Responsibility

Political Responsibility



Responsibility and Politicians

10 September 2016

We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.
- Pericles

To be free, and to remain free, a populace must participate in and remain involved with the operation of their government.

They must themselves create, ordain, and establish the constitution under which a government is to be formed. They must carefully prescribe the limited sets of powers which that government may have. They must define those individual rights which the government is not only forever proscribed from curtailing or circumventing, but which it also must preserve and protect as the foundation for its existence and its actions.

Having established such a government, they must participate, to the utmost degree possible to each individual, in its governance and operation. It is their responsibility to be politically involved: to be president, congress, judiciary, governors, legislatures, councils, boards, commissions, and employees.

Having authorized that government's operation, they must ask themselves who specifically are they counting on to be the people to whom they will entrust the operation of that government?

They must be more than voters. They must be responsible for their government, operating it, protecting it, and when necessary, repairing it.

To the extent that they shirk their responsibilities, thereby they fail to enforce that constitution so carefully written and adopted. When they fail to participate, through their absence they lose the power to enforce that constitution, and by simple default, relinquish government to those who enjoy power over others for its own sake, and those who would take control and manipulate government actions for their own personal gain.

When a people refuse to kneel in obeisance to the despotic oppression of the autocrats, they must themselves take the responsibility for being the government. They must be the guarantors of their own rights, of their own freedom, not just as soldiers in time of war, but as politicians throughout their lives.

-- Scott

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