Kerby Anderson

Most Americans say we face serious problems and yet there is growing evidence that we aren’t really serious about serious problems. Ned Ryan wrote a commentary about “An Unserious Movement for an Unserious People.” Although many of his criticisms are focused on the Republican party, most of his comments apply to both parties and most political leaders today. He says we need to acknowledge that we “in many ways, have become an unserious people. No serious civilization and society would allow a fraction of what is taking place here—from the absurdity of our education system to the dominance of big tech monopolies to our current form of elections.” Let’s just focus on the election system. The last elections were a reminder that we allowed mail-in ballots, questionable voting software, and voting rolls with lots of inaccuracies. For example, the mail-in ballot system we have has been rejected by “nearly all civilized nations, ones even the Left recognizes as among the most advanced.” What about electronic voting? “Canada will not even allow electronic voting. They have paper ballots and have observers installed in every polling station because faith in the outcome of elections is important there.” In the past, I have asked how serious we are about education. Total expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools is $739 billion. That works out to $14,439 per public school student. Let me ask you a question, if I gave you more than $14,000 per student, would you spend it the way we currently spend it? Same question for health care. We currently spend $3.6 trillion on health care. If I gave you more than $3 trillion to spend, would you spend it the way we currently spend it? Of course not. We aren’t really serious.