Sunday, May 14, 2023 | 2 a.m.
View more of the Sun's opinion section
I have been away from this column for the past two weeks because, without sharing too much information, I have been conducting an investigation into the relative opportunities and practices available to people who need medical care.
Time to think is a precious commodity these days, so I consider myself fortunate — no matter how I got the time off — to have had the opportunity to do not much else.
My thoughts aren’t deep or revelatory — admittedly some of them were driven by the effects of anesthesia, which added a certain color to the process. Anyone who has ever been “under” knows what I mean.
In fact, my thoughts have bordered on the simple, doable and commonsensical. What the time gave me was the ability to get out from under all the reasons America has given for basically poor performance at many levels for a very long time.
This is not a Republican versus Democrat thing but, rather, a uniquely American thing. In a land of plenty, in a land of overabundance, we seem to have lost our ability to surmount the most simple challenges. And we have plenty of them.
Let me explain.
Government in our country is designed and expected to provide for the safety and security of its people — that would be providing for the common defense and promoting the general welfare — as explained in the preamble to the U. S. Constitution.
And, yet, across our country, our cities are plagued by a “homeless” challenge that exposes people living on our streets and in our parks and under our roadside bridges and in tunnels to the most unsafe conditions. Those conditions also affect anyone who has to work their way through and around the masses of humanity each day, which presents security threats and direct assaults on our “domestic tranquility.”
On our borders, especially our southern border, an inhumane, unreasonable and continuing refusal by Congress to easily “fix” our immigration system over the past few decades has led us to the point where Americans — and the rest of the world — see impotence and incompetence leading the way instead of a country seeking to “establish justice” and secure the blessings of liberty.
In our schools, shopping malls and other public places, no person and none of our schoolchildren are safe from the ravages of mostly men with weapons designed for war. Remember the part about insuring domestic tranquility, promoting the general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty in the preamble? What part of mowing down our babies in their grade school classrooms with AR-15’s sounds like the government is doing its job the way our Founding Fathers envisioned?
And, yes, in the early days of this democracy 50 percent of the American people (that would be the women) and many others were considered “less than” full citizens, if at all. Shame on us.
But good for us that during the ensuing two centuries, we have made strides toward a “more perfect union” by making sure that men and women of all sizes and colors had the benefits of equal citizenship in the United States of America.
Until recently, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and relegated 50 percent of our countrymen (again, the women) back to second-class citizenship. Once again, the court is making the ladies “less than” their male counterparts when it comes to “securing the blessings of liberty” as promised by our Founding Fathers.
These challenges to our uniquely American way of life are not insurmountable. They are, in fact, easy to fix. We have just refused to do so.
There are many reasons why failure has been the preferred option, but I believe it comes down to the simple fact that for too long America has allowed the men in society to take the lead. And with some obvious exceptions, the men have failed.
So, that brings us back to today.
Mother’s Day.
If we are to fulfill the hopes, dreams and desires of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America it seems to me that we must turn to the mothers of America to get the job done.
Mothers don’t stand by while their children are slaughtered by murderers with automatic weapons in their school rooms.
Mothers don’t turn their backs on the hard decisions needed to keep our streets clean and safe and free from the ills of society that lead to homelessness and the inherent threat to tranquil communities that result.
Mothers don’t choose which of their children should be more equal than others when it comes to the benefits of citizenship of this great country — certainly not based on their sex or, to add another wrinkle, their sexual preferences.
And mothers don’t make their first decisions about their families’ safety and security and liberty and tranquility based on how much something costs. No, mothers have always had a different, more human approach to such things.
Perhaps that is why we celebrate them on Mother’s Day.
And, perhaps, that is why the sons, and brothers, and husbands, and fathers across this country should relent. They should finally admit that if Americans are to continue to form a “more perfect union” it is time to let the mothers of America do what they do best.
Celebrate them today. Honor them throughout the year.
Happy Mother’s Day.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun
