Tonight we are wrapping up some elections here in our little corner of the world, Vancouver, Washington. Elections get me fired up, they are a chance to cast out the old dead wood and infuse some new ideas and enthusiasm. It can also be the time to save the ones doing good work from those trying to unseat them. It's all in the details, all in what you hold dear about this great Republic we live in.
You know what? I'm not content anymore gearing up every year or two for the fight, picking my battles, backing the right man or woman and then settling back into hibernation until it is time to fight again. So recently I became involved in reviving the Libertarian Party here in our little county. A few years ago the party was semi-active under seemingly lackluster leadership until it collapsed under the weight of apathy. Now, four individuals have set forth to revitalize our party and maybe get the word out that we no longer the party of John Bircher's and Lydon LaRouche, we never really were those are people that hijacked the party for a while.
I have taken up the position as Treasurer, an office from which I believe my new found skills in tax preparation and access to the best bookkeepers for help make me valuable in keeping our county party in the black and legal. None of us four were involved with the old party. So far we have drafted a good set of By Laws and will be voting them into place on November 12th and at that moment dissolving our Board and starting into elections next month for a first term board. I intend to keep my job.
This last Presidential election just saying I was a Libertarian was not enough, my friends think I am just a loner much like the Unabomber, that I should be writing a manifesto. As I was sitting there trying to decide how best to make people realize that there are other options than a donkey or a elephant I decided that I was thinking nationally but only had the power to act locally. I was thinking too big, too far beyond my means and I had to scale back to what I could influence, what I could easily fit into my schedule as a husband and father and full time employed person. Sometimes you have to take a few steps back in order to go forward. There is still time to let people know that there are better options than the lesser of two Evils.
See these guys to my left? These are the Founding Fathers of these United States, sorry to dumb it down but some of were victims of public school districts. These men and their brave women risked it all so that their children and their children's children would have a better world than they did. They did this not because it was easy, but because it was the right thing to do. I have a child and the future I see for him under the current two party system is bleak and corrupt, riddled with career politicians and the machines that control them, or worse. It may be hard for me to pull this off, but if it makes his life even a little easier, with even a little more freedom and a better understanding of what freedom is and what sacrifices it takes to tend the flame of freedom then I can say that I mattered.
In this election now I am surprised at how much I could accomplish in such a short time. I studied who was running, decided who was the man to back in the Mayoral campaign and now with maybe just a little help from me and many others that man is about to take office. Now looking forward to 2010 our little party can learn from others and maybe we can put our own candidate on the ballot and be the ones celebrating in November. If not? Then we dust ourselves off and we try again, wiser for the last campaign.
I will be keeping you, my throngs of supporters, in the mix on what is happening, how we are doing it and what we are learning. Maybe my efforts will inspire someone else to get involved locally in their own personal Lake Wobegon.
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