As 2015 drew to a bumpy close, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson tweeted his New Year’s resolution: “Make common sense common again.” Just a few months later, Carson endorsed Donald Trump for president. Since Carson didn’t take his own advice, I’m appropriating his tweet for the title of this column.
Many people in this country want basic common sense to guide our politics and government. We must speak up. Injecting more common sense into our elections and policies would do far more to topple the dreaded “establishment” than any individual candidate ever could. We who embrace common sense have a few suggestions.
We want voting made easier, not harder. Voter fraud, as Republicans define it, doesn’t really exist. Common sense should spur people living in a representative democracy to involve more people in our elections, not fewer.
We want the corporate media to stop treating elections like sporting events or celebrity gossip and start covering the issues in depth. Understanding the issues is the first step toward voting with common sense.
We want taxes made fairer for everyone, not used as giveaways for the wealthy and corporations. The Republican Party’s obsession with redistributing wealth upward in the hope that it will eventually trickle down to the rest of us defies common sense, and it has been empirically disproven by economic reality for the last three decades.
We want Wall Street and corporations to invest in the working class instead of padding their own fat wallets. Common sense tells us that a tiny ultra-wealthy class can’t exist while everyone else struggles to get by.
We want Citizens United overturned to get secret money out of politics. The “corporations are people” view is the biggest violation of common sense in recent American history. Allowing such outsized corporate PAC influence on elections has to end.
We want war only as a last resort, not a permanent policy. Our Defense Department is funded 10 times as well as our State Department. Where’s the common sense in overfunding war and underfunding diplomacy?
We want veterans treated with respect, not used as props. When our citizens make the profound sacrifice to defend our nation, we need to take care of their needs after the battles. We don’t need to wave the flag while obstructing every legislative effort to help veterans. Helping veterans is more than common sense. It’s human decency.
We want women’s choices not dictated by government or religious dogma. Common sense prevailed in the discussion of abortion and contraception decades ago. Let’s not regress to the days of institutionalized misogyny.
We want guns regulated the same as other dangerous products. Doing nothing to address gun violence while sending “hopes and prayers” after every tragic shooting is about as effective as a hair dryer in a sand storm. The only thing that can stop a bad elected official with a gun fetish is electing good officials with the common sense to work for stronger gun-safety laws.
We want marriage equality and LGBT civil rights to remain as the law of the land. No one with common sense uses the government to micromanage which bathroom people can use or who we can love.
We want the do-nothing Republican saboteurs kicked out of Congress and state governments. Democrats have been pushing common-sense policies while Republicans at every level have been obstructing anything that helps everyday Americans. Since the Republican Party shows no signs of fixing itself from within, the only way to get them to wake up is to send them home and let the grown-ups take charge.
We want the radical changes instituted years ago by Presidents Reagan/Bush/Bush finally reversed. Common sense requires us to see where our problems originated and to clean up the messes rather than simply stepping around and over them as if they don’t exist.
We want President Obama respected as the classy, effective president who brought our nation back from the brink of economic collapse and international embarrassment. Anyone looking at the past seven years with minimal common sense should realize that President Obama has been a strong voice for clarity in a very confused political system.
We want Trump to shut his dishonest mouth and the rest of Republican politicians to stop basing their policies on outright lies. Five minutes on legitimate fact-checking sites reveals what common sense has been telling us for many years: Republicans lie far more often than Democrats. America works best when both parties tell us the truth.
We want Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders (and their supporters) to unite and keep us moving forward. Clearly, one party has plans that support opportunity for as many Americans as possible, while the other party drags us backward. The only way to defeat Republicans in November is for everyone in the American center-left majority to vote — not just for president, but for every office in Congress, statehouses, and local government. A real common-sense revolution can only happen in this country if we participate together at every level.
Common sense throughout American government isn’t too much to ask. So we’re asking.
John Sheirer is a writer and teacher who lives in Florence. His new book, “Make Common Sense Common Again,” will be published in May. For details, visit JohnSheirer.com.