You Say You Want a Revolution?

I've rewritten this a couple times over the last two weeks. There is a lot here, and I want to make my thoughts as clear as possible.

 I love this country. I think one of the things that makes it great is our right to free speech. Anyone who knows me me well knows that I will defend that right even if I don't agree with the ideas that are spoken. I love that this allows for debate, disagreement, and open criticism of our government. It goes hand in hand with our right to assemble peaceably, allowing us to both discuss our ideas and make them known to the powers that be.

There are increasingly vocal cries of discontent from several camps. I have been trying to critically analyze the things I see and hear in order to form my own conclusions. I have come up with some very general thoughts, which I have attempted to sort through below, for your consideration.  

1. "Deserve"is an often used word. The dictionary I have handy says it's a transitive verb meaning "do something or have or show qualities worthy of (reward or punishment)"(emphasis mine). What this means to me is that by default, a citizen of the United States deserves only rights guaranteed to them in the Constitution. You get those simply by having the quality of citizenship. Anything else requires some action on the part of the individual.

2. The government owes a lot of things to a lot of people. They owe me. If you've held a job in the last 74 years, chances are they owe you too. There are a couple problems here. First, many people believe that the government owes them debts that they simply have not earned. They feel that by their virtue of being, they are entitled to benefits that the government has not guaranteed they will receive. They expect something for nothing. The other side of the coin is that the government cannot pay what it owes. The government has debts not only with individual citizens, but also private companies and other countries that exceed the revenues that can be collected. As this debt increases, credibility decreases and public infrastructure crumbles due to the lack of funds necessary to maintain it.

3. Life isn't fair. It never has been. There is no system of government or economics devised by man that will ever make it so. There will always be haves and have-nots. political and economic shifts merely shuffle the numbers. Those with monetary wealth may have earned it, inherited it or stolen it, or (more likely,) some combination of the three. The system we have in place was originally designed with the idea that it should be possible for those who were not in the have category to change their station by their own merit. By the same token, those haves should be allowed to fall if they did not maintain their status through wise and responsible action. The catch here is that the system has been tampered with, and now functions abnormally.

4. The rights of the people as guaranteed by the Constitution have been eroded over the past 224 years. The system as designed worked well, but it wasn't perfect. The original designers foresaw the possibility of imperfections and designed the system so that it could be easily modified. The problem is that more often than not, laws made in the name of security have filed away at the edges of liberty. It seems to me that this erosion has accelerated in the past 20 years, though my perception may be skewed because of my frame of reference. This lack of personal liberty negatively impacts the ability of those who wish to change their socioeconomic status because it further limits the options available to them.

5. The government is in bed with big business. This is not a new situation that has cropped up in the current administration, the last administration, or even in the last thirty years. It goes back to at least the antebellum period and it's likely someone with a better grasp of history could point to much earlier roots. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least one example that predates the United States by a few hundred years. Money talks, and big businesses, of course have money. It would be naive to believe that politicians in either an official or unofficial capacity would be swayed by it. The problem is that the voice of the corporations has begun to hold more power than the voice of the people, and the rights of the corporation are protected over the rights of the populace.

So what can we do?
We as citizens have tools that have not as yet been stripped away from us. I believe it is still possible to initiate change within the current legal bounds of our society. Speak out. Talk, discuss, debate, write, blog. By all means, peacefully protest. As you do so, think about the change you're asking for. Does it truly benefit society, or is it a short term solution to your own needs?

Vote, but vote smartly. Forget political parties. They set agendas that benefit the members of the party. They could care less about the needs of the people. look at ALL the candidates. what do they claim as a platform? If they've held office before, does their record match what they say? If not, why?