I am in no mood this election year. I mean it too, NO MOOD. NO mood to be jerked around. No mood to be blackmailed into casting my vote a certain way. No mood to be lied to. No mood to listen to the same political lies I’ve heard all my life in an election year. I mean just how stupid do the Politicians and the Press think we are anyway?
I know that come every election, we begin with our ideals and then somehow drop our expectations to “getting the guy from our Party elected”, or the “lesser of two evils”. I mean in a capitalist society we thrive on winning and an election in a democracy is all about “winning”. It’s the reason we have the kind of vitriolic campaigns we have, the smear campaigns, the negative ads, etc. The object is to get elected. Hell, what does it matter how many campaign promises get thrown under the bus [damn that phrase is over used nowadays], as long as it wins the election.
The Democratic primary season was all about getting Democrats to vote for a candidate. That means “appeal to the Left”. But, now we’re in the general election cycle, and it’s all about the Independents. After all, no Left of center Democrat is going to cross party lines and vote for a Republican, no matter how many issues are dumped along the way. That was then; this is now. It can all be justified in the “He’s only doing it to win the election” meme. We have to win this election-don’t we? So, no need to stick to any policy positions during the primary. Who cares? GET ELECTED. That’s all that matters. Think of the Court appointments. Think of Iran. Think of the mess in Washington. Get the man elected. Don’t look too close at the man behind the curtain. He just needs to get elected. March to the center, and win, win, win in November.
I’m a left of center moderate. Just so there’s full disclosure. An Independent to the pollsters. I hate political parties, but see how they came about. I hate how we elect leaders, but don’t have a better solution. I wish I did. I would tell you all about it, and try and convince you to follow my lead.
All I do have is a sense of outrage whenever a politician wins primary votes saying one thing, only to reverse during the election–all to get elected. I have to ask myself, which one was the real candidate? The one during the primary or the one during the general? Or was the person I saw during both election cycles just a slick politician doing first what it took to get nominated, and then what it took to get elcted–and lying to us all the way to Washington. Seducing me [and a country] for a vote only to then be asked to BEND OVER.
And mark my words, I do not think either Party or either candidate is any better than the other. Both sides spend my tax dollars and deliver very little for the amount of money they have to work with. They’re both bankrupting the country and breaking the backs of working Americans.
Anyway, I found some quotes that reminded me that we are a nation of laws and they are supposed to work for the people. We’re not a nation of political parties, or men that are above the law. Politicians are our public servants. STOP and think about that. They are our servants. We should be able to trust them to do that, but we’re only voting to keep the worst of the lot out office.
Anyway here are the quotes.. from men and women who thought that policy should serve the people. Read it and weep–because we have fallen so far, and so fast.
In matters of Power, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
— Thomas Jefferson
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
— John Adams
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants.
— William Pitt
No legislative act contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above the master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people; that men, acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.
— Alexander Hamilton
Any time we deny any citizen the full exercise of his constitutional rights, we are weakening our own claim to them.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation.
— James Madison
[and a personal favorite of mine]
The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
— Justice Robert A. Jackson
It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.
— Thomas Paine
The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.
–Patrick Henry
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country.
— Theodore Roosevelt
If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates, but let there be no change by usurpation; for though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.
— George Washington
Be not intimidated… nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.
— John Adams
Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
— Daniel Webster
The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.
— Samuel Adams
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
— Abraham Lincoln
Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
— Benjamin Franklin
If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.
— Samuel Adams
History teaches us that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.
— Thurgood Marshall
Emergency does not create power. Emergency does not increase granted power or remove or diminish the restrictions imposed upon power granted or reserved. The Constitution was adopted in a period of grave emergency. Its grants of power to the federal government and its limitations of the power of the States were determined in the light of emergency, and they are not altered by emergency.
— Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
— Thomas Jefferson
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
— Abraham Lincoln
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
— Henry David Thoreau
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
— Thomas Paine
My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.
— Barbara Jordan
