Thursday, October 24, 2019

An Open Letter to the United States Congress

                                                                                                                  [Image Credit: Edmon de Haro]

Dear Senators and Representatives:

Our Founder’s vision for the American Republic was a system of government where the People were to empower the government and where elected representatives’ preeminent duty was to work for the betterment of the country’s citizenry. 

Over the past many decades a slow deterioration of this ideal has occurred. 

Now, nearly every one of you is now beholden to the military/industrial/security/
banking/pharmaceutical complex and not to your constituents. There is no ambiguity - money has corrupted your institution. Individually and collectively you have lost your way.

You claim to represent us. You claim to be leaders. You claim to have answers. You claim that your party’s answers are better than theirs. 

You behave like children. Your infighting has led to the great divide that cripples our country. It is a travesty how you have abdicated your responsibilities (us). It is a travesty that we stand for it.

Interests groups dictate policy. There are 22 registered lobbyists for every member of your institution. You allow this disgusting influence to exist and to propagate. Meanwhile the nation's infrastructure crumbles, healthcare reforms languish, our children’s educations regress, crime escalates, mass shootings become commonplace, Social Security is at risk, the rich get richer, climate change exacerbates.

Yet you have low-cost health insurance for life. 

True leaders would give to others that which they give to themselves. Honorable leaders would serve others before themselves. 

Sincerely,

Robert M. Hamburger


“Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my company, my success–responsibility to the order of being where all our actions are indelibly recorded and where and only where they will be properly judged. The interpreter or mediator between us and this higher authority is what is traditionally referred to as human conscience. If I subordinate my political behavior to this imperative, mediated to me by my conscience, I can't go far wrong.” 
--Vaclav Havel, playwright, philosopher, dissident and president of Czechoslovakia, February 1990 speech to the United States Congress