It is election season again and social media and the
airwaves are buzzing with political speech, debates, arguments, and the
almighty memes. This election is
especially interesting and nasty and has left many standing around trying to
figure out for whom to cast their ballot.
Never fear, I have arrived to help you cut through the fog of confusion
and make your choice for the leader of the free world. After all, everyone else is out and about
dispensing their political genius on anyone who will listen or click on their
link, so why not me? Who better to tell
you who to choose than some average guy in south MS? Well, truthfully I am not here to endorse one
candidate or party over the other. That
is not my right or my job, but if you ask I will tell you what I think (just be
gentle when you unfriend me). My prayer
is that I will make you think a bit about the choices in front of you a little
more before you make your selection.
A few years ago, I waded into the cesspool called
politics. During my brief swim through
the political sewer I learned one valuable lesson that has helped me clean most
of the stench of partisan politics out of my mind. What I discovered is nothing earth shattering
or mind blowing but rather a very simple truth.
The truth is that the overwhelming majority of politicians and
bureaucrats that have been elected to “represent” us in DC have no core values
or principles. It really does not matter
what letter that you put behind the name, the majority of them are there for
the same reasons. To feed their inflated
egos and bank accounts but at all costs keep the status quo.
In 2010 we witnessed the RNC pick their favored candidate in
the MD primary for governor before a single vote had been cast. That same year I heard the Chairwoman of the
MDGOP openly and proudly exclaim that she would choose party over principles. For many years now we have seen Republicans
claim to be for balanced budgets, fiscal responsibility, and a smaller and
limited government. We have seen
Democrats promise to end poverty, make the rich pay their fair share, bring all
of our troops home, and make the world love us once more. Through all of the promises from both sides,
what really has changed? The Democrats
had control of the White House, the Senate, and the House for 2 years and yet
they still clamored that the Republicans were blocking their efforts. The Republicans have controlled both
legislatives chambers for almost 2 years now and point across the aisle at the
Democrats for impeding their progress. Our
country is nearly $20 trillion in debt.
That is $20,000,000,000,000.00 that our elected “leaders” have spent
with virtually nothing to show for it other than empty promises and more political
rhetoric to try to convince us to vote them into office again to continue the
cycle.
It is easy to focus only on the elected officials who have
gotten us to this point, but unfortunately there is plenty of blame to go
around. What are we as the voting public
doing to change things in DC, in our states, in our counties, and in our
communities? What do we believe? For what principles do we stand? It is one thing to say that we believe in
something but on election day, are we voting with those beliefs in mind? If we did truly believe and vote according to
our beliefs and principles, we would have a much different country today. Each one of us needs to understand what our
core values and principles are and for what we are willing to fight.
As I said earlier, this is not to tell you for whom to vote
but hopefully to make someone stop and think about the choices we make every
election cycle. No one can really
predict what some slick politician will do once they are elected based on their
promises, so you have to decide which candidate on the ballot best meets your
expectations and does that candidate believe in the same principles as
you? Trust me, there is no perfect
candidate out there this time or any other time throughout political history. If you find that you agree 100% with any
politician, one of you is lying. God has
given each one of us our own unique minds and personalities, so it is
impossible for any two people to agree on everything. You need to decide if the difference in beliefs
are big enough to remove your support or if the differences are on beliefs that
are not as important to you as some of your core values and principles. As a country, we need to get past the habits
of choosing our elected leaders based on their gender, their race or ethnicity,
their religious preference (mainly because most of them only show up in their
local church before an election), how well they can read a speech from a
teleprompter, or based on what letter shows up after their name on the ballot. Choose well America, our country and our
future are at stake.
