Making a Stand

A recurring theme in my personal journals is the following:

We must all recognize our two feet standing squarely on the ground. (Personal Journal, Iowa City, Iowa, June 29, 1983).

What does that mean? Since I left home to attend university, my life has been one of self reliance. I intend to stand on my own for as long as I can.

Today, I’m thinking of friends whose life is impacted by the new administration and its unlawful cutting of government programs. I’ve been spared much of the current pain because I rely on government programs as little as possible. This round of cuts, the two main ones that support me, Social Security and Medicare, have been spared the knife. During a Feb. 4 telephone town hall, my Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks said, “(President Trump’s) instruction to us as well is that there are no cuts to Medicare or Social Security.” Check with me next year to see if that continues to be the case.

I received a government paycheck twice. When I served in the U.S. military and when I worked at the University of Iowa College of Dentistry.

My 1975 enlistment in the U.S. Army had everything to do with how screwed up the military was coming out of Vietnam. I asked myself, if regular people didn’t step up and fix the mess, who will? I stepped up and did what I could to make the military better. While my colleagues tried to convince me to stay in, I finished my enlistment, got out, and finished my graduate degree with money from the G.I. Bill.

When I took a job at the Dental School, I was seeking employment to support myself as a writer. The University of Iowa is by far the largest employer in Johnson County and my prior military service put me a step up in the point system they used to select candidates for jobs. I met my future spouse there and once we married, it was time for employment outside government work.

Among my friends and their families, many work for the government and are caught in the current, illegal federal funding slowdown and cuts. Some have invested heavily in the jobs they hold, with degrees, with tenure, and with a commitment to place. I empathize with them.

I’m glad I left my government jobs, and to be honest none that paid well enough to support a family was ever offered to me. It’s not like I was looking.

I’ll admit we need the government for things like utilities regulation, road and bridge building and maintenance, financial regulation, public water standards, research and development of new treatments for disease prevention and cures, and more. Self reliance goes only so far. I could get along without all these things, yet it would be a poorer world. We join together for enterprises bigger than ourselves. Abraham Lincoln once said, “The legitimate object of government is ‘to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves.'”

I paid taxes since 1968 and have been happy to do so. I served four years as an elected official to help provide emergency services for the community and maintain local cemeteries. I volunteered in our neighborhood to help provide a public water system and wastewater treatment. Now our government needs to make wealthy people pay their fair share of taxes. I don’t see many rich folks out here doing volunteer work. What’s fair for one is fair for all.

Although I have two feet standing squarely on the ground, I know it is good for society when we bend down and lend a helping hand to those who need it. Together we can find resilience. I hope we will.