During the last few months, any opportunity to watch the news has also been an opportunity to give a cheer for civil rights and human rights.
The turmoil currently underway in the Middle East, while often violent, is still an example of the best of humanity’s ability to band together and demand change and equality. In the face of this massive mobilization it’s hard not to wonder what happened to our own nation’s passionate crusades.
The current issue of The Lamron is sitting next to me as I write this and is open to Sam White’s article “American voters should elect moderate politicians.” The argument that White proposes is almost undeniably true. Speak to any American and you are likely to get a similar story of discontent with the current government and its policies. This discontent, however, is not represented in any real or tangible way.
It seems that we, as Americans, are more upset than ever with the way our government is functioning and the choices politicians are making. Yet we are quieter on the subject than we ever have been before. If you take the time to look at our nation’s past, it is largely marked by the issues that the American people were able to overcome. Our very own forefathers were men who not only opposed their government, but actually overthrew it against all odds. The passion of the American patriot seems to have dwindled to a place of discontent that lacks the will to do anything to alter it.
I don’t intend to encourage widespread mobs or riots, but one does have to wonder, in a nation where the ruling legal document begins “We the people,” where are the people? At what point did we give up our right to a government we want and accept a form of leadership with which no one is happy? Where is the will of the people to make changes to the faulty decisions that have found this nation trillions of dollars in debt? What happened to those patriots like Thomas Jefferson who inspired us to act so bravely and determinedly to change what we didn’t want in the past? And if they are still here, why is no one listening to them?
It is hard to imagine an America that is not constantly fighting for the good of the people, but that is the America in which we are living. Without change and a serious mobilization of the people, I fear to see where this nation will end up in the future. Let’s hope that we the people can find the unity and courage to begin making the choices that we want, and leading our nation in the direction we choose.