Huntley: Thoughts on America — and a farewell

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Reading articles recently speculating about robots eliminating work for humans, a thought passed through my mind: Well, I won’t be around long enough to see that. My work will be done before then — now in fact.

In the twilight of my career, I can recall other speculations of doom. In the 1960s, it was a population bomb bringing mass famine. That was followed by fear of a new ice age. Last year came an award-winning book suggesting the Earth may be headed for “The Sixth Extinction,” another mass extinction like the one that killed off dinosaurs, this new one the result of global warming. The promise — threat? — of robots in everyday life is the story line of the new AMC television series “Humans.”

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As someone who has for nearly a decade written a column about politics and public policy, I focus more on the here and now. Looking back over recent years, I do see some cause for alarm for our society and our uniquely successful form of self government.

The threat to work is not the robot but government policies discouraging job growth and the entrepreneurial spirit that builds business and prosperity from the ground up. Washington interference through excessive regulation, taxes and dependency-promoting programs — 1 in 5 Americans gets some form of government assistance — helped push the U.S. labor participation rate to the lowest level in a generation. Another sign is the slowest post-recession economic recovery since World War II.

Big government programs nurture big business and crony capitalism. Obamacare set off a wave of mergers and proposed mergers in the insurance business, hospitals and other medical professions. Will bigger be better for medical care?

Massive federal regulatory legislation after the banking crisis of the Great Recession has perversely made banks too big to fail only bigger. Mortgage-lending standards, the original sin of the housing collapse, are headed lower again.

President Barack Obama, by virtue of his personal story and history-making election, had the opportunity to be a powerful unifying figure. Instead, choosing to pursue ideological ambitions, he will leave the nation’s politics more polarized.

His use of executive authority to rewrite parts of Obamacare, immigration law and environmental policy, combined with a contempt for Congress, threaten to leave America with an ever more imperial presidency. Liberals who’ve stood silent will sing another song when a Republican next sits in the Oval Office.

Obama’s record overseas also does not bode well, with the Islamic State rampaging across the Middle East, al-Qaida still a threat, Russia threatening neighbors, China bent on expansion and Obama red lines meaningless.

As former President Jimmy Carter put it, “I can’t think of many nations in the world where we have a better relationship now than we did when he took over.” Of particular concern is Obama’s elevation of U.S. goals involving the terror-sponsoring, nuclear-weapon-seeking Iran over the interests of our friend Israel. Arab nations like Saudi Arabia are as alarmed, or more so, than Israel over Obama’s determination to reach a deal with Iran at almost any cost.

Perhaps nothing says more about this administration’s national security stance than the comment of James Clapper, director of national intelligence, after the revelation China had hacked into the government’s supposedly secure computer systems and stolen millions of personnel records: “You have to kind of salute the Chinese for what they did.”

Despite this record, I remain an optimist in believing Americans in the 2016 election have the opportunity to right the ship of state. As British historian Paul Johnson put it in his enlightening and insightful “A History of the American People,” the “great American republican experiment is still … the first, best hope for the human race.”

So now I retire. I’ve been blessed with an incredibly satisfying career starting with my first job at age 16 with the hometown Lexington, N.C., Dispatch, continuing with rewarding challenges at United Press International (UPI) and U.S. News & World Report, and concluding with nearly 30 wonderful years with the talented and hard-working writers and editors of the Chicago Sun-Times.

The editors of the Sun-Times have generously offered me the opportunity to return periodically when I feel I have something to contribute. While this is my final regular column, you might not have heard the last from me.

Email: shuntley.cst@gmail.com

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