by Craig Wiesner – San Mateo Daily Journal – July 8, 2024
My 6am morning routine includes time on the couch, dog curled up on my right, coffee on my left, and laptop in the middle. First stop, email. Next, the Daily Journal to scan top stories, columns, letters to the editor, and comments. After that the Huffington Post, Daily Beast, Washington Post, Yahoo News, Politico, The Hill, and CNN. Lately I spend time on a fairly new social media platform called Spoutible. Entrepreneur Christopher Bouzy, founder of Bot Sentinel, a Twitter analytics service, created Spoutible where I discover stories and happenings that I might not otherwise find in my usual surfing. On the morning I started writing this column, several posts made me think of the word “extremist.”
Many on the left lambast “MAGA extremists” and many on the right decry “WOKE extremists.” Let’s look at some of today’s left and right positions on some issues and ask are these extreme or mainstream.
Labor: The national minimum wage should be raised to $15 an hour. Current child labor laws should be strictly enforced. Extreme or mainstream? There should be no national minimum wage. Child labor laws are too strict. Parents should decide at which age children can work, which and how many hours, and what jobs they can do without government or schools interfering. Extreme or mainstream?
Reproductive Decisions: The decision on whether to continue or end a pregnancy belongs to the individual, not the government. Abortion, IVF and contraception should be legal. Extreme or mainstream? Life begins at conception. Abortion, IVF, IUDs and the morning after pill should be illegal. Extreme or mainstream?
Health Care: We should have “Medicare for All” with sliding scale co-payments based on income and wealth. Extreme or mainstream? Eliminate the ACA, VA, Medicare and Medicaid and replace them with marketplace insurance or private direct pay with charity-based services for the poor. Extreme or mainstream?
School: Universal access to free public pre-k through community college with national, state, and local educational regulations and standards. Parents can opt to pay for private/parochial options. Extreme or mainstream? Eliminate the federal Department of Education and national standards. Give parents vouchers for any public or private pre-K-12 school they choose. Extreme or mainstream?
Identity: Systemic and individual racism and discrimination based on other factors of identity have negatively impacted individuals and groups of people throughout our history. The damages done because of that discrimination continue to harm people and should be repaired through targeted action, uplifting some, in order for our nation to some day fulfill its unrealized promise of equality for all. Extreme or mainstream? America is a level playing field. Systemic racism doesn’t exist. Policies that favor anyone based on race or other identity factors are discriminatory and should be illegal. Extreme or mainstream?
Religion: The separation of church and state has been a bedrock principle since our founding. Our government should remain neutral towards all religions, not officially recognizing or favoring any one religion. There should be no religious test to serve in government. Public schools should not promote any religion. Extreme or mainstream? The phrase “separation of church and state” is not in the Constitution. America was founded as a Christian nation and the nation’s laws should be based on Christian values. Public schools should teach from the bible and display the 10 Commandments in every classroom. Extreme or mainstream?
Political Campaigns: Regulate how much money can be contributed to campaigns by individuals, corporations, and organizations, and require complete transparency of who is giving what to whom. Limit how much campaigns can spend. Extreme or mainstream? Money equals speech and can’t be restricted. No limits on contributions, with anonymous giving and unlimited spending allowed. Extreme or mainstream.
Guns: Sales/transfers should be regulated with universal background checks. People should have to be trained, obtain and maintain a permit, and securely store weapons, with regulations on which weapons are allowed for whom, and where they can be carried openly or concealed. Extreme or mainstream? Individuals have the right to obtain, possess, transfer, openly carry or conceal any weapon allowed by the US Supreme Court based on the court’s interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Extreme or mainstream?
Climate Change: It is real, caused, and exacerbated in large part by continued use of fossil fuels, and we have to do everything we can to reduce our carbon footprint to save the planet and its inhabitants from the worsening disastrous impacts of inaction. Extreme or mainstream? It is a hoax and we shouldn’t waste any time or money trying to mitigate a hoax. Weather changes. Deal with it. Extreme or mainstream.
Craig Wiesner’s column in the Daily Journal: Extreme or mainstream? 7am, time for me to get off the couch but the dog is fast asleep and she’d consider me moving very extreme.
Craig Wiesner is the co-owner of Reach And Teach, a book, toy and cultural gift shop on San Carlos Avenue in San Carlos.