Typical of Democracy

"I will put my family's safety above sensitivity."

The problem is my US senators and representatives don't. Daily.
My local senator and representative don't. Daily.
My governor doesn't. Daily
My local mayor doesn't. Daily. (hourly if you live in SLC)

Every city leader decries racial profiling (only because they have to get votes from those races.) But, guess what... racial profiling works. It works better than any system we have now. Yes, it might not have stopped McVeigh, but it would have stopped or hindered 9/11, and scores of other problems.
Start profiling if it protects my family.
Guess what, if the profile says that white males are the number one terrorist, fine, send me through the extra search line. And if you are one of the white male terrorist, look out, because I'll be the first one condemning you and screaming for the death penalty or worse. I will not be the one whining that you had a rough childhood, or that you didn't get any scholarships because the minorities gobbled them up, or that you lost your job to affirmative action.(these are what Jesse Jackson would be promoting if he was white) I'm tired of the whining. I'm tired of the hypocrisy. I'm tired of the corruption.

Here's the problem. I think government is screwed up.
I'm fed up with it, and I want to do something about it.
But, where to begin. Also, if I do begin, I am one voice and still live in a democracy. How do I convince my neighbors to speak up when I can't even convince my wife that the conversation is important?
There is an epidemic of apathy in this country that is going to be the death of it.

Take heart my friend... This is the war that your Gospel teaches you about.

It won't end today nor tomorrow... Your children will have to engage it once they come of age... And your grandchildren as well.

I can sympathize with your frustration... My wife will have none of it... She thinks it is my hobby, and not a popular one.

You'll help your cause when you realize that we do not live in a pure democracy, but in a democratic republic... We must sustain and preach about our country in that way in order to minimize the affects of radical libertinism.

Russell Kirk said, "Of all the terrors of democracy, the worst is its destruction of moral habits." He then goes on to quote Fisher Ames, "A democratic society will soon find its morals the encumbrance of its race, the surly companion of its licentious joys."

Many of the Christian founders saw the dangers in the Democracies of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. Where there is no prescription, no formal moral or orthodox duty to code, where men happen along their own abandon, the adversary will have strong influence. They had a great example in the French revolution. Based on the enlightenment thought of Rousseau and Condorcet, men had abandoned reverence for antiquity and decorum.

Fisher Ames also said, "Our country is too big for union, too sordid for patriotism, too democratic for liberty. Its vice will govern it, by practicing upon its folly. This is ordained for democracies."

Many of the conservative thinkers in the early founding of the country recognized the importance of enlightened leadership and understood that the success of democracy, and federalism, were based on a fallacious premise: "the supposed existence of sufficient political virtue, and on the permanency and authority of the public morals."

"On the contrary however, passion, deluded sentiment, and a destructive yearning for simplicity are characteristics of peoples who have exchanged the leadership of the good, righteous and enlightened, for the intoxication of self-expression and the negation of discipline." "The people, as a body cannot deliberate; therefore their appetites are flattered by demagogues, who satisfy the popular impulse toward action by the exhibition of violence and the spectacle of incessant change."

The way to combat this change as I see it, would be to give up your glamorous life as an IT Administrator and go into teaching. Our schools are woeful, and corrupted by progressive thought which undermines enlightened and reasoned learning. We will not change our generation, but can be hopeful that persistent effort will reward us with future generations of moral and upright citizens.

One more very interesting quote from this man Fisher Ames: "Popular reason does not always know how to act right, nor does it always act right, when it knows. The agents that move politics, are the popular passions; and those are ever, from the very nature of things, under the command of the disturbers of society... Few can reason, all can feel; and such an argument is gained, as soon as it is proposed."