I Think I Got Off the Merry Go Round….And I Feel Fine

 

(Image credit artofmanliness.com)

     Well, life got in the way again.  One of these times, I’m going to get life to not interfere when I start thinking ‘I haven’t blogged in a while, I should get back to that’.  I did have an idea or two I kicked around, but by the time I could have posted them, they no longer seemed relevant.  Maybe I’ll post them anyway and put a little disclaimer at the beginning.  Yeah, that’ll fix it.

     So, we are now hot and heavy into the political season.  The national conventions are occurring, complete with candidates and speeches.  Not sure there’s a whole lot of substance there (choose your favorite cliché – all flash no heat, no ‘there’ there, or any others I’ve missed).  I was talking with my father the other night and he asked if I had been following the convention.  I had to think a minute before I said something about just catching the highlights.  Afterward, I began to think about how little I had been involved in following the political process this year.  Part of it has to do with what I discussed here.  As far as I’m concerned, the end is known, the drama is going on for the sake of the play itself.

       I’ve been working my way through a rather interesting book this summer.  The theme is how the colonists weren’t following God’s laws when they rebelled against England.  I cannot say I agree with everything the author was saying, but there are a number of points where we do agree.  A particularly interesting section of the book contained a quote from John Wesley.  Wesley was confronting the colonists on their claims of ‘no taxation without representation’, among other things.  Here is the quote:

‘If Parliament cannot tax you because you have no representation therein, for the same reason it can make no laws to bind you.  If a freeman cannot be taxed without his consent, neither can he be punished without it.  For whatever holds true with regard to taxation holds true with regard to all other laws.  Therefore he who denies the English Parliament the power of taxation, denies it the right of making any laws at all.  But you have never disputed this power over the colonies.  You have always acknowledged statues for the punishment of offences and for the preventing or redressing of civil wrongs.  And the reception of any law draws after it by a chain which cannot be broken, the necessity of accepting taxation.

But I object to the very foundation of you plea.  You have confidently asserted that “every freeman is governed [only] by laws to which he has consented.”  But that is absolutely false.  In wide-extended dominions, a very small part of the people are involved with making laws.  As with all public business, this must be done by delegation, and the delegates are chosen by a select number.  And those who are not voters, who are by far the greater part, stand by as idle spectators.

But the case of voters is little better.  When they are near equally divided, almost half of them must be governed, by not only without, but even against their own consent.  And how has any man consented to those laws which were made before he was born?  Our consent to these, nay and even to the laws now made in England, is purely passive.  And in every place, as all men are born the subjects of some state or another, so they are born passively, as it were, consenting to the laws of that state.’ (italics mine).

     I think, in this highly contentious political season, we would be well served to keep in mind Wesley’s comment about voters.  Somewhere, whether national, state, or local, a political majority is not what we chose and is governing against our consent.  There is nothing wrong with trying to get your particular candidate or number of people in the party you prefer elected.  But treating elections like an all-or-nothing proposition is a prescription for disaster.

     Personally, I am more than willing to let the political process (I’d call it Kabuki Theater, but I don’t want to insult Kabuki) go through its’ motions and let the chips fall where they may.  No matter which party wins the race, I still have my responsibilities to take care of.  That is where my focus is going to be.  I will be educated of course before I put my ballot in the mail (we do all-mail voting here), but I find myself a much better person when I’m not dealing so much in the minutiae.