By James Carlini

Looking back about five years ago to 2013, I wrote about the betterment of mankind by trying make a New Year’s resolution to revisit tolerance and acceptance in our lives.  I guess we haven’t come too far? In fact, I would say we have regressed.

As I pointed out in the article in 2013, “The average person is being bombarded by self-appointed “culture experts” who are judging what can be said and what can’t be said. Last time I looked, this was the United States. There are many cultures, religions, and many different perspectives here. They are supposed to blend together in a melting pot and not stick out like ingredients in a salad. Your perspective can be presented because of the Constitution and Freedom of Speech, but don’t think it is automatically mainstream or that it should be immediately adopted by everyone.”

What has happened to us as a society?  Some people still have not accepted the results of the 2016 Election and are resistant to change, resistant to new ideas, resistant to a shift in policies, and resistant to working together to get things done.  We have become more polarized, but that polarization started long before the 2016 Election.

There is no word like “compromise” in any civil discourse anymore.  People are discouraging public discourse on ideas and concepts if the speaker does not fit their belief system or their perspective on issues. What happened to Freedom of Speech?

FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS OK – ONLY IF YOU AGREE WITH ME

“If you agree with me, I will let you speak, but if your ideas do not mesh exactly with mine, I will stop you from speaking.” This is the attitude shown and is what is happening on many college campuses, and it does not promote any type of broadening one’s perspective.

Funny how it is not just a group of students. Faculty and administrations on some of these campuses are just as intolerant as those radicals coming on campus to disrupt a presentation that they do not agree with.  I always thought higher learning was supposed to promote the ability to share different perspectives and develop a broader perspective by having in-depth discourse on ideas?

This intolerance is not only evident on some college campuses, it is evident in other parts of society, including Congress.  From our outside perspective, we hear,”We don’t want to discuss this endeavor.” by the opposition. And then, after it is voted on, we hear, “We didn’t have any input on this idea.  The opposition did this all by themselves. We don’t agree.”

It’s time to cut out the childish attitudes, the chronic intolerance, and start working together to forge ahead.

There should be some positive projects that everyone in Congress can work on AND have their constituents benefit from.  I have talked about an infrastructure project that can benefit many states, industries, companies, and even farmers.

MISSISSIPPI RIVER LOCKS PROJECT – MAYBE A PROJECT TO UNIFY MANY PEOPLE?

I have written several articles on the Trillion Dollar Infrastructure Project that Congress is starting to review.  What should they prioritize and what could benefit a huge amount of people across many states.

The Mississippi River has a series of locks that barges carrying all different types of products need to go through to get to the Port of New Orleans.  These locks that were built in the 1930s are totally obsolete and are holding up shipping from many states. The faster things can get shipped down the river, the cheaper their costs are. This benefits us as a nation, keeping our costs for products down..

We depend on the Mississippi River to ship over 600 Billion tons of products annually.  The products include agricultural products to aggregates to coal and oil.  From this article, I recently wrote, here are some observations:

Many industries across many states depend on the Mississippi to ship their products out to the rest of the world.  Farmers also depend on shipping products out for world export as well as domestic use.

“The agricultural products and the huge agri-business industry that has developed in the Mississippi basin produce 92% of the nation’s agricultural exports.”

With all the intolerance on so many issues and ideas, maybe we can get Congress to focus in on a project like this which transcends political parties and focuses on doing something good for a good, diverse portion of the United States.

If we can find common ground in supporting a large project like this, maybe we can find common ground on many other areas that just require some compromise and not be chronically blocked by hardcore opposition. (from either side)