This month many of us joined in Easter, Passover, and Ramadan celebrations, three of the most important religious holidays in the world. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all fit the definition of monotheism, which is the worship of one god. These three religions find common ground in Jerusalem, and have similarities in an emphasis on charity, good works and a divinely ordained law. In addition, as Tendai Kashiri wrote in “Understanding Monotheism Religions,” “they are referred to as the Abrahamic faiths because they share the same father of the faith, Abraham.”
All through the season, I kept thinking about the monotheistic faith of our country’s founders and their insistence that the democratic constitutional republic they were creating would survive only if freedom and faith sustain each other and the self-governance of its citizens. Most days I was plagued by two recurring thoughts.
First, what does it mean to be proclaiming that we are an Easter people of freedom and hope; that I am an Easter person? In addition to beautiful, inspiring and challenging Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, sunrise Easter services at the cross on the hill of Clancy Cutoff Road, and Easter Hallelujah service, I also listened to an Easter sermon from April 12, 2020, by Pastor Drew Hart at Adrian First United Methodist Church. He concluded that “…Jesus’ resurrection touches almost every aspect of human life, so it has a myriad of implications… I’ll focus on one important implication of being an Easter People, which is this: As an Easter People, death has no power over us…. As an Easter People, death no longer has power over us.”
But these days, that hopeful message is in tension with a second, darker thought — the question of how is America to survive. Although the majority of people still believe America is the greatest country on earth, according to recent Fox Business polls, 78% of U.S. adults “do not feel confident” the lives of their children or grandchildren will be better than their own, and nearly 80% of Americans forecast they will face economic difficulty in 2023.
Our national and state problems are legion. But virtually nothing is being done to develop a comprehensive plan to deal with any of them! Intead, when people of good will are working extremely hard, such as our Montana state legislators and executive branch officials, to make good policy decisions that are not detrimental to any responsible residents, and that serve the greatest number, numerous issue stakeholders go immediately to their ideological corners and denigrate the other parties’ efforts.
For example, our State Senator Edie McClafferty (D-Butte) wrote about “the war on public schools” (Boulder Monitor, April 12). I do not know of anyone who is at “war” with educators, as she described it, or labeling “all teachers as bad” or making “attacks on teachers.” Yes, there is one major education policy difference between the primarily Democrat and primarily Republican positions: Whether to keep public dollars in public schools or to authorize additional charter and new community choice options for families. Parties on both sides insist they are trying to ensure that Montana education policy fulfills Montana Constitution Article X, Sect. 1(1) “ It is the goal of the people to establish a system of education which will develop the full educational potential of each person. Equality of educational opportunity is guaranteed to each person of the state.”
Pick an issue, any issue, and similar vitriolic communications encompass any efforts to resolve it. Also on April 12, Jim L. Smith (not the former Helena Mayor) wrote in the Helena Independent Record that the Republican party “spent the first half of the current legislative session on an all-out attack on our democracy…the electionystem…proposing and passing laws attacking gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual people, denying them equal rights.”
I am unaware of any equal rights that have been denied to any persons old enough to consent or who receives parental permission. I have to wonder whether Mr. Smith read the Montana Party Platform Preamble that “recognizes the Declaration of Independence” and a series of beliefs, including “that to secure these God-given rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that the Constitution of the United States of America is a unique and binding compact, which defines a republican form of government designed to protect the rights of citizens by limiting the power of their government.”
Meanwhile, tax day came and went. Many of us paid significant amounts — even as the federal government forked out $247 billion of taxpayer cash in wrongful payments last year, according to the Government Accountability Office, including $80.6 billion wasted in Medicaid, $46.8 billion in Medicare, $29 billion in the COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program, $18.9 billion in unemployment insurance, and $18.2 billion in earned income tax credits. The national debt exceeds $31 trillion and increasing interest payments due to inflation is starting to harm ongoing programs.
Moreover, increasingly it appears to me that most federal cabinet secretaries are not qualified to manage their agencies and most career bureaucrats running this country are working to ruin this country. There are millions who don’t care about doing their jobs, don’t care about the American people, and don’t care about doing what’s right. Their goals are keeping their jobs and advancing their neo-Marxist agenda.
How is America to survive? Maybe it won’t. We are at a tipping point. Perhaps the 2024 election will lead us to conclude our differences are irreconcilable. We might split into about five different smaller countries based on affinity and governance models. However, assured that death no longer has power over us, we the majority of Americans, who still believe in America, will continue working to keep our republic, and to build bridges for honest communications and the development of good policy for safety, security and equal opportunity for people in our communities and the State of Montana.
Jane Lee Hamman is a Clancy resident.
