Despite what some people may think, my outlook on life is not based on how politically active my fellow citizens are. If it was, this report from the Deseret News would have made today really lousy.
Utah now has the nation’s worst voting participation rates.
We should have participation closer to 65% like Minnesota rather than 36%. We should also have more than 58% voter registration (in fact we should have more than the 67% national average).
In church today there were a number of things spoken related to Independence Day. One of the people who spokle wa a woman from the UK who noted that the celebration was of independence from Great Britain. Of course that is a natural perspective, but I think that we need to recognize that that what we are really celebrating is independence from oppresive government. In Eighteenth Century America the government of Great Britain was the embodiment of government oppression.
Today we should still be mindful of any government oppression and assert our continued independence by participating in the system and holding government accountable because freedom from government oppression can only be had by clinging to an authority higher and more lasting than the current administration. That is why each officer of government at all levels pledges to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States – now if they would all keep their pledge.
I really enjoyed Lyall pointing out the Op-Ed articles on patriotism from McCain and Obama yesterday. I think he was quite right to point out a major flaw in McCain’s statement that patriotism should come “before anything” but I don’t agree that without that flaw the editorial would have been perfect.
I really liked McCain’s reference to the patriotic rivalry of Adams and Jefferson. Though the stature of the rivals is not nearly so great, I consider the contest between McCain and Obama, like most presidential rivals, to be a contest between real patriots. These men almost universally have a great love for their country depite any individual flaws. McCain asks a very good question about our current American spirit of patriotism:
Would they (Adams and Jefferson) find that love of country was just as strong in the hearts of today’s Americans?
Unlike McCain I do not believe they would find our current love of country to be as strong among the nation as a whole. We certainly have patriots today – probably numerically more than in the 18th century – but overall and as a percentage of the population I think that they would find our patriotism to be comparatively lacking. The evidence is in the smallness of most of our individual thinking and in the bitter emptiness of most of our political dialog.
At one time I believed that Obama had the potential to be another Adams or Jefferson, but despite his gift for rhetoric he has been showing himself to be a modern politician, speaking of principles but standing on political expediency. Once again Obama demonstrates his ability to articulate truths which are hard to describe and even harder to implement:
. . . each generation must understand that the blessings of freedom require our constant vigilance, and that true patriotism also means a willingness to sacrifice . . . the liberty we defend {is} the liberty of each of us to follow our dreams. . . . the equality we seek {is} not an equality of results but the chance of every single one of us to make it if we try. (emphasis added)
Obama’s editorial was closer to perfect than McCains, but his actions are no closer to perfectly implementing those high ideals than McCain’s are.
“There’s always the chance that politics are involved in politics.” Steve Urquhart
I wonder if Steve chuckled to himself when he crafted that bit of wisdom today.
I’m always interested in ways to open up government to the average voter so I was interested when I learned about GOOOH (Hat Tip – Mark Towner). Their mission is to change the way we elect representatives and try to make those representatives more accountable to their constituents.
Because GOOOH is a process for selecting representatives (not an agenda-based party platform) we expect a very liberal candidate to be selected in San Francisco and a very conservative one in Colorado Springs — but it will be up to the GOOOH members in each district to decide.
They obviously recognize that some of their ideas will generate some friction:
The most controversial part of GOOOH is that the founder, Tim Cox, has proposed excluding politicians, actively prosecuting attorneys, and individuals with family assets over $11.5 million (250 times the median income) from the process. They are excluded not because they are bad people, but because they are overly represented in government today and, generally speaking, no longer seem to represent the common man.
Personally, as I have spent lots of time thinking and discussing the issue of term limits, I also have a problem with their current stance of promoting a limit of two terms (4 years) in the House -that seems excessively strict to me. On the other hand, it sparked an idea that I would like to explore sometime about the possible ramifications of having a bicameral legislature where one house is term limited and the other is not – allowing voters to be the term limiters in one house and forcing voters to seek fresh faces regularly in the other.
So I like the general idea and I figure that if I want to have any impact in massaging the positions of the group now is the time to act. In any case it’s worth looking into and I would recommend that anyone who is interested in improving our government should go have a look and decide if this is worthy of their support.
I really don’t mind so much if the voters in Utah always choose Republicans to represent them in Congress so long as they replace at least one incumbent on a regular basis (I’d say at least one new face every other election cycle). For that reason, if for no other, I was happy to hear that Jason Chaffetz ousted Chris Cannon in the Republican primary yesterday. District 3 will have a new face and we are guaranteed to have another new face by 2012 with the addition of District 4.
Today I am hoping that Republican primary voters show that they can see through party connections to select a candidate who might actually be qualified for the office of State Treasurer by selecting Richard Ellis to represent the party on the November ballot.
There are other races where I have a preference, but no others that I could vote in.
For all the political talk about what ails our society and how our “leaders” in Washington can fix it, I think that Peter Lovenheim has identified one real solution that can put everything back into perspective – recapturing the meaning of “neighbor.” He asks this very important question that I’d like to take a stab at answering.
Why is it that in an age of cheap long-distance rates, discount airlines and the Internet, when we can create community anywhere, we often don’t know the people who live next door?
My first guess is that this is a matter of scarce resources (time) becoming spread too thin. Because we can stay connected with our college buddies when they are spread around the country we spend less time getting to know the neighbors who may not share any interests with us. When it was more cost prohibitive to keep regular contact with our old friends we were more likely to reach out to the neighbors where we could afford to build the relationships. In fact, I think that we can safely say that prior to easy travel we had the added incentive to build neighbor relations because there was also a higher chance that we were staying closer to home and so our neighbors were likely to have history or family connections with us.
I would not argue that this is acceptable. In fact, I think that this tendency toward disconnection on the local level feeds into our growing propensity to seek solutions to all our problems on a large scale. The less we identify with our local neighborhood the less likely we are to think about concerns on a local level. The more we think in terms of national problems the more we insist and accept the erosion of liberty that almost universally follows when we try to address concerns (rightly or wrongly) on a national scale.
Does anyone else have perspectives to round out my thinking?
Obi wan nailed the truth in his reaction to Democratic Capitulation on FISA and the rule of law. In fact, he nailed it and so did his readers in the comments section:
rmwarnick said…
They all took an oath of office to support and defend the Constitution. Every one of them.
Obi wan liberali said…
They obviously took that oath seriously now did they.
The idea that we need more transit friendly ways to develop our urban and suburban areas is nto new to me. I have long believed it. The idea that government restrictions hinder as often as they help is also easy for me to accept. That’s why I was interested to read about the ways that existing zoning laws often impede smart development.
Many of us will abandon our big gas-guzzling vehicles and forsake new land-guzzling, auto-dependent suburban developments in favor of commuter hubs and “new urbanism” communities clustered near mass-transit stations.
We’ll live sensibly for a change. . . We won’t go kicking and screaming, either. Just give it a little more time. Let the air pollution and traffic congestion and gas pumps that ring up $50, $60, $70 in a blur sink in, and we’ll embrace smart growth and new urbanism and commuter hubs like grandmas hug babies and babies hug puppies.
It’s already starting to happen . . . But there’s still one big obstacle . . . If commuter hubs and bus stop/train station developments are going to become the norm, if we’re going to change our wasteful ways and ease the burden on our environment and pocketbooks, local governments have to lead, or at least get out of the way.
“High density” can no longer be dirty words. Commercial and residential zones must be melded. Those tired old requirements of two parking spaces for every doorstep have to go.
My ideals for my family living situation include a large yard and I begin to wonder if that conflicts with my ideals for smarter growth and a more transit-centric lifestyle.
I think I’ll try to tackle that issue with some ideas of how to meld the two ideals – not just for me, but in general municipal planning. Any thoughts for me to consider?
