Compassion for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

Our Declaration of Independence states that all individual are given these inalienable rights by their creator:  

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Governments are created by men to protect these rights. (But only for those people that actually live inside of said country - Amendment 384.)

The United States did not create these rights, nor do they own them, nor should they restrict others from pursuing such rights.  In fact, we should be honoring these rights in all that hold them dear.  Courage lead our forefathers to risk their lives for these rights, not only for themselves, but for everyone that followed.  And not just for every American that followed.

Let’s take a few examples:

1. Immigrant children crossing into our border, or already living in this country.  Are they an exception to the above rights?  Have they done anything so egregious that they are an exception to the above principle that our fathers fought for?
2. Illegal immigrants.  Let’s see they broke unworkable laws in a broken immigration system to obtain a better life for themselves and their children.  Most are too poor to bribe their way into the American line on their side of the border.  We have decided because they were born on the wrong side of the Rio Grande that we should not fight for their Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness, at least not in the land of the free (except for all those incarcerated people).  
3. Palestinians: obviously, we should not fight for them in their pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.  They have some bad people living among them that shoot missiles at Israel just because Israel keeps them in prison.
4. Families with same sex marriage partners. It goes without saying that these people are just evil.

In each of these examples, we can find rules that someone broke and therefore we can decide that because they broke a rule (one that we made or approve of)  they should not get our help in their pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  There is only one bridge that can reach across the rules and our judgment and change our point of view: Compassion.    We must feel the suffering of the other person and want to reach out and alleviate that suffering.  I could enumerate the suffering that each of these groups are experiencing, but if you don’t what these groups are going through, then compassion has probably not come to a city near you … yet.  You see these people as those people like Hitler saw the Jews, or the American saw the Japanese during WWII, or how the whites saw the blacks in apartheid.  Those people are always the problem.

Us and them.  The chosen and those that are not.  Remember when our fore-fathers rebelled against England, they were one of those people.

One of us means those that are following our rules.  One of them are those that are not following our rules. And obviously, anyone not following our rules is an exception to the belief that all men in endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Obama and Community College: Reward Kids that Graduate

To be competitive internationally, we need more college graduates.  I would like to offer a different spin to free college.

1) Loan anyone the money to attend college.
2) If they pass the course, forgive 90% of the debt.
3) If they graduate, forgive the balance of the debt.

The goal is not to get kids into college, the goal is to get them to graduate.  Reward kids that graduate by forgiving their school loans.  The kid wins and the nation wins.  Our present prosperity was built on the backs of the kids that attended school in the decades of the 50's, 60's, and 70's, etc.

The same concept could apply to all forms of post secondary education.  If you look at the graph below, thirty years ago we had 45 percent of people getting college degrees.  Well, we haven't improved.   The rest of the world is improving .... many our kicking our butt.  Our new high tech world will reward those that are educated more than ever before.  If you want the U.S. to continue to lead innovation, then push for programs that promote for more kids graduating from college and all other forms of education.

Do you have any idea how to increase the college graduation rate?