The holy, secular promise of government: to promote the general welfare

I’m a spiritual man in a secular world. I thank God for the former; and thank John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton for the latter.

As a secularist, I join our nation’s founders in promoting the establishment of a government based on reason, the rule of law and collective action for the greater good. As a spiritualist, I try to accord Golden Rule empathy to all people, in all stations of life, as guided by the better angels of my nature.

Thus, in the current conflicted world, I choose to love those who support what I oppose. But this does not affect my heartfelt duty to speak truth to power, to pursue justice, to expose hypocrisy and to work for positive change.

Lucky for me that Kentucky is now a right-to-work (for less) state, as my angels have been working overtime.

The night Donald Trump eked out an electoral victory despite losing the popular tally by over 3 million votes, I spent about 15 minutes in deep despair. That a fraud with such alley-cat classlessness could get the support of so many citizens whose interests he’d surely work against was most disheartening.

Then my spirituality kicked in. I prayed, and in that instant realized that no outward event or person could control my life or my destiny. Thus, I fervently pray that Trump and other politicians unify the country and use the power of government “to promote the general welfare,” just as the preamble to the Constitution mandate they do.

But Republicans under Trump are doing anything but. Their rule is nearly all for the rich, the powerful and the corporate — the new aristocracy — with huge cuts to services for our most vulnerable citizens. Their tax cuts, deregulation and record levels of debt pour up evermore public resources to those already enjoying the lion’s share of our wealth (the top one percent have over 40 percent of our nation’s wealth, the bottom 80 percent have just 7 percent.

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities observed in a recent report: “Less than two months after signing massive tax cuts that largely benefit those at the top of the economic ladder, President Trump has put forward a 2019 budget that cuts basic assistance that millions of families struggling to get by need to help pay the rent, put food on the table, and get health care. The budget also scales back efforts to promote opportunity and upward mobility, such as by cutting both job training and programs that make college more affordable. These cuts fly in the face of the Administration’s rhetoric about expanding opportunity for those facing difficulties in today’s economy and helping more people work.”

Their radical agenda also includes mass privatization, giving away our federal franchises, like the vaunted United States Postal Service and selling off sacred federal lands. This corporate welfare to some of the richest people in the world, while taking essential government services away from those who truly need it, is as immoral and unjust as it is nonsensical.

So as a spiritualist I ask: Why are we failing to follow the high moral precepts we know to be right? As a secularist I ask: Why aren’t we learning from history? The current pour-up, trickle-down, deregulatory path is both immoral and is also exactly what caused the Great Depression and Great Recession.

A strong safety net, with services to those who need it most, makes us a stronger nation. It helps us all, rich and poor alike, to live more securely, happily and with goodwill to one another.

And the Constitution demands it: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity...”

There it is — secular meets spiritual. The holy secular purpose of government helps us fulfill the Holy mission of our spiritual heritage.

We need only to exercise the faith of our forefathers and follow the blueprint they so boldly forged for us at our nation’s birth.

This story was originally published October 17, 2018 at 6:41 PM.