Tackling the “Common Cause”

Americans, being human beings, proclaim many assumptions about the world in which they live and, like most assumptions, could not be further from the actual-world reality. Moreover, many, hiding behind such assumptions, blind themselves from the objective, multi-communital truths.

Statements and proclamations in the nature of those presented in last Friday’s column, "The Common Cause," presumes national truths without dialectics. The random, circular thinking leads to a misunderstanding of the possible goals of such an argument.

Before I begin, I apologize that my rebuttal cannot cover all the issues addressed in The Common Cause, due to length. For example, the whole immigration issue will take another several columns alone to explain.

Firstly, blasting any president’s administration for the failures of Congress will not deliver any practical results, yet will only prove to showcase the constitutional ignorance of the blasphemer. Besides, the president needs Congress to pass the bills before he can then sign or veto.

The president, according to Article Two, Section Two of the Constitution, has power to act, basically, only "by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate."

Secondly, when one argues based on assumptions, he forgets to define colloquial terms, such as "middle class."

The middle class has "but nobody--not economists, sociologists, or the U.S. Census Bureaus--[who] seems to have a clear definition of who the middle class actually is," according to an overview of Politics & Economy by PBS.

U.S. Census Bureau offers a more number-based approach. "In 2004, the middle fifty percent of households had annual gross incomes between $22,500 and $75,000. The top quarter (26.8 percent) of households earned more than $75,000 while the bottom quarter earned (25.2 percent) earned less than $22,500 annually."

Thirdly, David Brooks, New York Times columnist, summarizes a new report by Third Way, "The authors of this report… try to blend all the diverse pieces of American reality, and to expose what they call the 'myths of neopopulism.'"

The first of these myths is the "failing middle class." He continues, "It’s true there are more households headed by young and old people, who tend to have lower incomes. But if you take households headed by people in their prime working years, 25 to 59, you find those people are not failing. Their median income is $61,000. If they are married, their median income is $72,000."

What is more, "living standards are not stagnant," like usually presumed. In the last 27 years, "the percentage of prime-age households making over $100,000 in current dollars rose by 12.7 percentage points," Brooks writes.

Finally, some argue the fact of wage inequality proves the middle-class shrinkage. One of the most wage equal times in American society was during the Great Depression. The poor and rich both fell, yet only the poor had a shorter distance to fall. No one wants a second Great Depression for equality to return to the States.

Some might complain this wage inequality is a problem the government needs to address. However, when only 27.7 percent of all Americans over the age of 25 have a Bachelor's or higher and 14.8 percent never finish high school, wage inequality is going to occur, despite a government, let alone a president.

I say, it is a citizen problem, and we, the American citizens, are the ones who need to address it.

But to do that, assumptions must be put to the side.


I will have to thank the Parthenon staff member who caught the several errors I missed, when self-proofing. I am not to happy with this column. I started out by addressing every issue that "The Common Cause" stated so matter-of-factly. By the time I finished I had about 900-1000 words, so in my cutting I missed some easy errors--I forgot a word, I used "assume" in the place of "presume" twice. Oh well, it happens. The point is that assumptions mislead and block forward progress.