Go ahead; Make My day. Shut Down the Government...America America...by Jamil Shawwa

In 1981, and after the sounding defeat of Jimmy Carter, the new president, the Grand Old Party lifesaver, Ronald Reagan declared, “government is not the solution, government is the problem”. In 1993, Bill Clinton declared, “the era of big government is over”. Both presidents, a republican and a democrat, used that rhetoric during economic downturns like the one we live in now. Since then every president, every candidate for office tried to emulate and imitate and tried to get into this wagon or off the wagon of blaming the federal government for everything that goes wrong in this country, from their perspective. Almost all has been and is political rhetoric, no substance and false. America is the federal government; it is the glue that made America the greatest country on earth. The federal government is the government of the people and for the people and by the people and it is the fifty states combined and it is the union that we all live and breathe through its healthy and renewed veins. America loves to discuss, talk, argue, deliberate, and convince, this is how this country was built and this is how the constitution was crafted, out of excruciating years, months, days, and hours of deliberations. America’s lifeline and foundation is there for everyone who is interested to read, in the federalist papers and in the drafts of the constitution and in the bill of rights. The founding fathers of the republic, The United States, put the power over the purse in the hands of the elected body, the congress, and not in the hands of the elected executive, the president. They wisely knew that you need more than just one individual, even if that individual was the elected president of the United States, to decide what money can and where to be spent. We have witnessed an impasse like the one we are witnessing right now back in 1995, when few republicans, infuriated by the loss of George H. Bush and the winning of a little known southern state governor by the name of Bill Clinton, that they created what came to be known, for couple of years and then disappeared, as the republican revolution when bill Clinton got reelected in 1996 and defeated a good man but with no charisma, Bob Dole. They shutdown the government, showed people that they are meanies, they did not intend to, but republicans come across- in general- in the American psychic as inconsiderate meanies, and sometimes according to some as bunch of SOBs. Americans felt then, in 1995, and now, that they were out of touch, did not care about the elderly, women, children, all they cared about was to tell Americans, that you need to depend on yourself only, that it is you that can make or break things, that the government is not a babysitter, that if you do not work hard, no one really can carry you or your burden. The republican party’s message then and now is that America cannot afford to be a welfare state, America cannot pay for women abortion clinics; this one actually resides deep in religious reasons, many of them are religious christians that feel that clinics that cater to abortion and unwed mothers are sinners, and that the government cannot support such sin. In that particular one, they forget or try to forget the separation of state and religion or the separation of church and state, or the synagogue and state or the mosque and state, America now is for all and not only for church goers or mosque goers or synagogue goers. The news just updated of a tentative deal between president Obama and the republicans to avert a shut down of the government, but until when, no one yet is sure. The issue is not that, it is the blackmailing of America that some in the republican party use every now and then to get their way, but in the process and in the midst of all the political spinning and rhetoric, those extremists do not realize that they are hurting the very same country that they claim to defend and pretend that they care about. The government is the people, it is the women and children, it is the parks and the museums, it the military and the troops that stay day and night all over the world to make sure that we are safe here and that we have freedom here, and that our foundation is solid. The federal government is not a strange body that you need to fight, on the contrary, it is the very heart and soul of this country that you need to nourish like a baby, and protect. The problem is not the government, it is us, we the people who make the rules, and write the bills and the laws and create the policies and the politics. Do not attack the government, do not shut down the system, reform it, protect it, and keep it alive. Those tactics of shutting down the livelihood of the people will not work, they never did, in the past the republicans lost and they will lose again if the tactics continue.