Posted on 12/07/2004 12:25:26 PM PST by CHARLITE
The founding fathers knew this day would come, when “we the people” would become so focused on our own individual desires, that we would no longer act in the interest of our nations needs.
They talked about America’s most fatal threat coming from within, in the form of self-servitude. They spoke of America’s eventual fall from the weight of decisions made by “me the people” without regard for “we the people”.
They knew that America’s long term future would depend on “the people’s” ability to resist the urge to vote ourselves money from the treasury, once we figured out that we could. In short, they knew that a truly free self-governed people would be free to self-destruct.
They knew that the one flaw in America’s original design would surface once “we the people” realized we held the power to vote strictly in our own self-interests. Consequently, they knew that America’s success would produce the seeds of failure as well.
The fall of America will come from within, just as they worried. It begins with each of us putting “me” ahead of “we”.
Our society is based entirely on this premise today, with all the hyphenated American’s who are more concerned with where they came from than where they are going, more impressed by that which makes us different, than that which makes us the same.
Everyone talks about the divide in America today, but nobody takes personal responsibility for it. Many talk of the need for national unity, but nobody really wants to unite. It might be counter-productive to our own self-interests. In most cases it would be, at least in the short term.
The “me the people” system of self-governance provides a special opportunity for would-be career politicians. It gives them the ability to deal with us as voting blocks instead of as individuals. It makes it possible for them to divide up segments of the populous based on mathematical electoral equations, pandering to the wishes of a chosen few, at the expense of “we the people”.
During election season, everything becomes a wedge issue, and today, we start the next campaign season upon completion of each election. So wedge issues are perpetually in our headlines, making certain that “we” never forget about “me”.
Because all of the focus is on “me”, we naturally gravitate towards those who speak to our individual ideologies and desires. We accept as fact, only that which supports our agenda, even when there is no factual basis.
If someone challenges our set of facts, we simply discard them as partisans, as political operative’s intent on advancing their agenda at our expense. We assume there is no validity to their case, simply because it doesn’t support our agenda, our ideology.
Anyone who is “anti-me”, must be a bigot, a “con” of some type, a “brown shirt”. We recognize that our opponents have a clear agenda, but we don’t realize that we do too. The only question is what is our personal agenda?
Today, that defines which voting block the DNC will stick you in. Gay Right’s advocates go into that block, Abortion activists in theirs, Affirmative action folks in theirs, and so on. Add them all together, and you have a party of single issue voters.
Ask yourself a question, and no matter which voting block defines you today, answer it honestly.
If the Republican Party were willing to accept same-sex marriage, affirmative action, abortion, illicit drug use, removing religion from public view, free stuff for everyone, and a kinder gentler means of dealing with our enemies abroad, would Democrats even have a Party today?
We all know the answer to this question; it was just a reality check. Move these voting blocks to the “R” column in the last 30 years of elections, and the DNC would not muster 10% of the popular vote, or have a party. That makes these the “issues of division”, and those who profit by them, the dividers.
The problem is, while each of these issues is supported by some people focused on their own self-interests, none of them are supported by the majority of “we the people”. The reason they don’t have broad public support has nothing to do with anyone’s desire to trample on anyone’s personal liberty.
It has to do with what is in the best interest of our country, and it is after all, “we the people” who are charged with the responsibility of making such judgments in this self-governed Republic of ours.
Now sometimes, Republicans are guilty as well. This word “mandate” seems to get batted around a lot these days, implying that a certain magical margin of victory gives them the Right to tyrannize the other side of the aisle. This view is equally wrong and every bit as short sighted…
Let’s face it, we all know the dismal future of a divided country, and anyone paying half attention has already figured out that only wannabe career politicians benefit from our division.
What nobody seems willing to admit is that we have created this division ourselves, by focusing all of our attention on “me” issues, forgetting that the “we” issues are of much greater importance, of much greater consequence too.
Can a house divided stand? Never in history has one been able to, so there is no reason to believe our experience will end any differently.
Can our house be united? Only if “we” take the focus off of “me”.
Is anyone willing to change in order to unite our nation? Only those willing to face the reality that this divide is entirely self-inflicted. Promoted and exploited by political operatives for sure, but created by us, as a direct result of our self-centered single issue agendas.
America has united in the past, and it will again, when America comes first… Not one day sooner!
About the Writer: J. B. Williams notes that he is a business man, husband, father, and a writer. His website is at http://www.jb-williams.com J. B. receives e-mail at JBW@JB-Williams.com
Rats want you to believe that they're the party of 'we' when they are actually the party of 'me'. They wouldn't know how to do something for the good of 'we the people' over 'me, the pompous, snobbish a..hole'.
Nice article. Too true.
BTTT
-Eric
I've been trying to put my finger on this whole diversity cr@p forced on us at work (and everywhere else), and that statement right there nails it!
bump
Bump
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution work for me. Simple to read and understand.
This doesn't say much. Yes, we are divided into groups. It would be nice if it were not so, but it is. Wishing won't change. Compromise is not always appropriate. Some things are worth fighting over, some things are worth dividing over. The best thing we have going for us is that we are a nation of 50 States. The Dems hate that and want to compromise down to a single one-size fits all polity. In large part they have succeeded. Social Security, Section 8, Medicare, these are not programs States can opt out of.
I have no interest in compromise with Socialists. They are misguided, but certainly THINK they are doing the right thing for everyone. If you told them "think we" they would say they are: that's why we need more free clinics and free food. Whatever.
The author may be a great thinker but he fails to say anything meaningful in this essay. Next!
The author is condemning individuality, while stressing the need for the collective.
And he claims individuality is the reason Americans started voting themselves money from the public treasury?!
Um, excuse me but the painfully obvious fact is ALL the taxes and socialistic entitlements that follow come putting the collective over the individual!
If people kept their own money (gee, maybe that has something to do with individuality) and stopped taxing others for "the common good" NONE of this would have happened to begin with!
And then he has the raw nerve to blame individualists for socialistic behavior!? And if only we stopped thinking for ourselves, socialism would end??????? Now that's ignorant.
Amen brother!
And it isn't as if our government is dwindling to nothing because of all this supposed "Me the People." Certainly the Founders would not recognize our current government as what they intended.
While JB makes some valid points, he also sets off some alarms. It is not America that is great, but the people that make it great. I cringed at the use of the communal 'we'. The greatest heritage of our country is it's commitment to individual freedom.
While denouncing the 'me first' school of thought, there has to be a degree of acceptance to individuals who subscribe to that selfish position. To champion individual freedom means to accept some of the inherent inequities and negative aspects that come with it.
The real threat to our country from within, is not the 'me firsters', but those who seek to manipulate them in collectivist fashion to further entrench their reliance on government for the sustenance of that selfishness. Those that seek to mislead the citizenry into believing that compassion is not an individual trait, but something doled out by government. That is the premise behind entitlement programs, defining compassion as a willingness to not give of oneself, but to take from some to redistribute to others. All the while, abdicating the individuals personal responsibility to show compassion to their fellow man, because government will do it for them.
Defend individual freedom and liberty, and you defend what makes this country great. 'We the people' refers to the people as individuals, not as a collective. The Bill of Rights spells out individual rights, the rights of each person. If, in the effort to champion our individual beliefs, we lose sight of this basic concept, we begin to erode those very individual freedoms we all hold dear.
I think you summed up a lot of what I was trying to say in post 11.
Thanks, Freeeee. I saw that use of the communal 'we' and alarm bells started ringing. JB's opinion piece is a perfect example of putting words together that sound good, on first glance. But, if you step back, the picture gets uglier.
James Madison
TUESDAY, JUNE 26TH. 1787
"... It ought, finally, to occur to a people deliberating on a government for themselves, that as different interests necessarily result from the liberty meant to be secured, the major interest might, under suden impulses, be tempted to commit injustice on the minority. In all civilized countries the people fall into different classes, having a real or supposed difference of interests. There will be creditors and debtors; farmers, merchants, and manufacturers. There will be, particularly, the distinction of rich and poor.
It was true, as had been observed (by Mr. PINCKNEY), we had not among us those hereditary distinctions of rank which were a great source of the contests in the ancient governments, as well as the modern States of Europe; nor those extremes of wealth or poverty, which characterize the latter. We cannot, however, be regarded, even at this time, as one homogeneous mass, in which every thing that affects a part will affect in the same manner the whole. In framing a system which we wish to last for ages, we should not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce. An increase of population will of necessity increase the proportion of those who will labor under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings.
These may in time outnumber those who are placed above the feelings of intelligence. According to the equal laws of suffrage, the power will slide into the hands of the former. No agrarian attempts have yet been made in this country; but symptoms of a levelling spirit, as we have understood, have sufficiently appeared in a certain quarter, to give notice of the future danger. How is this danger to be guarded against, on the republican principles?"
The entire message of the piece is built around the idea that we now have something called “voting blocks”, groups intentionally divided for the purpose of calculating and manipulating voters by pandering to their “individual” desires, usually at the expense of the masses in the form of an ever “growing” government. Then we wonder why we are divided as a nation…
I read comments about “alarms” going off over the word “we” the people, as if “we” is a new code word for “communist” principles, supporting my assertion that the Right is a bit overzealous in their thinking today too…maybe even a little paranoid…
I read a call for suspicion, (or two), from people who are supposed to know their history (conservatives), doubting my claim that the founders worried about us killing the goose that laid the golden egg by endlessly voting ourselves money from the treasury, causing an ever increasing need for bigger and bigger government, as a result of involving itself deeper and deeper in the private lives of citizens, as though we all don’t already know this story all too well.
The article takes aim at liberals for their selfish agenda of an ever growing government, needed to supply their never ending demand for free stuff. And it takes aim at those on the Right who think any margin of victory gives them the Right to run roughshod over those who have no power.
Nowhere did I suggest that conservative should compromise their principles for a moral, free, prosperous nation, quite the contrary. Anyone who knows my body of work would consider this suggestion insane. Check www.JB-Williams.com or my archives at www.TheRant.us, or www.AmericanDaily.com, for starters…
But somehow, the message was missed. As I should have been able to predict, neither side is able to see the flaws in their own judgment today. Appropriately, I have received comments from both sides, indicating that I only attacked them, which is a clear indication that I got it just about right in the article. Both sides are only able to understand and support the criticism of the other…
One of the comments had it right; some things are worth “fighting” for. Uniting in our common causes (not the voting block causes) is one of those things. Uniting behind those things we have in common like, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, those things that are the cornerstone of our existence. The federal government was never intended to deal with “voting block” type issues.
This is the point of the article…as a conservative, I don’t need or want anyone fixing my life, I only want a healthy vibrant country, I can take care of my own life…Every American should feel the same, but they don’t…and that is why this article was written."
Brilliant analysis, and good further explanation!
Bump for reference!
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