Mirsky: Wishing America a Happy New Year

The state of America and of the world is very precarious right now, especially if you are watching too much TV news, or if you happen to be paying too much attention to news writers and columnists, "pundits".

We will have a new government this month. We will all need to do our best, do our jobs as citizens, to make sure things work out right.

In this spirit, here are a few suggestions for the coming year:

1. We must obey the laws of our country, which means two things at least:

a) We must obey the United States Constitution, including the Bill of Rights (particularly the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments, but also including, since passage, the all-important 14th Amendment which provides Due Process and Equal Protection, and the 13th, 15th and 19th Amendments, which ended slavery and ensured a universal right to vote, without which our democracy would have no meaning). Without the United States Constitution we would have no country. We would have something, but not a democracy with personal freedoms;

b) We must obey international law because that is part of United States law, and because human beings need to have limits on their behavior and we can't expect other people to follow the rules if we violate them.

2. The people all need to register to vote, and they need to vote.

3. Politicians on all sides should realize that you will only be trusted if you at least try to tell the truth. The legendary ABC-TV sportscaster Howard Cosell once gave a pretty fair definition of the the truth when he said, "I tell it like it is." That has to be a goal, anyway. If you can't at least try to tell the truth, you may fool some of the people some of the time, but what you are doing is not worthwhile and might even be reprehensible.

I believe that one of our greatest United States presidents, Abraham Lincoln, said something like this, but to be truthful, I don't know enough of the details about what Abraham Lincoln really said. I am part of a generation that is much more familiar with the words of another great United States president, John F. Kennedy.

4. The last point about getting people in politics to at least try to tell the truth may in fact be an unrealistic pipe dream, but that is why we definitely need to know and understand and obey and cherish our United States Constitution. Our Constitution states limits on our government, limits that protect us.

So have a happy new year everyone, and God bless these great United States of America.