn from this is that whoever refuses to give is condemned to death. Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes talked about “paying forward”. The Kingston Trio sang about “priming the pump”: (“You’ve got to prime the pump. You must have faith and believe. You’ve got to give of yourself ’fore you’re worthy to receive.”) The message is the same, regardless of the source.

That’s the attitude we need now. We all need to pitch in and help.

“We must hang together, gentlemen; else we shall most assuredly hang separately.”
—Benjamin Franklin