Responsibility
Growing up my Dad was involved in many community organizations the Hospital Board, 4-H leadership, Water Board, Chamber of Commerce Board and the Gunnison Guide and Outfitters organization. He was involved because that is what you do as a responsible citizen. He cared about his county and his place in it and worked for the best outcomes for all.
He, as do I believed in conservation of our land, water and animals. His life was whole watching a bull elk graze on a hillside, but also harvested their meat for our family, a sacrifice he did not take lightly for he revered the wildlife. My dad was honest and responsible; I can only hope to fill his shoes as I follow his civic path forward.
People of this country from the inception of the Colonies had to work together to feed the group, fight fire, set up trade organization and develop their townships to function at the top of their game for it was a matter of life or death. Without coordinating trade, food supply and work efforts the colonies would have failed long before the first states formed. It was an unspoken responsibility and it carried over to the earliest formation of government where rules were set and laws eventually followed. The irresponsible ones didn’t make it.
To this day, all of us have a responsibility to our country and frankly the immigrants take it more serious than most. They came from oppression, brutal regimes and feared for their lives on a daily basis from leaders of countries they fled. My husband’s family, my mother’s family and most families I know, came here as immigrants and built a democracy out of nothing when it comes to government. Sure, they had some bumps and bruises, but they had written our Constitution and the Bill of Rights to be a living, breathing document that could, when necessary be added to as the country evolved.
Unwritten in that document is the fact that we all have responsibility to the Constitution and the country. We are the truth tellers and are supposed to oversee its’ application. We have the responsibility to engage by attending meetings, writing our lawmakers and most important of all, to vote. Without the vote, democracy is dead.
The very idea anyone would try to detour the vote of the people is to shut down our democracy forever, and frankly I for one, will not stand for it. Democracy started as an experiment and it worked, but it cannot continue with our government bodies talking people into its’ failure. Telling Americans they have a dishonest voting system? Good grief, the same states have mail ballots that did in 2016 and Trump was elected, so what is he talking about. He didn’t win necessarily by ballot but it wasn’t a huge discrepancy like he is conjuring up in people’s mind now. He tried to tell the gullible then that the “election is rigged, unless I win.”
At any rate, the responsibility to take care of this country and its’ people comes with the job of President, just as it is your responsibility to vote, stay engaged and read up on the issues. We have all failed in our jobs, so we have a runaway train we may not catch before we run out of track.
It is incumbent on all of us to bother to learn the issues and the facts. This election cycle and last has not been about issues, because this President doesn’t know about the issues. He understands bullying and the power of the lie if it is repeated over and over again. Even though real issues don’t pass his lips there are many to consider. Bill Barr our Attorney General has exposed how fragile the Constitution is by the very bastardizing of the document.
Somehow we must tighten the loopholes he has used to twist the laws. But, how far can we go with that without jeopardizing the very liquidity of the document so that it can still remain a living writ? It is difficult to know and that is exactly what our founders wrestled with nearly 250 years ago. Refusal to answer the House with witnesses and documents is another area of defiance we will have to address and unless we do the precedence will harden like concrete making it impossible to hold another President accountable.
The Supreme Court will revisit nearly every law of consequence decided over that last several decades. If they are over turned, what will be sacred when it comes to law? If we survive as a country, everything our founders had to ponder, we will ponder. It is our responsibility. Can it even happen where people will come to the table for salvation or simply for the contents of the purse?
If we survive as a democracy, we have our work cut out for us. Will we have the stamina to work long nights to hammer out a path forward when we couldn’t even save our own people from death? Can we move forward for the good of the country or simply mouth the words of our allegiance? It will take responsibility and there isn’t much of that left.
