Back to politics (Ron Paul)

I watched 20/20 last night, primarily because of the part about the Missouri girl that committed suicide after the parents of a classmate created a fake MySpace account to entice her. But at the end of the program, as I did end up watching it all, there was John Stossel talking about an interview he did with Ron Paul. He directed everyone to abcnews.com to see the interview. Yearning to see if there was more I could find out about the Ron Paul enigma, I checked it out...watched some of the clips, since the hour long interview will conveniently be played out over the span of a week, and then began to look over the 169 comments that had landed there since airing last night.

I only made it through a few of them when I had enough. Enough of the Ron Paul supporters bashing the naysayers...enough of the naysayers...enough of the obliviousness. Oblivious to the fact that Ron Paul, himself, can not fix this nation even if he were elected. And on a quick side note, George Stephanopoulos' comment directly to Ron Paul that he had "No Chance" of winning the Republican's nomination was pretentious, rude, and disrespectful. His place is supposed to be as a reporter, not as an opinionater.

But I digress...back to the obliviousness. It's not completely true that if Ron Paul were elected that he could do nothing by himself. The president does oversee all foreign affairs and can typically act without approval from Congress in that capacity. So his idea to pull troops not only out of Iraq but out of the Middle East would certainly have an effect on the nation. Whether that would be good or not, I haven't formulated an opinion yet.

But the other things he speaks of...smaller government, less spending, more freedom's...almost none of that can be done without the approval of Congress. Sure, he can veto spending bills and speak out on drugs, prostitution, and abortion not being federal issues. But it's Congress that makes the laws...not the president. So we can't look solely to the president to fix this country, if you are one of the ones that believes it's broken.

Unfortunately, it seems evident that Congress can't, or won't, act unless WE MAKE THEM. We The People. Yes, it does take work on our part. Our representatives do just that, represent us. We should not give our power to them blindly and not expect many of them to eventually act in their own self-interest.

At our own work, we are expected to give our best performance every day. We need to actively, not passively, demand that from those that represent us in this great country. There is a website that I have found tremendous...vote-smart.org. It is non-partisian, provides you with voting records of our Congressmen and Congresswomen, provides you with commentary that may be helpful in undersanding your representative, and even provides websites for the representatives where you may be able to email your representatives. You should definitely check it out...drop your representative a line, and let him or her know you are now actively keeping track of how well you are being represented.