Viewing Sharron from a different angle

To some, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle of Nevada is extreme.
No, she is the epitome of extreme.
After all, Angle wants to end Social Security as we know it and privatize the system. She wants to privatize the federal Veterans Administration. She wants to eliminate the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Internal Revenue Service, and several other federal bureaucracies. She also believes in forcing young girls to have babies that are the by-products of rape or incest. And, she is an anti-Muslim bigot.
Well, all of this is, of course, what the left-wing has concluded from comments that Angle has made; and this is what the left wants the rest of us to believe about her, too.
There is no question—and no denying—that Sharron Angle is a hard-line, right-wing conservative. She is solidly right of center, and that makes most leftists and centrists uncomfortable and uneasy. It’s no different than the way hard-line left-wingers make centrists and right-wing conservatives feel.
Sharron Angle is a polarizing candidate; there’s no doubt about that. Then again, so is the incumbent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV.
It really just depends on who is asked and what their point of view is.
While I think Angle’s opinion on Social Security, the VA and other federal bureaucracies is idealistic and probably unrealistic, I can see the rationale behind what she advocates.
I don’t think what she advocates is entirely unreasonable, either. I’ll explain why.
First, let’s talk about Social Security. Originally established to provide Americans with supplemental income to their retirement—and to offset the devastating effects of the Great Depression on people’s retirement savings—the Social Security Administration has come to be relied upon as a primary retirement funding source; something it was never intended to be.
Millions of Americans over the years have failed to responsibly save and prepare for retirement with a private nest-egg, and instead have counted on Social Security to be there for them when they can no longer work.
The program was supposed to remain viable and self-sustaining with individual payroll deductions going to fund individual supplemental income benefits, and a trust fund for this reserve revenue was established for the express and exclusive purpose of supplementing retirement.
So, when SSA bureaucrats began paying out disability benefits from the Social Security Trust Fund, and Washington politicians also took money from the trust to pay for other government spending bills, the money that was once reserved for retirees had disappeared.
The result is a house of cards that has little or nothing left in reserves. Instead, Social Security relies on annual payroll deductions and federal budget appropriations just to keep it afloat these days.
What’s more, there are still no safeguards in place preventing the trust fund from being raided again should it be restored. In other words, there’s nothing to stop bureaucrats and politicians from doing again what they did before.
This puts Social Security’s viability and sustainability as a supplemental retirement source for future generations at great risk.
What Sharron Angle has advocated is a private option to a public system for younger workers, who can choose to put their Social Security withholdings into a private supplemental retirement account rather than be forced to pay into a program whose benefits may or may not be there when they are ready to retire.
What exactly is so extreme about this position?
Heck, if I had been able to invest all of the money withheld for FICA into a private savings account where I could earn compounded interest over time, I would be coming out much farther ahead in my future retirement than I am on pace to now.
My point here is that Sharron Angle isn’t irrational to advocate for a privatized option to the current Social Security system. It makes sense to those of us who would like to maximize our supplemental retirement income, but cannot under current law, which compels us all to pay into a system that is really cheating us out of a better retirement.
Moving on now, let’s talk about the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Veterans Administration.
Admittedly, I don’t know exactly what Sharron Angle is advocating here. She hints at privatizing the VA system. Whether that means privatizing the health care delivery or completely relieving the federal government of any and all responsibility is not clear.
But I will say that privatizing the delivery of care and the management of the health care of our nation’s veterans is not irrational or unreasonable.
I believe that Congress and the American people have an obligation and responsibility to support our military veterans for their service and sacrifice to defend their country. We owe it to the men and women who gave up their freedom to protect, preserve and defend ours. As such, if Angle is advocating that we no longer pay taxes to support our veterans, then I completely disagree.
However, if she is advocating that the delivery of health care and its management be privatized, then I don’t see why this is such a problem. Other arms of the government use private contractors to carry out their programs. For instance, the U.S. Department of Labor contracts with private companies to operate and manage Job Corps centers across the country. The Job Corps program remains federal—and federally funded—but its delivery is handled privately.
There are numerous U.S. veterans who have been grossly underserved by the current VA system. Many veterans would even argue that the current public management of the VA is flawed and that a lot of patients aren’t receiving the kind of quality care and attention they deserve. Public management doesn’t seem to be working very efficiently. If private management can do it better, then why the heck not? The health and well-being of our veterans are worth it.
Then there are Angle’s comments about eliminating the Department of Education, the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others.
Reasonable arguments can certainly be made as to why these bureaucracies should remain in place; but just the same, reasonable arguments can also be made in support of either their elimination or reduction.
Angle has argued that many of the current federal bureaucracies are not supported by the Congressional enumeration of powers contained in the U.S. Constitution. Because these bureaucracies exist and operate in addition to the powers of Congress, they are not necessary at a federal level. What Angle advocates is an observance of the Tenth Amendment to the Bill of Rights, which guarantees powers to the states that are not enumerated to Congress by the Constitution.
Unfortunately, the federal government has stepped on states’ rights far too often over the years, usurping for itself powers to govern and regulate that were Constitutionally intended for the states to do for themselves.
A good example is the U.S. Department of Education. Where exactly among the enumeration of powers does it say that Congress is responsible for providing public education?
Left-wing progressives and even centrist moderates tend to argue for each and every federal agency using the “Commerce Clause” of Article I, Section 8 (enumeration of powers) as well as the phrase “provide for the general welfare of the United States.”
Too bad they ignore the original interpretation and intent of the founders who framed and ratified the document in the first place. To provide for the general welfare is to provide a climate of prosperity where opportunity flourishes and essential liberty is maximized. That’s what our founding generation believed in.
The founders certainly didn’t believe in a bloated and overbearing federal bureaucracy that is involved in an individual’s life from cradle to grave; but that’s exactly what the United States government has become.
Frankly, I disagree with the current powers of the U.S. Department of Education. The federal government really has no business telling local school districts what they should be teaching our children. Those decisions are best made locally; not nationally.
History proves this.
Before the U.S. Department of Education was established—and before curriculum, testing and learning standards were federalized—American public schools offered some of the finest education found anywhere in the world. Prior to the federal DOE, public schools were funded, managed and run primarily at the local level; meaning state, county and municipal communities.
Coincidentally, education quality has gradually and steadily deteriorated since public education became yet another enterprise of the federal government. Low test scores and graduation rates, high drop-out rates, and a growing number of students requiring remedial education are among the embarrassing nationwide results of federally controlled public education.
Oddly enough, public education quality was higher before there was a U.S. DOE, and before there were national testing or curriculum standards. States did better on their own, because they knew the learning needs of their regions, their populations, and especially their economies much better than the feds.
At the very least, the U.S. DOE’s powers should be significantly rolled back and limited to the distribution of federal funds; development of professional teaching standards; and enforcement of ethics laws pertaining to the industry and the profession.
The federal government should get out of the curriculum and testing business, and instead leave that to the individual states, whose educational needs differ by region and regional economics.
I’m okay with the federal government providing subsidies to states and/or local school districts…but without the strings attached. Emergency aid should be available for struggling districts. However, I think it’s wrong for the federal government to provide funding on condition of meeting curriculum or educational program mandates.
Federal mandates are one major reason why education per pupil these days has become so expensive. School districts have to satisfy these mandates in order to either receive federal money and/or keep it. Consequently, more time is spent courting the federal government for money, and trying to meet federal mandates, than is spent focusing on local educational concerns and issues. As a result, parents and other local community members seem to be ignored by school districts that have tuned out their local support in favor of getting more federal support.
Is it any wonder why home schooling has become so popular over the past couple of decades? It is the educational modality of choice these days for parents, because they can at least have some say in what their children are being taught. In today’s public school system, parents are under the thumb of the federal government with little or no voice concerning what kind of curriculum is being handed down from Washington, D.C., and into the classroom. Children are at the mercy of the feds, too, and they are the ones who have ultimately suffered the consequences of federalized public education.
The last thing I will comment on about Sharron Angle is her abortion views.
The Reid Campaign has misrepresented her views as being policy driven for the entire country.
This is what Angle actually said about abortion in cases of rape or incest: "My own personal feelings—and that is always what I express—my personal feeling is that we need to err on the side of life. There is a plan and a purpose and a value to every life no matter what its location, age, gender or disability. ... I think that two wrongs don't make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at-risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade."
Now, you may categorically disagree with her point of view, and that’s fine. It is your right to do so. But for the Reid Campaign to suggest that Angle wants to turn her personal views into national policy effecting the entire nation is a gross exaggeration of what she really said.
I happen to believe the same way about abortion. If there are alternatives that preserve life, then why encourage a young girl to choose abortion?
I think many young girls in trouble aren’t aware of their options. More often than not, they are offered one alternative to having the baby, and that is abortion. They assume that their choice is either to get an abortion or else give birth to and have to raise a child that they are not equipped to care for. There are alternatives to being stuck with a child that cannot be cared for: Adoption, most notably. For every young woman who gets pregnant out of wedlock, there are several couples that can’t have natural children of their own, and who are willing and waiting to adopt an unwanted child.
Does this mean I favor laws outlawing abortion? No, at least not at the federal level anyway. I’ve always maintained that the individual states have a right to decide whether abortion should be legalized carte blanche or regulated and/or restricted to a degree.
I’m not about to advocate for a law that bans abortion in cases of rape or incest. But, like Angle, I’d like to see a more concerted effort to preserve life by ensuring the young girl in trouble is fully informed of all of her choices and alternatives, as well as the consequences of some of those choices. I think abortion is pushed too liberally on young women who might otherwise decide that giving birth to the baby and putting it up for adoption is a better choice than killing it.
The bottom line for me is that Sharron Angle is not near the extremist that her senate campaign opponent paints her as. Not when I look at the bigger picture of the issues, and also when I read the complete version and full text of what she has said.
I’ve no doubt that Sharron Angle is an extremist to a leftist, or even a centrist. Anyone solidly on the right is considered extreme if they don’t show any hint of compromising toward the center.
I find it amusing that the left especially demands compromise from the right in order for the latter to even appear remotely reasonable. Yet the left does not hold itself to the same standard of compromise that it holds the right.
In order for Sharron Angle to appear even remotely reasonable to a left-wing progressive, she would have to come to the center, while the left remains solidly entrenched…where else?...on the left. There’s neither a compromise from the left nor even an expectation that it should meet the right in the center.
I admire Sharron Angle for refusing to compromise where the left thinks she should—which is just about everywhere and on just about every issue.
No doubt, it gnaws at the left-wing and irritates it to no end that a right-winger would have the gall to say “no” when the left asks her to compromise in its direction, but doesn’t itself move a muscle toward the center.
I believe it is time for the left-wing to learn to compromise also. That isn’t something for the left to preach and the right to practice. If you are going to dish it out, then you should be willing to take it, too.
Dishing it is something the left-wing does, well, liberally; but taking it is something entirely different. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, too. If the left and the center are going to insist that Sharron Angle is an extremist, then perhaps it’s time for us “right-wingers” to start pointing out just how “extreme” all those enlightened leftists and centrists can be.
To borrow a phrase, “Extreme is as extreme does.”
Personally, I am extremely cautious of extremists who call other people extreme.