ShadowMonkey - Revolutionaries: A New Kind of Candidate

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Revolutionaries: A New Kind of Candidate

Written by DarqueWing

Wednesday, 18 October 2006

A version of this article originally appeared in the comments section of
I Pledge No Allegiance.

There are a lot of interesting ways to refer to the guys that fought for and won independence here in this country. Some say freedom fighters, some say founding fathers, some say framers. (For some reason, there's a lot of alliteration there...)

But let's face it, folks - they were revolutionaries. They rebelled against an established, recognized government. If it happened today, they'd be whisked away in the middle of the night to some secret prison in Guam or Uzbekistan or Libya or, worse, New Jersey. They would be traitors. Remember that famous flag that Ben Franklin put together, with the various colonies represented as parts of a snake, and the motto, "JOIN OR DIE?" They weren't kidding - their lives were on the line, because if they got caught, the rebellion was over and so were their lives. In a different time, they would've been called guerilla fighters, or insurgents, or traitors, or anarchists. And they did it all, amongst other things, to fight against taxes that were pretty insignificant compared to what we pay today.

Why mention this? Because they knew what it was like to have to fight the insidious power of an entrenched and utterly uncaring government. Instead of leaving the code of the government to an unwritten constitution, like Britain (seriously, unwritten), they decided that they would be transparent, open, and plain before their citizens. They decided they didn't want to be the same kind of arrogant, unforgiving, and indifferent government that they had just won independence from.

Pay attention to what's in this "Pledge of Non-Allegiance." It outlines some of the very things that our "framers" hated in the British system that have cropped up yet again: shameless partisanship (Whigs? Democrats? Tories? Republicans? Any difference?), arbitrary abuse of power, and a system that allows for the accumulation of obscene amounts of power in a single person or body of people. Checks and balances - it's supposed to keep everything tied up nicely, but it can't when the self-serving party system has usurped the power of all three branches of government.

How about, instead of electing yet another harvest of gray-haired hand-shakers who have no interest in office other than the cost of their influence and vote... instead of letting the reins of power stay in the hands of a group of people who have so thoroughly corrupted their offices... and instead of simply handing the power of office back to yet another generation of partisan hacks of either color...

How about we actually change the rules on them? How about we have our own pledges, like this one? We can rewrite the definition of the word "electable" in a manner more suited to the real, modern world that we live in, as well as the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that our forefathers promised us. Instead of voting for "moral values," or voting for whomever you heard about at church, and instead of voting out of anger or vengeance... try participating in the system instead. Try to get real answers, try to get real results, or at least find someone who will do so for you, and put that person in office - whether they're red or blue, black or white, rich or poor, pro-this or anti-that.

In other words, look for people who could take this very oath, people who would pledge their allegiance to freedom rather than to a political party, people who would swear to YOU and not just rich investors... and reward them with a vote. As insurmountable as it seems, our system is built for change. Now, instead of changing just for the sake of changing (just to end up with the same damned thing over and over again), we can start looking for real statesmen, real patriots, real people who would rather do their job and go home instead of jealously clutching to themselves the political power that they've gained.

They're out there. They might need to be convinced that they're electable, because like most real folks, they've got enough secrets that they think they're forever barred from the world of politics. Just keep thinking about this pledge and about what it would take to get an entire wing of government, Congress, say, or the Executive, to not only say but believe the words. Freedom, not power, is what laid the foundation for this country. Don't sacrifice either.

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