A lot has happened in the week since we shared some of your thoughts on what would make America great again. Who would have thought Vice President-Elect Mike Pence would attend the Broadway show of Hamilton and find himself the center of attention?

While John Caplis shared his thoughts before that event, he mentioned Hamilton in his writing, so let’s start there this morning.

“In Ken Burns’ documentary film The Civil War, historian Shelby Foote describes the cause of the war saying, ‘It was because we failed to do the thing we really have a genius for, which is compromise. Americans like to think of themselves as uncompromising. Our true genius is for compromise. Our whole government’s founded on it. And it failed.’ This failure to compromise led to the Civil War and it has led us to where we are today. A nation divided against itself. The swinging pendulum of partisan politics will never stop, but to Make America Great Again we should try to reduce it a bit.

“The mistake of the ruling party, as history has shown, is to assume a mandate and push too far to the left or right, forgetting that it is the people in the center who got them elected. The shift angers those in the middle, the “moderates” and the undecided voters. This is the same populist anger that prevents the presidential ‘third term’ and handed both Barack Obama and Donald Trump the presidency. I find it amusing that Texas wanted to succeed from the union under Obama and now Oregon is ready to leave over Trump. We get nowhere unless we make a good faith effort to see the other side’s point of view and work to find a compromise. Investors like stability. People like stability. To make America great we would do well to consider Foote’s point about the genius of compromise.

“Another obstacle facing the nation resides in our differing views of government. The liberal belief in the power of government and its ability to serve the people as a force for good differs sharply from the conservative view of government as … the problem. ‘Get government out of the way and watch as America gets great again!’ This is a false dichotomy. Government is necessary. As a fan of The Walking Dead, I am willing to try anarchy, but the rest of you wouldn’t make it very long. Government provides many essential services we cannot provide on our own.

“I have two jobs. Both of my paychecks come from the government. I am a teacher by day and a paid-on-call firefighter whenever the need arises. I’d like to think the community reaps the benefits of my service and doesn’t mind paying the taxes that make these services available. I love teachers, firefighters, EMS personnel, police officers, and park rangers. I don’t mind paying taxes for worthwhile programs that benefit my community, my state, or the nation. To make America great again, we have to agree to pay for a specific set of government services … and then agree to actually pay for them. No one likes taxes, but let’s face it, whenever you say, ‘the government should pay for that’ you can’t mean China or Mexico. You have to mean ‘We the People,’ And accordingly, to make America great, we are going to have to reduce what government does to a smaller set of services.

“On a final note, the founders gave us a gift to make America great. (And we all love the founders, even liberals are going gaga for Hamilton!) The gift was Federalism. Shared power between Washington and the States was meant to achieve a balance and to allow for compromise. If you want this and I want that, we can vote with our feet and move to a state filled with people who share our views and where they make laws that reflect our values. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis found room in our republic for states to become laboratories of democracy. To make America a greater nation we should relax and let states have greater autonomy. Let the people of Michigan, or Texas, or Oregon solve their own problems. Then, a state’s borders can help us allow for our differences.”

Pauline Buchner had this to share on the subject:

“A great America would not look to the past, it would invest its efforts on creating a future.

“It would invest in education, health care, civil rights for all, and employment security.

“A great America would be a place where CEOs make only 25 percent more than their average employees.

“A great America would keep all of the Constitution and its amendments in place and enforce the practices implied.

“A great America would lead the world with diplomacy.

“Liberty and justice for ALL would prevail.”

And finally, Chuck Russel shared that it was time to return God to more prominence.

“Somehow we need to go back and put God first. God needs to put back in our education system. God needs to be a bigger part of our families in what we do and what we talk about and how we entertain ourselves. God needs to be in how we deal with each other. We need to find a way and a place to worship God who created all  of us. And we need to learn how to read His book from cover to cover.

“That’s what made us great in the first place and that is what will make us great again.”

Next Saturday your thoughts will continue, including an interesting perspective of an Alpena native now living in Great Britain.

Bill Speer can be reached via email at bspeer@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 354-3111 ext. 331. Follow Bill on Twitter @billspeer13. Read his blog, More BS (Bill Speer) at www.thealpenanews.com.