“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done. And there is no health in us.” ~ Morning Prayer, General Confession, Anglican Book of Common Prayer
Reading the headlines, page five stories and op-ed pieces the past couple of weeks regarding the levels of civility and discourse in our country, and then reading other stories and headlines on things our government and our people have done recently, I am thinking very heavily on the quotation above.
I have written letters in the past (mostly unpublished) on the seemingly endless capacity of those in charge to do the wrong thing too often, and the equally endless capacity of those they allegedly are responsible to for allowing them to get away with it.
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As a people, Americans (that is to say, residents of the United States in this context) have always paid a great deal of lip service to tolerance and freedoms of things like speech and religion, and for the opportunity to live the great American dream, whatever that means. But is seems that in the years since World War II, we have drifted away from this; away from what our founding fathers conceived as the basic ethos for this country.
With the 2014 elections, we were given a choice, which turned out to be really no choice at all, between what we were told are competing political ideologies, but which are once again just the opposite sides of the same coin, or the variable verses of a song with the same chorus.
It is high time for our citizenry, be they on the national, state or local level, to take back the freedoms paid for so dearly over the past 2 1/3 centuries and tell the so-called leaders that we are simply tired of everything being about money, power and their egos and that we want the basics of our Constitution to once again control. We don’t need liberal or conservative politicians, we don’t need more government or more laws. What we DO need is leadership that will do the right thing for EVERYONE, all the time.
Protect our poor and helpless, make sure enough food is there to feed the hungry, make sure the elderly and the children get health care, make sure we think three or four times before we commit ourselves and our posterity to wars that only mean something to the self-serving and selfish politicians that started them. For the sake of all that is good in this world, stop worrying about what some spoiled and over-paid actor or athlete is doing or saying and start worrying about the welfare of our families and neighbors. AND finally, take some sort of a stand and tell those who would lead us, “Enough already! You want the job? OK, agree to DO the damn job and do it right for a change; don’t just give us empty promises and then go out and ignore us. Don’t be so busy trying to get re-elected that you forget why you are really there.”
This isn’t an ideology; these ideas aren’t right or left wing thoughts or dogma. Those who espouse the popular positions too often do so with the idea of tearing down what is there and replacing it with their own idea of what is right without thinking about what is right for ALL. We don’t need either more or less government, we need GOOD government at all levels and politicians who realize they are answerable not to those who grease their pockets, but to the people who vote for them. We need news media that are willing to speak truth impartially, eschew hyperbole and innuendo and tell the truth about the world. We need educators who will educate in a way to teach our kids HOW to think, and not WHAT to think.
And we all need to stop, be quiet, and LISTEN for a while. It can be astounding, what you can hear when you want to.