PERRY: 2012 Election marked the end of an era of selfish intolerance

Damn, look at who we are.

Colorado, Aurora and the whole country has turned the corner on a dark age of discrimination, intolerance and institutionalized selfishness.

This year’s General Election reveals an emerging America that is nothing short of astounding.

After decades of fighting the good fight, we have won it. We are those who never lost sight of fact that a better America is one that sets aside preconceptions and focuses instead on compassionate, pragmatic answers. But above all, we are a community that has pressed on because it was the right thing to do. We agree that people come first.

Fallen GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney was never more wrong and out of step than when he said that corporations are people.

So look at who we are as a country. Despite a grave and persistent economic crisis, this is a country that re-elected a black president who drags around the name, “Barack Hussein Obama” like a political boat anchor. Obama was re-elected despite pervasive racism, especially in the South. This is a country where voters in Maine and Maryland agreed to extend the rights of marriage to its gay residents. That’s just huge. This is a country that never stumbled after finally granting its gay citizens equal rights and opportunities in the U.S. military. This is a country that soundly slapped at the cruel and crazy antics of people like Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin, whose misogynistic ramblings about rape pointed out just how backward much of the country can be, and how we’re done with that.

Colorado has become a place where even those who have abandoned their Christian religion still strongly embrace real Christian values: tolerance, compassion and selfless generosity.

It’s those values that have become the standards of this new Colorado, this new America that was ratified with this week’s elections. We know now that taking care of each other makes good financial sense. There will be no turning back.

Recently, I was lobbied hard by outgoing Adams County District Attorney Don Quick to rail against legalizing marijuana in Colorado. Quick is a smart, savvy and perceptive man who keenly feels for the community’s poor and disadvantaged residents. While twisting our arms on the pot issue, he made a passionate case for spending more money on educating the community’s poorest residents. Over and again, here and all over the country, we know for certain that the better disadvantaged children can read, the less likely they are to commit crimes and use expensive government-paid services. It is indisputable. By spending money on people when they are young, we spend less money on them when they go to jail or need government-paid healthcare or housing.

Even though so many families are really struggling here in Aurora, they came together on Election Day and approved a tax increase that goes to helping ensure that Aurora’s poorest students get more help to succeed in school.

While it’s a milestone that Aurora, and the rest of the country, has come to grips with the fact that taking care of each other makes good financial sense, it’s more important that we realize it’s the right thing to do. Aurora, and America, have moved beyond the dark, Ayn Rand-ian world of “I got mine.”

Earlier this year, led by GOP Colorado House Speaker Frank McNulty, Republican leaders were able to thwart the will of Colorado residents and fellow lawmakers by using political tricks to prevent a measure that would extend civil union rights to gay couples. Because of the election this week, McNulty will soon lose his leadership position and be replaced with the state’s first openly gay speaker of the House, Mark Ferrandino. State Sen. Pat Steadman, who is also openly gay, is likely to become president of the Senate as well. The civil union measure will pass.

Ferrandino will be joined this year by a growing number of minority and women state lawmakers. Voters in Aurora elected three, black state representatives this week, truly representing how diverse the community has become.

This year, the state will finally be able to move beyond the past persistence of trying to create a society that rounds up illegal immigrants or otherwise segregates them, realizing that the last time a community tried that it resulted in World War II.

We have turned away from an era where we shrug at stories about children unable to afford life-saving cancer treatments and simply be glad that’s not our plight. We have finally adopted the credo of the U.S. Marines, realizing that we will fight our battles with each other in mind, and from now on, no one gets left behind. It’s a damned fine place to be here in Colorado.

Reach editor Dave Perry at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com