Reality Check 101

            “The Democrats have raised nearly $100 million more than Republicans this year.  This is a wake-up call to all Republicans who thought they could ‘sit this one out.’”  So read a recent Republican National Committee letter to us faithfuls.

            There is a saying that when you point a finger three point back.  A $100 million short-fall should be alarming but not simply to lackadaisical party constituents.  People usually do or do not participate in the democratic process for specific reasons and not from last minute election day whims.  The reasons for voter apathy are frustration and disillusionment with Congress as a whole and withWashingtonpoliticians as a breed.  The next time a member of Congress mocks President Bush’s approval rating, their offices should be inundated with phone calls and e-mails reminding them of their own shameful performance.   

            In spite of what careerist politicians claim, the most pressing house-cleaning measures are common sense.  For example, a former state legislator recently publicly regretted the passage of term limits inMichigan.  His lament, and the likely lament ofWashingtonstalwarts, was rooky inexperience with the system.  But the purity of inexperience with a convoluted system of back-scratching, self-preservative wedge politics, earmarking immorality and intricate maneuvering is our only genuine hope.  The great American experiment was designed on the premise of government by the people, not by princes and princesses in Washington or Lansing who perceive themselves as sage guardians of the common good for clueless commoners.

            It was to prevent such royalist mentalities that representative democracy in the new world was formed.  Our founders’ mission statement, the Declaration of Independence and their vision statement, the Preamble to the Constitution, make that clear.

            The solutions are not yet beyond our grasp.  Americans have only to demand a new Congress at the polls, one that can pull an approval rating above 11 percent compared to the President’s 29 percent.  Our key to success is installing men and women from among ourselves, not from among the politically astute or the strategically well-placed; men and women of record not rhetoric who are patriots not politicians; men and women who have the courage to flush congressional self-entitlement, unlimited terms of power and earmarking down the sewer, as well as years-long election campaigning, the lobbying industry and the in-house jungle of rules, exceptions to the rules and loopholes to the exceptions which foster alliance-making and factious squabbling.  In essence, outside of a massive ousting of Congressional politicians and eradication of extra-constitutional systems, Congress will euthanize the nation it claims to serve. 

The other half of the illness killing our nation is large segments of her population.  TheUnited Statesis becoming less united because of an ever-increasing rule by the minority rather than the majority.  We live in a time when, for whatever reason, it is “in” or proper to walk on pins and needles in fear of offending special interest groups or segments of society (both legal and illegal)  who seem to believe that they have a special right not to be offended.  Americans increasingly contribute to the dissolution ofAmericaby abusing the legislative and judicial system which affords them all that they have in the first place .  Of course they see no problem with offending the religious, the “straight”, the legal citizen or the self-sufficient in the name of tolerance, diversity and poor-me entitlement.

Unless Americans find it within themselves to deny their hyper-individualism and “I deserve” mentalities long enough to unite against Washingtonian failures and minority abuses for the common (not personal) good, they will lose all that they had in the first place.