Sometimes I get stuck in my own head. It's a quirk of my personality that my husband, at least, has learned to appreciate. Though it doesn't seem like it while it's happening, it's usually a very productive process that lets me work through a significant amount of concerns I have all at once. And that is where I have been lately...I've been stuck in my own mind.

What I've come back with is this: Americans are still much too content with what little they've retained to be willing to risk that on change.

Perhaps I'm being unfair here, but the truth of the matter is that in comparison to much of the world Americans are still not all that "uncomfortable" and if comfort is the goal then we are sitting pretty. The majority of Americans, which is not true of the majority (in actual population) of the world, have enough to eat, clothes to wear, access to education, and luxuries like clean water and electricity. However, that is not the "objective," if you will, of the American dream.

America should be a great nation that leads the world in productive, progressive ways. By this, I do NOT mean the liberally defined "progressive" that's bantered about. I'm stepping away from politics, American or otherwise, to talk about true progress.

As I've previously mentioned in comments to other posts, I've been reading a book entitled Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville and while there's many ways I can expound on this particular book, both negatively (as per the author's conclusions) and positively, there is one particular aspect of this work that I found very disturbing in relation to the objectives of Vote Out Incumbents for Democracy.

America, even contemporary America, is supposed to be a democratic republic. Yet, as per de Tocqueville's description, many of the traits of contemporary America better reflect that attributes which he paired with an aristocracy.

Perhaps that statement gives you pause; if not, I would assert that is should. America mirrors the attributes of an aristocracy!?! I readily admit I find that very disturbing indeed.

One of the purposes of Vote Out Incumbents for Democracy, as per our Mission Statement, is to educate voters. And here, perhaps, is why.

Democracy in America (from section 55, pages 298-299):

If education enables men at all times to defend their independence, this is most especially true in democratic times. When all men are alike, it is easy to found a sole and all-powerful government by the aid of mere instinct. But men require much intelligence, knowledge, and art to organize and to maintain secondary powers under similar circumstances, and to create, amidst the independence and individual weakness of the citizens, such free associations as may be able to struggle against the tyranny without destroying public order.
--emphasis added

I suggest to you that Vote Out Incumbents for Democracy is exactly such an association, one that is struggling against the tyranny and one that is doing so in hopes that

public order need not be destroyed in order for beneficial change to take place. Yet, acquiring the support and assistance of the populace, even those amongst the populace who claim to agree with our intentions and our strategies, is a battle which we seem to be losing to the apparent apathy of that self-same populace.

I fear, perhaps, that those who are running our current political institutions embraced the Tao Te Ching too fully as part of their political ideology:

excerpt from Chapter 3
The Master leads by
emptying people's minds,
filling their bellies,
weakening their ambitions,
and making them become strong.
Preferring simplicity and freedom from desires,
avoiding the pitfalls of knowledge and wrong action.

Is this the America we envision for ourselves? Do we want to be a people who are kept well-fed, happy and stupid by those who govern us? It seems to me that this is exactly what is taking place. My husband is a decade older than I, and the education he received between grades K-12 was considerably more substantial than my own. The same is true in comparing my husband to those who are a decade or two older than he. Is this the pattern we wish to continue to follow?

If your answer is the resounding "NO!" that mine is, then there are two things we need to consider, a long-term goal and a short-term goal. The long-term goal is to ensure that the American people are properly educated so as to be a people with the "intelligence, knowledge, and art to organize and to maintain secondary powers" and to ensure both their freedoms and their equality. But that will require time we cannot currently buy for ourselves. It will require a re-vamped education system that honors the motives of this free and equal nation, which is not what we currently have acquired due to our negligence. So, our short-term goal must be to educate those individuals who can affect the change necessary to implement our long-term goal.

Education is the key, which is why Vote Out Incumbents for Democracy focuses so much attention on education. And yet, change is a scary thing. Education involves action, and action seems to be rather lacking in America...at least action that produces a better America for ourselves and our children.

Frederick Douglass said:

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

We, as Americans, cannot maintain our livelihoods through ignorance. We cannot maintain our luxuries by allowing the corrupt influences within our government to oppress, rob and degrade us. We, as Americans, must stand up for that which is our birth-right: a nation that establishes justice, insures domestic tranquility, provides for the common defense, promotes the general welfare, and secures the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. That is what we were promised and that is what we should demand from our government.