BROKEN GOVERNMENT

It has long been apparent that the government of the United States is faltering. It has been broken ever since election has replaced governing as a goal, and parties have replaced the general welfare as a direction. Wealthy industrial lobbies have replaced the public as determinants of legislation and party affinity, extreme right and left wing zealots have mired our elected officials in the slime of inaction; only the wealthy (banks and insurance companies) remain the recipients of governmental assistance.

The answer is clear, and was espoused more than 200 years ago, one summer day in Philadelphia, when a weary but proud group of men announced;

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, . . . [T]hat whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive . . . it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Perhaps we have reached the time for the second American Revolution; this time each of us will hold a ballot rather than a gun. Let us, indeed, take back our government and our nation, not from fellow citizens, but from the sloth and corruption that has rotted the core of our most noble institutions. Let the election of 2010 be the second wave of our attack, after the election of 2006. Let us once more, in unity, tell our legislators that they work for us, not the other way around and, if they forget that simple truth, our answer MUST always be, “YOU’RE FIRED!”