Posts Tagged → Active
Why I am politically active
From my earliest years until now, I have been politically active. It is a drive inside me like others have to eat, breathe, or sleep. Literally, I cannot live without being an active participant in America’s political process.
No question about it, most people call me a “politico.” That is, a person who eats, breathes, drinks and lives politics. Not everyone is wired this way, of course. And what an annoying place every place would be if everyone were so tightly wired that they were all this politically minded, and did nothing but speak of politics. Everything would be political talk all the time. And if someone did not bring up the great taste of the day’s chicken salad lunch, it would be a very boring conversation indeed.
And yet, I still cannot help but be slack-jaw amazed when I meet a person who says “Politics don’t interest me and I have no time for them. No, I do not vote.”
Almost as ineffective are those people who say “I vote, and that is all I have time for.”
Voting is part and parcel of being an American, and yet, it alone is not enough.
A person must volunteer on political campaigns, put out yard signs, go door to door for good candidates, make phone calls for candidates, and donate money. Even ten bucks to a candidate makes a difference, makes a statement, sends a message.
If every vote matters, and we know that is true, then even more true is that every political activist matters so much more. Political activists influence voters and channel how votes are cast. One voter is one vote, while one political activist might equal a hundred votes, or many more.
After the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin noted that (roughly) 33% of the Americans had been Tories, Loyalists to the British crown. Another 33% had been Patriots, risk-takers dedicated to the unique idea that government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. And then there was another one-third of the population, the 33% who were disinclined to be politically active, to take sides, and who often said they were too busy running their farms and businesses to get involved in politics. These politically disengaged people were willing to go whichever way the wind blew. If Britain successfully re-asserted her claims to America, then this one third would have hung the Union Jack out their window and been happy British subjects. As it turned out after the Patriots won, they were at least just as happy to have gained freedom and opportunity unlike they had imagined possible.
So even during the foremost conflict in then-modern human history, when the toughest choices had to be made, roughly one third of Americans were disengaged politically from a process that was playing out all around them.
Fast forward a couple centuries, and roughly fifty to seventy percent of Americans are politically disengaged. Not politically involved. And many of those who are politically involved do so for financial reasons, which is not the most pure or healthy motive.
Not too long ago, a former drab government clerk-nobody observed “Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”
What Albert Einstein meant by his quote is that so few people maintain their own independence of thought and inquiry; that too many people allow others to direct them on their way through life. To tell them what to think and how to feel, instead of determining for themselves what is correct and what is untrue.
Apparently I am one of those people who wants to know for himself, so that my own feelings can be true to myself, true to my principles. Outsourcing decisions about my life to someone else, who probably does not care about my life, is not something I will do willingly. I highly recommend this approach, because to do so is to take one’s destiny in hand and make the best for it, while otherwise a person becomes a sheep. A victim. And sheep go to slaughter. And that is what Benjamin Franklin meant in 1776 when he said that Americans “have a Republic, if you can keep it.”
Takes a lot lot of work to hold on to what Americans have. A lot of political work. Can you step up and lend a hand?
People ask me why
For some people, politics and political activism are their bread and butter. Politics pays their bills. With the right clients, they can make millions of dollars out of politics as a business model.
For me, politics is about personal liberty, freedom, opportunity and many other inspiring principles behind the founding of America. It is also about the little freedoms we have that emanate from the bigger ideas: The freedom to drive or walk somewhere without having to prove that you belong there, the freedom to choose where to live, the ability to select from a wide assembly of fresh food, to name a few popular ones.
Call it an innate sense of justice and right and wrong, which family and friends have said I’ve had since I was a little kid, or call it a lack of patience, an inability to watch, participate in, listen to, or tolerate BS/fluff/empty slogans/lies/self-interest, whatever it is that motivates me, I am passionate about good government.
Good government has been a passion of mine since I was a teenager, when I first got involved in political campaigns. Back then, I was horrified at the way abortion-on-demand was changing our culture, I was against gun control, and nuclear missiles scared me. Later on, watching police beat non-violent pro-democracy marchers in South Africa motivated me to put my voice behind change there (note that now the monumentally corrupt and un-just African National Congress government there is hardly better than the overtly racist apartheid government it replaced). Age, paying taxes, and work experience have a way of shaping political views for normal people, and I was no exception.
So here I am, living a life that has meaning for me, trying to shape Pennsylvania and American politics in ways I believe are healthy, necessary, and just. The citizens and taxpayers who are supposed to be served well by their government (of the people, by the people, for the people) are not being well served today. This is why I am involved in politics. That is why I will not go away, at least not until things are fixed to my satisfaction.
Huffington Post: No democracy for you!
A Huffington Post headline reads “Congress Inaction Prompts Obama to Act Alone.”
American civics class 101 teaches citizens that the executive branch cannot act alone, not really. If Congress is inactive, the president can only enforce laws that are on the books. He cannot create new laws. That would be dictatorial.
Ah-hah. There’s the point. Obama fans LOVE his dictatorship. Unashamedly.
Just remind us of that love when we have a new president from the other party, surrounded by angry citizens demanding retroactive corrections to the Obama years. You’ll learn to love it then, friends.