We Want It Both Ways

The above phrase is clearly an unrealistic and  selfish position. We would say to a child or adolescent who uttered this that they can't have it both ways. It's akin to "wanting their cake and eating it too." 

We elected Barrack Obama to help steer the country out of the recession, help create jobs, reform the health care system, help defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and help move our energy consumption to cleaner forms, among other important issues. And yet at the same time we want him to take care of these issues, we also fear our federal government too much to let him do any of the more major work or pass any of the more important legislation necessary to right the damage. It is a dysfunctional paradox. We want the system to be fixed, but we're too afraid to let the person we hired take the steps to fix it.

President Obama has unveiled his own proposal for reforming the health care system. It is thorough, well conceived, sensible, and realistic. He is also clearly open to other ideas because, in addition to saying so repeatedly (and already having spoken to the Republican members of the House), he has scheduled a bipartisan meeting for tomorrow, February 25 to discuss alternative ideas. Clearly too, the unveiling of his proposal is an indication that he prepared for that meeting. Congress needs to be prepared to and accept his invitation. In short, we need to stop obstructing and agree to cooperate in light of this overture from president, on this issue and all others.

I have said it before in other blogs I’ve written. Those of us in the United States who are in support of blocking almost anything that President Obama proposes are in my opinion responding and acting from paranoia and not from constructive intelligent thinking. President Obama has made many excellent proposals and has already passed some key important legislation. He is doing a good job. But too many of us in the country are not letting him do what is necessary and what he is capable of doing. We are just getting in his way simply because we don’t want him to succeed and we fear our federal government too much. It is a greatly exaggerated and unwarranted fear.

True, we don’t want a dictatorship and government that allows its leaders to do what they please without its citizenry questioning (the reason for the Bill of Rights) their leaders. But we do not have a dictator in President Obama. His presidency is so far one of the most transparent in history—not to mention that this president is one of the smartest in history—and those who oppose him are doing so with such a zeal and fervor that you would think that the White House had barricaded their doors and threatened to shoot anyone on the spot who disagreed with them. In fact what we have now is exactly the opposite. We have an administration that is being very honest, very transparent, that knows what it’s doing, is trying to implement ideas, is attempting to actually do something about all the problems the country is facing, but is being ridiculously stymied by too much mass paranoia.

I understand that in extremely difficult times (such as we are still in now) it is not easy to trust a centralized government. But we as a nation have forgotten whom we elected as president of United States. We have a brilliant, caring, and compassionate man at the helm, and though we need to exercise our individual and collective rights, we also need to relax more and let him and his administration do their job. In fact, they have been trying to do their job ever since they took office. It is “we the people” of the United States who are getting in his and their wa