I’m not sure people realize how huge of an impact government can have on our lives. The government has the power to do just about anything, from taxing you a few percentage points here and there on your purchases with a sales tax, to taking thousands of dollars with income or property taxes, to imprisoning you and even in some cases, taking your life.
Despite all that, it can often be quite easy to turn a blind eye to government activities. We pay our taxes to go along with the rules. We let officials appropriate that money as they see fit, whether or not we agree. We let government regulate business, which might not seem to affect us at all. It’s big topics like health care or immigration that tend to get a lot of people interested, and yet all too often, we feel powerless over the direction the government is moving. This cycle must be broken: we must cease letting the legislature pass laws we disagree with and then moving on and never coming back to get rid of them. We need legislators who will write laws that make sense for the American people and who will also repeal all the horrible laws on the books. The key here is remembering how these politicians got into office in the first place.
Sometimes all the candidates on a ballot seem the same. Whether they’re Democrat or Republican, they all seem to pass more laws, spend more money and continue down the same path we’ve been on for quite some time now. It really is a shame that there aren’t better candidates out there, people who are trustworthy and stand for real values and principles, rather than doing whatever it takes to get them elected and re-elected.
I think there are, and have been, some genuinely good candidates out there such as Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Peter Schiff and Debra Medina, but they are generally few and far between. It would be nice to see more people running for office so that we have more people to choose from and aren’t left with the situation that we see all too often: people voting for the lesser of two evils. When we are continually voting for the lesser of two evils, we are still getting evil, which is compounded over time and eventually leads our country down a road we really shouldn’t be traveling on.
I’d love to see more people run for office, even if just for local positions, and try to make a difference in our government. Americans voted for change in 2008, and yet judging by the President’s recent poll numbers, it would seem people are disappointed with the candidate running under that banner. It’s about time we see some candidates stand for real change and actually be that change we want once they are sworn into office.
The state primary election is coming up in June and the application deadline has not yet passed. Maybe you personally aren’t willing to run for office, but perhaps you know somebody who you think would be good at it. Maybe you know somebody who can’t seem to stop yelling at their television and regularly starts debates about policy. Perhaps they aren’t politically connected, have never held a position in government before, and wouldn’t be a typical candidate; I think this is a huge advantage at this point in time as this is what I believe the American public is starved for. We want to see real, down to earth people in office.
After George Washington had served his second term as president, he decided to step down from power. What a remarkable move for a man who could have held onto his power. Today we see the opposite: politicians grasping for more and more power all the time by violating the Constitution and the rule of law left and right, and in some cases (Michael Bloomberg) even campaigning for the law to be changed so that they might have more power.
We need representatives of and for the people. We need representatives who respect the Constitution and the rule of law. We need leaders who will stand for freedom above all else. The future well-being of our country demands it.