An Open Letter to Sarah Palin from Chicago: Thoughts on How to Turn Red and Blue States Into the Re-United States of America

Dear Governor Palin,
In my 62 years of life, I’ve discovered that if you’re willing to search long enough and hard enough, there are very few people with whom you can’t find ONE issue on which to agree. Now I want to confess right up front that I’m from Chicago and I’m an unapologetic supporter of Barack Obama, which means there are plenty of issues on which you and I disagree. But after scouring all the possibilities, I’ve finally discovered one issue on which we are kindred spirits. That’s the issue of home schooling.

You Betcha We Can Agree on Home Schooling
Yes, you and I are both strong proponents of home schooling. We came to our conclusions for different reasons. You came to yours due to your religious convictions. I came to mine due to the 17 years I spent in the teaching ranks and seeing what we were doing to our nation’s kids in the name of education…whether in public or private schools. So despite the fact that you and I are on opposite ends of the political spectrum in lots of ways, there is at least one point on which you and I strongly agree.

One Turns Into Two, and Two Into Four, etc.
Furthermore, with that one point of common ground in mind, I suggest that if I were ever offered the opportunity to sit down (no pre-conditions please) with you in order to explore our respective motivations for being in favor of home schooling, my bet is that we’d find another issue or two on which we could also agree.
And if we were to explore those next two issues, we’d probably find more and more things on which we could agree. In fact if push came to shove, my bet is that we’d find more things on with we agree than on which we disagree. And in the process we’d find common ground on which to respect each other. Furthermore, on those issues where we disagree, we could do so respectively without calling each other names, or thinking that the other was a flaming idiot for disagreeing with us.

Dividing and Conquering Americans
The bottom line here is to recognize that modern politics (the Atwood/Rove School) is so incredibly adept at finding things on which people disagree, and then pitting red states against blue states, men against women, blacks against whites, union workers against non-union workers, Christians against Muslims, gays against straights, young against old, businesses against government, that we the people are so thoroughly confused, frustrated, distracted, and angry we forget that for the most part, most people want the same things out of life, and there’s almost always more things on which we agree than disagree. All that makes our current process of divide and conquer politics (and hate mongering) absolutely abominable.

Sarah’s Phone Number?
I know Senator Obama is way ahead of me on this line of thinking and now that he’s won the Presidency, maybe we can once again move toward becoming the United States of America instead of the Divided States of America. But Sarah, if you’d send me a phone number, I really would love to speak with you and explore the home schooling issue…just for starters.

Sincerely,

Rick (The Writer) Osbourne
Osbourne.rick@gmail.com
630-495-3445