Planned Distractions and Local Efforts

I visited yesterday with Val Arbon, a friend in the freedom movement and I like his perspective. (I love ahah! moments!) He shared the following:

It’s all about local and state power. We fret over federal shenanigans—the things we have almost no chance of changing. This distracts us from the place where we can make a difference—our local communities.

Can any of us really change national politics? We raise our tiny voices to ask over and over: ”What can we do?” The echo returns: “Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! The problem is too big and you are too little.”

We’ve missed it: the place to make a difference is in local and state politics. When communities get it right they prompt states to get it right, and healthy states insist on federal limitations.

How else can it work? We yell at Congress and the president (and the TV!) and it doesn’t even ruffle the leaves on Washington’s trees. “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”

So let’s do something different—clean up government near to us.

Let’s help our communities by junking Agenda 21’s property grabs. Let’s get to know the county sheriff and encourage his protection. Let’s get Common Core out of our state schools by drumming on the governor’s door.

The states “made” the federal government. We were here first. It shouldn’t be able to boss us around. It does, because we let it. We didn’t invent a federal government so it could take our power away. The power is in the states.

Thomas Jefferson got it. He wanted to be in Virginia to help draft its state constitution in summer of 1776, when he penned the Declaration of Independence. It was the more important process. He was told to stay in Philadelphia and stay focused on the national effort, and he did. What a blessing! “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…” I love those words! I’m so glad he stayed in Philadelphia.

The voice of the people spoke for freedom, but they contracted with the states to be their working agents. The task was to create a new nation. Eleven years later it was to create a workable government. (The first attempt, the Articles of Confederation, was a bomb.)  The “chain of command” runs as follows: the people authorized the states to build a federal structure. Liberty was the goal; the states were the agents empowered to make it happen.

Currently, the shenanigans of the federal government distract us from doing what really works: get it right at home, first. Our two political parties are either the willing or unwitting agents of distraction. These two parties, Democrats and Slow Democrats* (you do realize the Republican Party has disappeared, right?) both work to build party power. Forget the well-being of the nation. It’s disheartening. Sometimes it even seems hopeless.

It’s not hopeless. We can fix “home” and spread the repairs upward. It won’t be fast, but it will be real. It’s actually a time for real hope. More people “get it”—they care. More families are teaching the Constitution at home. More parents are homeschooling. They center their lives on the church. The sleeping giant is waking up.

We are on the way up! Let’s put our action at the local level and build a foundation of freedom.

* Thanks to my husband for this description of the current political scene.