Sitting On Our Blisters

SITTING ON OUR BLISTERS

(Who Is Responsible For Democracy?)

According to The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution, the purpose of America’s democracy is to honor the citizenry’s equality of worth and facilitate their common good. Every government policy and program should support this purpose.  Whatever is adverse to this purpose is democracy’s despotic enemy.

The role of our government is to make sure that democracy flourishes.  This has nothing to do with its size.  It has everything to do with the strength with which it upholds democracy over its despotic enemies.  As Henry Clay affirmed:

Government is a trust, and the officers of the
government are the trustees; and both the
trust and the trustees are created for the
benefit of the people.

In this trusteeship, government has two primary enemies. One is the notion that the citizenry’s worth is imported which converts democracy from a system about equality to a system about inequity.  The other is individualism which converts democracy from a community event intended to fulfill the common good to a private event intended to fulfill personal whim.

Who, then, is responsible when democracy fails because it is captured by despotic enemies? Abraham Lincoln asserted in his Gettysburg Address that democracy was of, by, and for the people.  Whether democracy languishes and dies or flourishes and lives is the sole responsibility of the citizenry.  Our vote determines who gets in office and who stays in office.  Lincoln also asserted:

Elections belong to the people.  It’s their decision.
If they decide to turn their back on the fire and
burn their behinds, then they will just have to
sit on their blisters.

If we don’t like what’s heating up in our democracy then we either change it or sit on our blisters.  It is our responsibility, alone, and always has been.

Robert T. Latham

The hope of tomorrow
is the work of today.