Why Americans Need a Right to a Future

For starters, the right to a future is not some sci-fi concept–although it sounds like it. The right to a future means that each of us has right to expect that our government will place sufficient resources into prediction, prevention, protection and planning. The planning must necessarily include the possible consequences of the failure of government leadership to anticipate and plan for possible scenarios whose occurrence(s) would have significant consequences to any, some, or all of the security, educational, economic/environmental, and media institutions of society.

The right to a future means that it is each person’s right to expect that government has policies and practices designed to anticipate both the short term and long term effects of its laws and actions upon the individual and society in the context of the public good.

It is time for all Americans to ratchet up their imaginations in their duties as citizen bosses. After all, the 9/11 Commission’s biggest criticism of America’s preparedness for a terrorist act was its lack of imagination. In essence, that means all of us citizen slackers and our government leaders failed to anticipate what seemed to be apparent after the fact: that Bin Laden and his zealots were determined to cause great harm to our nation and people, having sufficient funds and ability to accomplish their goal. I assume that millions read a similar plot in Tom Clancy’s’ 1994 best selling novel, Debt of Honor, in which Japanese fanatics hijack and fly a commercial airliner into the Washington capitol with Congress in session. I found it difficult to believe the common excuse of high ranking government officials for lack of preparedness was that no one could have anticipated what happened to the World Towers.

The right to a future means that infrastructure is maintained by the government. Witness the 2005 failure of the levies following Hurricane Katrina and the 2007 collapse of the Minneapolis/St. Paul I-35 Bridge. The right to a future means that the responsible governmental agencies and Congress are prepared for the potential human tragedy following a “perfect storm” natural disaster. Again, witness the consequences to the people of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.
The right to a future means that government agencies should be required to place a small percentage of their budget in reserve before allocating all of their resources for the fiscal year. This policy would encourage savings by government agencies. Each year’s savings could be applied to pay down the national debt.
The right to a future means that before the FCC backs the plans of mega media companies to consolidate power at all levels of a community, its priority consideration must be the possible and probable cultural consequences of media consolidation and the importance of maintaining cultural and media diversity.
The right to a future means that every citizen has a right to preventive medical care. It is not adequate medical care to simply plan a reaction to sickness. Each person is entitled to be a part of a health policy that places an emphasis on prevention and health maintenance.

The right to a future means that the federal government needs to invest more funds into an educational system that puts more resources into non-academic vocational education and offers flexibility to allow for individual change, differences in speed in learning, so that all of its citizens can have access to a lifelong education.

The right to a future means that Americans owe it to one another to provide large portions of their country where preserving the naturalness of the environment for themselves and their descendants is prioritized over policies that encourage mining, forestry, or other development policies that can cause any kind of damage, including scenic, to the environment.

The above examples are just some of the reasons why I believe American needs to amend the Constitution and recognize the right to a future.

Posted on 25th February at 11:12 am

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