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How To Move Forward

A perspective and 14 proposals relative to creating our nation’s future

Mark H. W. Hiebert, January 31, 2021

What does it mean to move forward? How do we find a path to a future that holds true to the ideals toward which our nation imperfectly stives and from which we so often fail to reach? How do we reconcile ugly truths with glittering hopes?

Many people have remarked on the difference in approach that law enforcement took relative to the protestors during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations of 2020 as compared to the approach applied to the participants in the January 6, 2021 action at our Capitol, the latter expressing a clear favoritism and acquiescence to the privileged white individuals in both the scope of the preparedness of law enforcement in the face of a well-publicized event and the leniency in response to the illegal acts of the uncivil (and to my mind seditionist) mob. While this single event puts into high relief the difference in action and racial bias, it is just one in the long history of America raising up, supporting, and normalizing oppressive policy and law enforcement grounded in upholding the white supremacist and economically privileged subset of our nation’s citizens, the wink and nudge that undercuts the ideals we espouse in our founding documents and that we proclaim as sacred.

I am a white man in Texas circling in on my 50th year on this earth. Plain as Times Roman on a page of bright-white paper, I see the systemic racist mechanisms of our nation and culture on clear display both in the response of the government and the response of my fellow citizens to the events of January 6 and in the trajectory our politics has taken over the last several decades. Looking back at the movements of our society over the past 100 years, where steps uplifting the disenfranchised are met with backlash that checks the rise toward equality, I see the events and reactions spurred by the supposed preservation of individualism, personal freedom, and religious choice as a farce. At the same time, the broader calls for inclusiveness, empowerment, and diversity that get decried as liberal, socialist, and whatever other terms of derision that they might be labeled prove more truly aligned with the ideals of our nation and the bends of history than the supposed infringements decried by loud and privileged few.

January 6 is the latest crescendo in the score for our political opera, though this performance affects all of us in tangible, personal, and troubling ways. The key performers present a clear and present danger to democracy and liberty; the Representatives, Senators, and the outgoing President whose words, choices, and deliberate inaction spurred the seditious actions of the individuals who attacked our Capitol are culpable. These reactions are a result of social programming and propaganda that have disempowered and coerced a significant portion of our fellow citizens into the belief that the actions they take are in their self-interest when they are largely in service to the continued consolidation of wealth and power among a self-serving trans-national class of elites.

It is reasonable and in the national interest that the public servants whose words and choices enabled this travesty should either resign their positions or be removed from their positions by way of the most practicable and timely legal means. Despite the few remaining days of Trump’s term in office, it is a right and just measure in the upholding of our laws and the integrity of our union that he should be impeached since he has not been removed from office by way of the 25th Amendment or by his own choice through resignation.

At this time we stand upon ground destabilized through propaganda, uninformed opinions, and the viral spread of distrust in our fellow citizens. Though we all strive for security, peace, and the means to better our lives and the lives of the people we love, as a nation we seem unable to find agreement on what constitutes truth, fact, and reality. We individually look upon the events of these days and years and see contradictory worlds, unable to empathize, accept, or imagine the perspectives of the people whose views run counter to our own.

On the whole, I believe that the people I know whose politics run counter to my own hold their beliefs with an earnest faith and with the aim of doing good in the world, for the communities of which they are a part, and without the intent to cause harm to anyone. Looking at the world as they see it, they conclude that their vision is clear and that the truths they hold as self-evident are universal. They don’t understand that their choices deploy anything malicious against anyone for which malice is not due, but there-in is the divide: The bend toward a more just and equitable world is the continued turn away from malice, away from the need to deploy power against anyone, and away from the need to define any collective otherness.

Though perhaps viewed from a cynical and dystopian perspective, at the same time that the right-leaning balance of the political spectrum acts as the antagonist for the narrative at hand, the left-leaning and centrist elements have equal opportunity to take advantage of the theatrics and make of the present political horror a vehicle to serve their personal interests. Unchecked, the self-interest and ulterior motives of individuals seeking to hold or gain power undercuts democracy, no matter if coming from the right or the left.

And at the same time, the abhorrent work of entities that seek to dehumanize, diminish, and limit the potential of any of us is something that must be excised from this nation. The racists, neo-nazis, and fascists who seek to exclude and to harm have no place in any position of government or control. While freedom of thought, speech, and being demands that we uphold the right of hateful individuals to believe what they choose to believe and to hang their lives upon their twisted ideologies, the protection of the freedom of thought, speech, and being of those of us who are of the full spectrum of identities and systems of belief requires that our governance empower us to limit the actions of those individuals and organizations that would seek to do harm.

Rather than the certainties and assurances that definitive lines power creates, we must press more completely into the uncomfortable and often unclear space of openness, difference, negotiation, and consent. We must demand more than surface answers and bend our minds to meet the open-ended and contingent maps, narratives, and lattices upon which the fullest explication of our collective being can be read and revised. No partisanship will get us to that place, as parties inherently exclude. Rather, this next step forward in our governance and extending the experiment in our democracy requires radical, full, and true inclusivity.

What slim line might hold the check against the unraveling of our nation is our own earnest and honest engagement with the system we have empowered along with the equally earnest and honest engagement with one another such that we might make from that a course toward an acceptable and better future. Though some will say I am either naive or delusional (or both), I still believe that we have within us the ability to find that way forward toward reconciliation and the co-creation of a cultural space holding for all mutual respect, a shared understanding of our humanity, and a foundation of common facts and apparent truths.

There are those things which we all ought to be able to agree:

• That we are all created equal, and it is our individual and collective failure when equality of empowerment is not upheld or when we allow systems to persist when they limit what a subset of our brothers and sisters might achieve;
• That we are endowed with unalienable rights, among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that securing those rights for our brothers and sisters in this nation means holding ourselves responsible for our own actions and choices so that we do not infringe upon the well-being or potential of our fellow citizens; and
• That this government we have created belongs to all of us – is of the people, by the people, and for the people – and being such, it is our responsibility to take full ownership of our enfranchisement and to earnestly engage in the ongoing creation of this nation.

It should be entirely apparent to all people that we have allowed our nation to bend from the interests of the people to the interests of capital and economic power, vesting the measures of our collective well-being in increments of corporate profits and social standing.

With the aim of improving our government and making our representatives more responsive to the total needs of all Americans, I propose the following:

Proposal 1: Term Limits

Members of the United States House of Representatives shall serve no more than three (3) consecutive terms and members of the United States Senate shall serve no more than two (2) consecutive terms.

Proposal 2: Compensation for Members of Congress

The salaries of the members of Congress shall be set at and adjusted to 1.5 times the average of the median income of the general population of United States citizens.

Proposal 3: Housing for Members of Congress

Because housing costs present a significant burden to life in the nation’s Capitol, we will construct four multifamily residential properties in comfortable proximity to the United States Capitol that will serve as housing for members of Congress during their time in Washington, D.C.; the housing units will be uniform in size, modest in their amenities, and unit assignments will be randomized.

Proposal 4: Congressional, Judicial, and Presidential Healthcare

Healthcare for members of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the President, Vice President, and their respective staff will be the same as that provided to all United States Citizens.

Proposal 5: Campaign Reforms and Common Media Access

While not limiting individual candidates’ right of free speech, we will establish a high-quality, non-partisan, and fact-checked platform for free and equal distribution of campaign information to enable effective candidate evaluation by voters; this effort will take advantage of existing infrastructure available through CSPAN as well as current and future web technologies.

Proposal 6: Compulsory Service

Upon graduation from High School or at the age of 18, whichever is later, all United States citizens born after _____ will be subject to a requirement of two (2) years of compulsory service in either one of the branches of the United States military or in a division of the civilian conservation corps; in addition to a living-wage compensation paid to individuals during their time of service and in accord with their achieved rank, upon the completion of these two years of service the individuals will be guaranteed full tuition, books, fees, and housing at any public university, community college, or trade school in the United States or reimbursement of an amount equal to the aforementioned tuition, books, fees, and housing to be applied to costs associated with private universities, colleges, or trade schools. Failure to complete the compulsory service except as a result of disabling injury would exclude an individual from future Social Security compensation. There will be no exemptions from this service except where disabilities are beyond the limits of reasonable accommodation as understood through the lens of the ADA.

Proposal 7: Civilian Conservation Corps

The United States shall establish a new Civilian Conservation Corps that will enable individuals to work in non-military service for the betterment of our nation and in concert and coordination with state and local initiatives and needs. Divisions of the Civilian Conservation Corps will include Education Support, Community Health & Security Support, Land Management, Infrastructure Maintenance & Improvement, and other divisions as envisioned and necessary. Proposal 8: Living Wage, Housing, and Childcare Normalization

Revising the minimum wage standards, the United States will adopt a uniform living wage requirement that is adjusted for inflation and that accounts for the variability in cost and availability of affordable housing and childcare such that all working people of our nation can be assured a basic foothold for growth and an equal opportunity to contribute to improvement of our country.

Proposal 9: Law and Administration of Justice Reform

Addressing long-standing problems of inequity in the justice and law enforcement system, the United States will undertake a comprehensive reformation that empowers us to focus on rehabilitation, health, well-being, and community service while removing from our police and courts the burdens of laws established for the sake of politics and oppression rather than supporting civil rights and individual liberty.

Proposal 10: Investing in the Future

While our national stance for the past 50 years or more has firmly focused the greatest portion of our economy on support of the military-industrial complex, that has prevented us from adequately addressing the future needs of our nation and has created existential risks that cannot be addressed with guns and bombs; as such, we will transform the investment we have made in our war-focused apparatus and shift it to a future-focused investment that will result in both greater national security and environmental resilience.

Proposal 11: De-escalation of Violence and Fear

We recognize that a great many of our civil challenges are a result of fears that have grown out of reduced economic opportunity; perceptions of infringements on individual liberties, freedom, equality, and opportunities; and the inability to share in a common understanding of what is true and factual. As such, it is necessary that we directly address these issues. We will undertake an national truth and reconciliation effort that enables our nation to find a common understanding and shared purpose across the divisions we have created among ourselves and that have been leveraged by forces in service to greed and political power.

Proposal 12: Second Amendment Protections and Mental Health Reforms

While not infringing on the core right of United States citizens to keep and bear arms, it is also necessary to address the health and community safety issues presented by armed individuals who choose to act in violent and harmful ways; as such, we will undertake the following:

1. Ubiquitous and meaningful education on firearms training, responsible use, law, and safety;
2. Ubiquitous and meaningful education on mindfulness and non-violent conflict resolution;
3. Expansion of mental health resources and proactive mental health action; and
4. Denormalizing violence and promoting greater common empathy and peace awareness.

Funding for this effort will be sourced in part through:

1. A small portion of funds presently allocated to the Department of Defense and
2. A tax of two-cent per round (1 cent per projectile, 1 cent per shell casing) on all ammunition larger than .22 cal long rifle, inclusive of all ammunition procured or produced by the branches of our armed forces and as used by law enforcement agencies, whether federal, state, county, or municipal.

Proposal 13: Tax & Economic Parity

Established as an inherently capitalist nation, our nation did not guarantee equal happiness, only equality in the opportunity of its pursuit. While economic success and the accumulation of wealth is not a measure of happiness, it is a measure of the means an individual may have to live and participate in the collective work of our representative democracy. It is also clearly the case that economic disparity creates unequal access to liberty, freedom, and opportunity, and our system of taxation exacerbates that disparity. To mediate and resolve this challenge, we will undertake a real and actual revision of the tax system in the United States that will simplify the process and more fairly distribute the tax burden for all individuals in the United States.

Proposal 14: Civis

As an amendment to the Constitution, we will establish a third body in Congress that will mediate and approve the work of the House and Senate, holding the power to send legislation back or to forward legislation to the desk of the President. Composed of three individuals from each state and territory of the United States and where each member will be selected randomly through a lottery to serve a single two-year term, this lawmaking body will give an authentic voice and represent the interests of the American people without the influence or corrupting power of campaign contributors or the need to posture for reelection.