We are driving on a forest road. We come across a sign that reads you must use the road to get from point A to point B. We notice a footbridge and a field, either of these paths would lead us to point B faster or lend a more aesthetic appeal to our journey.
Some of us break the rule and use the footbridge, at first we think the bridge unsafe, others take to the field. They think they may be guilty of trespass but they are not.
We have the power to change our own lives to control our destiny. In the end we all possess existential freedom. Many of us believe we do not. We have the power to reach our full human potential this is our birthright. We fail to achieve this freedom out of our own personal fear compounded by circumstance which blocks our personal actualization. Some of these blocks are self-inflicted others are the result of the society in which we live.
For far too long a few in our society have traversed from point A to point B by breaking or fixing the rules in their favor. We see this almost every time a new rule is approved. During the Bush administration we saw many a rule broken. We saw an international treaty, the Geneva Accord, ignored. We watched many of our civil liberties become not absolute freedoms but liberty with caveats. We watched environmental laws and other regulations written by those who are meant to be regulated. We saw a foreign policy of ignorance and benign neglect kill three-thousand people in two office buildings. We have watched three-thousand Americans die in a war based on lies.
We either have been, or have watched, Americans being denied certain fundamental human rights. When people are forced to live in slums or rural poverty, when they are forced to send their children to substandard schools, when they are denied access to health care us, all of us, not just government, are complicit in the denial of basic human rights.
We deny ourselves personal actualization when we believe an advertisement that tells us if we should buy X car, y television, z gadget or consumer good and we will reach our full human potential. We are being conditioned as a society to use things to fill our existential angst rather than our spirits. So we buy their goods but the fissure in our spirit goes unhealed.
The establishment approved road to a perverted sense of our spirituality--religion-- is in many cases used to divide rather than unite us.
We are being told to question science and believe nature and nurture are abominations when so-called "gender confusion" occurs, and Gods help us if the "rule" against same sex marriage were torn asunder. We are being told that the theory of evolution is untrue. We are being told that global warming; the release of toxic chemicals, oil drilling and stripping forest does not harm our environment or ourselves.
We can change ourselves. We are all capable of reaching our full human and spiritual potential. We can reform, reorganize and improve our society. We have the right to vote, we have the right to boycott and in the extreme we have the right to commit civil acts of disobedience. We have the right to attend town, city and county meetings to demand reform. We also in lieu of government have the power to form, meet and act as ad hoc groups--the people out of doors.
What if there was an election in which both candidates were representatives of the status quo and it were boycotted, which candidate would win?
Executive branch cabinet meetings and the Republican and Democratic legislative caucuses should be televised and Internet-broadcasted. Our new president should pledge to hold one news conference a month. We must demand that frequent town hall meetings be held by the President, members of his cabinet, and the leadership of both houses of congress. These will not be spin job meetings for Americans who think critically know when they are told lies. The American people need to know who are the true change agents and those who offer up rhetorical lip service and platitudes meant to assuage us.
Americans yearn to change themselves and reform our society. We must have the courage and the steadfastness for our actions as the patriots of the First American Revolution are meant to improve the lot in life of our children and our children's children.
America was forged by a revolution, its promise of equality sparked a Second Revolution it is now time for a Third Revolution. The message of Barack Obama I am coming to believe is a clarion call to all of us to become activists, to become modern patriots of this Third American Revolution.
"Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American." --Woodrow Wilson