Before you jump to any conclusion, let me explain that I came away from the Forum with the sudden awareness that everyone has some disability, something they're not able to accomplish because of some physical, psychological or emotional impediment and that the only thing differentiating the so-called "disability community" is their ability to accept their limitations instead of trying to hide them. Which, it would be my guess, makes them a bit more honest than the rest of us.
One wonders what a difference it would have made for our nation, and the globe for that matter, if George W. Bush weren't compelled to hide his insecurity and incompetence behind an insolent bravado. At a minimum, I suspect, there would be close to a million Iraqis preserved from the experience of a pre-mature death.
John McCain, of course, has made a virtual career out of the disabilities visited on him by his captors in Viet Nam and has, in his own person, realized the goals of the Forum, Equality, Opportunity and Access. Which, again, is what all Americans strive for, when you come right down to it.
Of the eight Democratic presidential candidates only Barack Obama was a no-show. He didn't even, unlike John Edwards who had a conflict in his schedule, dispatch a surrogate to address this large (over six hundred people attended) community of advocates, whose goals would seem to be so entirely consistent with his own. While it's true that some segments of the African American civil rights community seem to think that their issues have been co-opted by the physically handicapped and even feminists, one would hope that Barack Obama has not bought into that perspective. That we all benefit when the least of us are advantaged is as true now as when it was propounded over two thousand years ago.
Hilary Clinton, who was also in the state that day to file her candidate application with the New Hampshire Secretary of State, was first on the Forum agenda and I arrived just as her presentation was ending. So, I'll have to rely on the transcript of her speech made public by the campaign, minus whatever questions were put to her. (Presumably, there were questions since she promised there would be time for them after her "few remarks").
However, perhaps because of my new-found realization that we are all equal in our difference and our disabilities (and special talents), Clinton's focus, to my mind, leaves much to be desired. When she says,
We want both kindness and justice for people with disabilities.
Disability rights are civil rights - the right to be treated equally. They are human rights - the right of all people to fulfill their God-given potentials. And they are an urgent issue for America - because America will never achieve our potential until all Americans can achieve theirs.
I'm prompted to respond that while kindness has to do with an attitude of beneficence that's undeserved and justice, being responsive to what someone has done, is deserved, neither of these virtues grows out of a recognition that humans are entitled; that both human and civil rights (their relationship with the state) exist ab initio--that because humans are humans and reside in a particular place, they're entitled to equality, opportunity and access without having to do anything in return. To suggest that all people are to "fulfill their . . . potentials" not only suggests that rights are conditioned on the correction of some flaw, but really confuses a right with an obligation. Never mind that "to be treated equally" is not the same as having one's equality recognized.
It's been my contention for some time that Republicans, and neo-conservatives in particular, presume that "all men are created evil and must be made good" for the simple reason that it justifies their imposition of social control. You could say that, ab initio, they deny the social compact humans enter into for their mutual benefit. "Fulfill their potential" strikes me as just a kinder and gentler way of saying that human beings, as the Good Lord made them, aren't very good.
Since I don't have the other candidates' speeches to refer to and quote verbatim, it would be unfair to critique Clinton's paragraph by paragraph. However, I don't think I can let this pass:
When I am President, my White House will welcome you. Our government will be a partner with you. And new opportunities will be open to you.
Whoever is president, the White House is the house of the people and the government is the people and public officials are merely our agents. It's not a partnership, Senator Clinton. We're all equal, but when it comes to employment, the employees are subordinate to their employers, who, in this case, happen to be the American people.
Somehow, our public officials seem to have acquired a deficit which makes difficult for them to have a clear understanding of who's responsible for doing what for and to whom. Maybe it's catching. But, it's clearly evident in a statement such as the following:
My plan requires insurance companies to compete based on cost and quality, not how skillfully they can exclude patients with the greatest medical needs.
Aside from the fact that the President of the United States can't require insurance companies to do anything and "cost and quality" aren't really relevant to insurance policies, but rather to the health care they aren't providing anyway, "medical needs" are either met by medical care providers, or not. Which the bureaucrat-in-chief of the federal government can't control either, unless we give him/her the money and insist on quality care as a standard. As one of our New Hampshire candidates for the United State Senate, Jay Buckey, has made clear, we all pay for whatever health care is being delivered. What's missing is an efficient payment system and adequate standards to assure high quality care for everyone.
Perhaps it's unfair to make the point, but Hillary Clinton's speech was largely about what she would do for the distressed and disadvantaged and the disabled. Chris Dodd, in contrast, brought along his sister Carolyn as an example of what a person who's blind from birth can accomplish for herself, if she's not held back--to be specific, a forty year career as an educator in the Connecticut public schools. And, not inconsequentially, because of her insistance that she needed a little brother, the contribution of a life-long public servant as a Peace Corps volunteer, United States Representative and, for the last twenty-six years, a member of the United States Senate.
Some people lead by haranguing; others by the example of their actions. It took Chris Dodd seven years to persuade the Congress to pass the Family and Medical Leave Act and he still hasn't succeeded in persuading the country that it isn't enough to hold people's jobs for them while they take care of a newborn or a sick relative. Which is probably why he's aiming for the bully pulpit of the presidency to argue that such leave should be paid, not least because family-based health care is both preventive and a lot more efficient and effective. As it stands now, the two trillion dollar a year monster we call our health care system doesn't even include all the time people waste failing to get the care they really need.
To his credit, Chris Dodd didn't shy away from the Help America Vote Act, despite the fact that it hasn't turned out as he expected--as a boon to handicapped voters and a more accurate tally of all elections.
Although we're all familiar with the saying that
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
what really makes the difference is whether the negative consequences suffered by someone else were simply overlooked, discounted, or actively orchestrated by malefactors who recognized an opportunity for making mischief. It's the latter which seems to be the case in the matter of the electronic vote tallying machines proposed and paid for by the Help America Vote Act as originally proposed by Chris Dodd. While there's now almost univerasl agreement among election activists that the electronic machines that were supposed to make it easy for people with disabilities to register their vote in private and increase access, as well as the accuracy of the counts, it seems to have been generally overlooked that the software would be easy to hack in order to change the votes. And while it's always possible to argue that one shouldn't buy a pig in a poke, the reality is that most people don't know how these machines work and didn't expect that the elections systems would be run by crooks.
It's taken a while to realize that the merging of the private and public sector was mainly designed to facilitate surreptitous behavior. Or, to put it another way, to get back to the good old days when the main interest of public officials was in arranging for the transfer of public assets into private wealth (think oil leases and mineral rights and rights of way for railroads). It makes sense that if doling out public assets to relatives and cronies is the main government function, there's really little reason to collect taxes.
Joe Biden was the final candidate I was able to hear in person and it was his presentation that pulled it all together for me as a matter of universal principles. Equality, opportunity and access---Joe Biden rolled them all up with the concept of dignity. I suppose in the Catholic tradition it would be equivalent to the belief that, since we are all God's children, the godhead in us is entitled to being respected and honored, or dignified.
Like some of the other speakers, Joe Biden promised to carry out the legislative mandate of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the intent of the IDEA, including full funding for teachers with special skills. That the veterans returning from the Iraqi and Afghan engagements represent a huge wave of newly disabled individuals. which the Veterans Administration is not prepared to help, is a growing concern and yet another reason for a comprehensive reform of our health care system. There's no disputing that veterans should not have to travel great distances to access the care they need.
The fact that our veterans have definitively demonstrated themselves to be deserving of care and still don't get it not only undermines the argument that obedience is rewarded, but shows it up to be a total fraud--a fraud that was in full view yet again last Tuesday when George W. Bush, in his pre-Thanksgiving TV interview, tried to lay blame for the plight of the "vets" on a bureaucracy he's supposedly been directing for the last seven years.
If the inability to recognize who's actually responsible for doing what to or for whom is indeed, as it sometimes seems, catching, lets make sure that the next person elected to the White House hasn't got it. People with mental disabilities should not be in charge of directing the federal bureaucracy. That's clearly an accommodation that's gone too far.
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