People just don’t want to work, some critics of public assistance say.
That wasn’t true for Maria Fernandes. She’s the Ohio woman who died earlier this year from exhaust fumes while sleeping in her car. She wasn’t homeless. She was tired from working four jobs. She had pulled into a parking lot on the way to one of them to catch a few minutes of sleep. It was cold so she left her car running. Trying to make ends meet literally killed her.
Nor is it true regarding the 52 year old construction worker Bob Herbert talks about in his new book, Losing Our Way. The day he was laid off he was driving home when he started thinking about how much he loved his work and what he was going to tell his family. He was so overcome with emotions he pulled his truck to the side of the road, put his head in his hands, and broke down in tears. Today he is working a minimum wage job as a Wal-Mart greeter.
Here’s something else we are hearing because of the Ebola threat. All flights from West Africa should be banned.
I guess the politicians saying this don’t know that there are no direct flights from there to here, and, thus, such a ban would necessarily include other countries in western Europe.
Then there are those critics who claim there is no established evidence that humans are contributing to climate change.
They probably didn’t watch the Cosmos episode in which physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson explained how scientists can measure how much carbon dioxide (co2) we humans are putting into the atmosphere, and that the only hoax about it are the claims of those who deny it is happening.
These are the kinds of things people say all the time that have no basis in facts. Apparently they don’t care or they count on people not taking the time to find out the truth for themselves. The other day Senator Rand Paul said you can catch Ebola if you are standing within three feet of someone infected. You don’t have to be a doctor (which he is) to know that what he said is untrue (which it was).
Which brings me to my primary point: Becoming empowered with information so we can separate fact from fiction and truth from propaganda is what philosophers call “a categorical imperative.”
That means that becoming an informed citizen is “a moral obligation that is unconditionally and universally binding” on all of us.
Our country cannot afford for anyone to stand on the sidelines. It only takes a few people to tear something down, it takes a village to build it back up.
America needs a lot of villages, ones filled with people who have taken the time to find out the facts before believing something is true, and it’s easy to do, actually. All that is really required is the will to know the truth.
That is what our country desperately needs today, people who feel it is their moral obligation to be informed about the very serious issues we are facing.
Being uninformed is not an option for those of us who want the best for our country and for the world.
