Tag / America

by Greg

The Presidential Election of 2012

“I’ve grown weary of the Republican primary campaigns.”

I think I may have spoken those words even an entire year ago.

Aren’t you? Or are you not even following along?

A friend asked a couple times recently what I thought of the presidential election race and I hesitated to offer my thoughts both because they are honestly not that well-formed, and equally because I am just a bit tired of thinking about it already!

But, as we are a republic, and we are electing one third of our governmental structure in about ten months, I suppose we all must pay attention at some point.

(But over a year before the election?!?)

Wearied by all the banter I see in articles (and subsequent reader comments) as well as things I hear on radio, and see in the multiple email forwards I receive from my politically-astute Dad, I decided to look up that website I had discovered a year or two ago.

VoteSmart.org has their VoteEasy tool up and running again (I’d guess it never comes down) and it’s a great way to start out gathering information and narrowing down who might be a candidate that would best represent you in Washington.

Please note that I said start out. It is critical that we investigate all claims made by reporters, political ads (especially these), and even friends. Whenever possible, go to the source.

I can’t emphasize that enough. (I did the best I could with the <strong> and <em> tags…)

I answered all the questions that VoteEasy uses to help you figure out which candidate might be the “best match” for you. I believe it’s clear that the site creators know they are just a good starting point because they don’t just tell you who to vote for. You can click on the picture of your Best Match and read their voting record, bills they authored, read/hear speeches, and see tons of information in their public record. Plus, you can of course click on all the other candidates, too, and do the same.

But, as I intend to do, verify the claims of any resource. And it’s best to verify by going to the original source as much as possible. The closer the information is to original (not filtered through several reports) the more reliable. (The reliability of the source should be gauged as well.)

It’s a lot of work, but I think we have a pretty messed up situation at all levels of government because for too long nearly all of us have neglected to actually verify the information we are fed; especially the crap that you hear from almost every political ad. Yuck.

(Ads in general greatly annoy me, but…. that’s a subject for a future post. It’s in my Draft folder…)

I’d love to know what your resources are for information on the candidates for President. Please add your thoughts and—most helpfully—links to the comments below.

The condition of our government is really always a reflection of the condition of us: We The People. After all, our elected officials—corrupt, greedy, power-hungry, disconnected, slimy politicians though they may be—are indeed pulled from the pool of us.

I believe that for so long we’ve been trained that our votes don’t matter. Conditioned to think we should leave government and “politics” up to the professionals. Sure we can vote, but since it’s not “our thing” we vote for the party our parents or our friends like (sometimes simply to avoid scorn) and we are quite easily swayed by the propaganda-like ads that bombard us for nearly a whole year before a “big” election. And so, we go on barely paying attention while money and power determine who “represents” us and the big-picture direction our country will take in the near and long-term future.

And it will only continue to get worse as long as we think that the government dictates to us, rather than represents us. We are the vehicle for change in a republican government (note the small ‘r’) and that goes beyond a vote cast every four years.

Get involved. Know what’s being done with your tax money. Both in your town and state, locally, and on the federal level as your state is represented in Washington. Information and knowledge go a long way; wield a lot of power.

But most of all, be a person of integrity. Character matters. You probably know that. You probably live that. But one reason we so disapprove of our representatives in government is that for so long in this country, character and integrity have not mattered. And, since our elected leaders are us… well… it’s a rather bleak picture.

The only way to reverse the trend is to know what you believe and live it. Honor life, freedom, liberty. Consider others before yourself. Live at peace with everyone.

It is indeed we who abide in Jesus who could (if we would) most affect the political landscape of our country.

I’m not talking about elections. I’m talking about living lives of integrity, loving justice, and treating everyone with the grace and mercy we’ve known so deeply we taste it.

That’s the only way we will truly change our country. No politician, no elected official, no representative can do anything as monumental as a concerned neighbor. You will most likely live your entire life not residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, as will I. But if each one of us treated the other like we’d want to be treated, then our country—even in Washington—would be the light on a hill our founders dreamt it could be.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with this. Watch this video. I posted it a while back. It’s a really neat way to see the current condition of our republic. Just depends on your perspective.

by Greg

Both Sides of the Story

I’ve mentioned here many times that I am learning how crucial it is to see life from multiple angles. Getting not only information from people with opposing viewpoints, but really trying to step into their shoes; see from their perspective. It’s just so crucial to communication, to cooperation, interaction… to society in general.

And so often, we—being human, flawed, self-absorbed—we aren’t even aware that there are other legitimate perspectives!

Our son Ian has been very interested in the World War II time period of history. He’s been learning every bit he can not just about the battles, but the people—the leaders in particular—involved in the story. Winston Churchill and FDR, as well as Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. He’s previously read about Woodrow Wilson and WWI… definitely has a serious passion for history and biographies!

So much so that Mom (Jen) has even recently taken up a book about Roosevelt titled, “FDR’s Splendid Deception”, about the fact that President Roosevelt was never seen public in his wheelchair, so as to not appear weak. From all accounts, it’s a fascinating story.

Somehow all of this brought to mind a movie I had seen some time back. I posted a mini-review on that movie, Letters from Iwo Jima, and it’s counterpart, Flags of our Fathers, here on this site in 2007. Please go ahead and click the link and read that story. (That’s actually the main reason for this post: that you’d re-read that older post!)

The fascinating thing was, Flags was released first, and then Iwo Jima. They depicted the exact same story from history, but from opposite sides of the battle.

How much better off we’d be if we could do that with nearly every conflict or disagreement!

For a long time now, Jen and I and I have been reading through a modern translation of the Federalist Papers called The Original Argument. In Federalist #1, Alexander Hamilton addresses this subject (in an atmosphere where there were passionate arguments for and against the proposed Constitution):

Since the motives behind each of the opinions are so strong, it is certain that wise and good people will be found on both sides of the issues. This fact should remind us all to remain modest in our opinion—no matter how right we think we are.

I think that is still my favorite quote from all the papers we’ve examined so far. And again, how different would our political climate be today if that were the way everyone approached every issue, whether controversial or relatively benign?

Forget politics. What if we all treated each other that way? What if we presumed that we were not smarter, better, right-er than everyone else around us.

“Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.”

That’s where it starts. You can’t really even care about the perpective of your adversary or opponent—or anyone—if you know you are in some way (or all ways) superior.

I’d really encourage you to read that post about Letters from Iwo Jima, and as I recommended now almost five years ago, if you haven’t seen it… do.

The more we can see things from other view points, other perspectives, the more we can live at peace with others around us. (Which is what Paul says we need to do in the verse just before what I quoted above.)

So I encourage you to take a walk in someone else’s shoes today. You might be surprised what you see.

Scripture quote is Philippians 2:3-4, from the New Living Translation

by Greg

Local Politics

If you’re like me, you got a sticker similar to this a couple days ago at your local polling booth. (Our son, Ian, was with me, and he actually got my sticker.) It is your badge of honor for participating in our great representative governmental system. This year may not have been the more exciting, national-level elections, but they’re still important.

Right?

When I scanned the ballot as I was casting my vote, I noticed that in many cases, the people running for the various local town, village, and county positions were unopposed. Some of them were listed as the representative for all of the parties! (How can you be backed by all of the parties?)

This made me wonder, why are we even doing this? I’ll admit to not being too plugged in to all the issues that face my village, town, etc, but I really didn’t know that these local representative positions were so unimportant as to have only one person raising their figurative hand to accept the spot! It actually made me want to run, just to compel people to look into the reasons you might want to cast your vote for whomever you end up choosing.

The trouble is, I don’t think that matters. We’ve become so politically polarized in our country that we just let the party that the candidate is listed under direct our vote. (That’s good for those chaps who were listed under all the parties!) It doesn’t matter what the person under that banner has done, or believes, or wants to do … as long as they have the right party flag, they get the vote!

The other piece is the glamorization of the national political elections. Any news you might hear about elections is often so heavily weighted toward the national elections, national issues, that the local races aren’t even noticed. They aren’t exciting enough to want to vote for (or apparently, to run for).

And in the end, I’m not even sure what our local government does. (Which is likely all my fault. I’m sure I could do a little investigating and fairly quickly find out at least more than I know now.)

So if I were to add my name to the ticket, what is it that I would be hoping to accomplish? Probably lowering taxes (we pay something like $23/1000 for our school taxes, plus town/county, and village property taxes) as well as trying to figure out why we need all that tax revenue in the first place!

Then, soon after that, I think I’d try to figure out a way to let other people in our community know (once I discover what it is) what exactly it is that our elected local representatives do for us. (If I discover that such positions are so unnecessary that there aren’t even people willing to volunteer to run for that office, then we can just probably do away with it altogether!)

So, this year’s elections are over. The unopposed candidates have been duly elected to their spots. But watch out in 2012 (maybe 2013, since 2012 is the big presidential election year…) you might have to make a choice which candidate you choose! And, since I am not affiliated with any particular party … I might just create a new one! 🙂

[post-tiles posts=’4′]

by Greg

Testing The System: Failure?

Curious as to the scope and effectiveness of the Nationwide Emergency Alert System test scheduled for 2pm EST today, I did a little research. A quick scan of various news sources seems to suggest it didn’t go off “without a hitch”.

ABC News out of DC reports that the first-ever nationwide test today “appeared to be a failure“, while CBS New York reported still more technical difficulties.

The ABC report described the test as being, “designed to allow the president to commandeer the airwaves and deliver an audio message to the U.S. people in a national emergency.”

This is either complete technical ignorance and buffoonery, or maybe something slightly more insidious? I’m guessing it’s the first. Hoping?

Haven’t these people heard of social media? Within seconds of the event, the entire world now knows news before any big cable news or radio station can broadcast it. Twitter, Facebook, Google+… you name it. Regular people report the news and literally within seconds to at most minutes, that news has spread with more success than apparently the EAS had today. (And they had their test planned for weeks… even months?)

Fascinating …

Maybe someone can give FEMA a crash-course in the latest technological advancements. Seems like they could benefit from a little refresher.

by Greg

November 2nd, 2010 Elections: VoteSmart.org

2010 Elections - Vote!It’s election time (or nearly so) and that means we American citizens of voting age get to head out and browse a sheet full of names and parties—many of which we’ve never heard of until stepping into the voting booth—and then flip some switches and pull a big lever in order to fulfill our duties as the electorate. Problem is, what good does it do to vote for people whom you do not know? How can they represent you? And even worse (in my opinion) what good does it do to vote for a particular candidate just because they slapped a party name on their name tag?

That’s not how it should be. It’s our responsibility to know whom we are voting for, and why we are voting for them, and how they will represent us on local, state, and national levels.

It really is up to us.

So I’ve been thinking, I really need to set up a website where I can post information on all our local candidates, so that we all can read up on every candidate and, after knowing the facts, we can make a fair and impartial assessment and choose the candidate that best represents what we would want our government to look like and to do. That’s how it should work, anyway. But I’m just one guy… how could I have the time to look up all the candidates even just in the elections I can vote for, let alone the rest of the country?

So maybe a wiki of some sort? But… that’s still a bunch of work. (I am having this idea way too late, I suppose…)

Enter Google. After a quick search for “learn about candidates” I discovered VoteSmart.org. I don’t know much about them yet, but they do go out of their way on the About Us page to say they are independent, impartial, non-partisan, and they have good and equal representation from conservative and liberal viewpoints.

Cool. That’s just what I was looking for!

So I’ll see what else I can find, but for now, have a look at VoteSmart. (And maybe see if you can help them out. They are all volunteer and at a quick glance it looked like they are always grateful for help)

They also have a fun tool called “Vote Easy“. An interactive, Flash site that makes the learning more fun. You put in what you think about a dozen or so key issues (and how important they are to you) and then it helps match you with candidates, based on what is publicly know about them.

Please educate yourself. And, do so directly from the sources, not from political ads, talk shows, magazines, cable news channels, or other such secondary sources. I can’t emphasize that enough. We have, in general, gotten very lazy about this. Take the time to be a responsible, voting citizen. The resources are available to us, and you can vote with a bit more of an easy conscience when you know you’ve had your say—and you actually know what you said.

Voting day is just two weeks away. So get to work! 🙂

by Greg

Currently: ReValue America Lecture Tour

ReValue America - NY - Self, Marriage, Family, Community.This past weekend, Jen & I were hosts to one stop on the ReValue America lecture series tour. Dr. Shanon Brooks is giving a series of free, two-hour lectures across NY State (as well as California, Colorado, and his home state of Utah, I believe) intended to inspire a new generation of American Founders.

And inspire he does.

There were about 130 people at our event on Saturday night. And nearly everyone that I spoke to there left feeling inspired to educate themselves both in regards to the foundations of our country—its forms of government, the documents that were created by its founders, and the people who were its founders—and the people, books and other classic works and thinking that formed the foundation of these “founders” lives, and their values. In essence, to get for ourselves, the same education that these people—ordinary people, just like us—had and drew from to establish the most free nation in the history of mankind.

(That’s a pretty lofty goal, don’t you say?)

Even more lofty, perhaps, is Brooks’ goal to get a library of books (I think it’s 5 or 6 books) into one million American homes. The books are about American government and foundational principals and education. (We’ve read a couple of them, and they are good reads presenting some challenging and worthy ideas.)

There are a few remaining dates on this part of the tour, which will end this Sunday night in Rochester, NY. If you visit the ReValue NY website (revalueny.com) you can see a schedule of the remaining lectures. If you live in NY State and can attend one, we do feel it is very much worth the time and effort.

You may just be inspired.

The follow up to this event is more intensive. Dr. Brooks will be leading interested participants in much more in-depth constitutional studies, American history, and then other great classic works which were the foundations of our own founding documents (Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Federalist Papers, etc.) You’ll read/study on your own and then attend a monthly lecture day with other fellow students. He calls this series the Foundations of Liberty course. (There is no official “credit” given for this course, only the education you receive from reading and studying these things together.)

Over the next couple days I will be posting a few thoughts inspired by the event we attended. Till then, I wanted to be sure to let you know this is happening, in case you might be able to attend and be inspired to educate yourself and to preserve freedom and virtues for yourself, your family, your community, and even our country. Are there other ways to do that? Of course! But this is one way to spend two hours that I am nearly certain will accomplish that end.

So click the link and head out to a lecture near you!

For further information:

by Greg

Restoring Honor Rally in DC: Not About Politics

You’ll hear a lot of different stories regarding today’s “political” rally in Washington, DC. You’ll hear things like “Thousands gather for rally” (Washington Post) or, “Glenn Beck Rally Has People Seeing Red” (NPR) or, “Glenn Beck Rally “Blatantly Political,” Says Top Democrat” (CBS News). There are some media reporting tens of thousands, but many are simply saying that “thousands” gathered for this event.

Interesting…

As you’ll see from the photos below, there were upwards of 100,000 computers tuned into the rally via UStream, and crowd estimates from people who were there were in the hundreds of thousands, not just thousands.

The main point is that the two-day event was much more a Christian convention (minus the exhibitors) than anything political. And not just Christian (though that was the primary viewpoint expressed) but all “brands” of Christians, Jews, Muslims … anyone who places their faith and trust in God as a core of who they are, and how they live.

There were three main emphases: Faith, Hope, and Charity. Awards were given to three Americans who exemplified those three attributes. The call to everyone (in attendance, or watching, and just to all Americans in general) was to restore honor to our country by first turning to God and getting ourselves right with him (faith, hope) – then living that out in our charity toward others.

Not sure that’s how it will be reported, but that’s how I saw it (admittedly, only via the UStream feed, not in person).

Someday I hope we can stop immediately discrediting people based on political party affiliation, or religion, economic status, skin color, and whatever else we categorize and judge each other by. Then we can listen to a people who are different than us, and find our commonality, rather than exaggerate our differences.

Perhaps that falls under the “I have a dream” category? Appropriate on the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr’s speech…

Perhaps someday the dream will be reality. We live in a broken world, so I don’t know that it ever will be, but Beck is right: it starts with a heart changed by the grace of God. He is our source of peace, and joy, and hope.

Not any man, or political party or ideology.

PHOTOS FROM RESTORING HONOR RALLY
(screen shots of Ustream feed)
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by Greg

Ronald Reagan: “Those Voices Don’t Speak For The Rest Of Us”

Saw this video shared by a few friends on Facebook today and decided to watch. I just can’t believe how much I agree with Ronald Reagan. There must be some things I do not agree with, but in almost everything I read, hear, or see he just presents perfectly the distinction between individual freedom and responsibility, and government(authority)-based control by a few over the masses. The latter is not the American way, though it has been slowly becoming our way for many generations now.

Maybe someday we (America) will be strong and well enough to realize and reassert our freedoms that are still protected by our Constitution. Currently apathy and ignorance enshroud the full understanding of freedom for many of us. Maybe we should all be taught not only about the founders of our country, but our 40th president as well.