If not you, who? If not now, when?
These words have been uttered by many prominent people from Rabbis to Presidents to entertainers. But they have never been more important than today!
We are busy, consumed with our jobs, the kids, and our own interests. We have precious little time to pay attention to such mundane things as who is running for public office, their qualifications, local property tax rates and how they are decided, how our elected officials are spending our tax dollars, and what laws are being proposed for our community, state or nation. After all, we elect our representatives to take care of those details. But if we aren’t informed, how do we know if our representatives are doing the job we elected them to do and if they deserve our continued trust, support or vote in the future? If we aren’t attending our local County Commissioner’s Court, City Council Meetings, School Board meetings and Water Board meetings, are we really informed? Once decisions are made, tax rates are set, budgets are set, new rules are voted on, it’s too late – of course that doesn’t stop the public from loudly complaining, after the fact.
Our country appears to be falling apart at the seams; our representatives seem to be unaccountable, becoming complacent and feeling entitled, scantly remembering they were elected by and accountable to us. We are a Constitutional Republic, specifically designed to be, “… of the people, for the people and by the people.”1 But if ‘the People’ don’t participate, our magnificent country fails. Our Founding Fathers pledged an oath to each other which was nothing short of “…. our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”2 To establish this country, their sacrifices were great, their comfort forfeited. These were men of means who had a great deal to lose, including their lives, but offered everything up to establish this experiment in Liberty, Freedom and Self-Rule which is the Untied Stated of America.
If we’re to keep all which has been sacrificed for, fought for, bled for and died for, what are YOU willing to sacrifice? A little time? A little comfort? Are you willing to get involved? serve on a board? run for public office? We’re all busy, we all have other responsibilities, we all would rather be doing fun, comfortable things. But time is short and there is work to be done to save our freedom, liberty, and way of life. So, if not you, WHO? If not now, WHEN?
René Leith resides in Bandera.
1. The words of Abraham Lincoln to honor the soldiers that sacrificed their lives in order “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” were spoken at Gettysburg.
2. The last sentence in the The United States Declaration of Independence: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”