A thicker skin

I am fairly new to the world of striving to be an informed and politically active citizen. I spent far too long being innattentive and over trusting of the repesentatives I voted for. That all change about a year and a 1/2 ago. I work harder to be informed and to be braver about speaking my mind. Now I need to work on developing a thicker skin. Everywhere I look in the media, people like me are being called racists, hate-mongers, crazy, & gun-toting religious zealots. And because our grassroots protests are against the administration rather than for it, our voices are being dismissed. We are accused of merely being "astroturf", paid by big business to cause problems for the administration. Earlier this week all those names really got to me and sent me on a rant on my facebook page. That post spurred over 50 comments.

I've learned that if I'm going to keep speaking out, I have to toughen up. I've learned to do that where my religion is concerned, because I've been dealing with those misconceptions, false accusations and ridicule most of my life. I can pretty much blow those off now. I'm not there yet when it comes to politics. Maybe because I feel like I'm still learning. I know what feels right and wrong, but I'm still working on gathering the facts to back those instincts up. And since my memory for names and dates and details has never been fabulous, I lack confidence in my ability to present an intelligent, fact based argument. But I'm not going back to being part of the uniformed, and silent. (Though I'm sure there are members of my family that wish I would at least go back to being silent.)

It's the water inside the boat that sinks it.

"I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. -- From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy."~ Daniel Webster (June1,1837)

I admit there are foes outside the country that I fear, but I am far more terrified of the foes within, because, as Representative Trent Franks stated the other night, at the town hall meeting I attended,"It is the water inside the boat that sinks it." We have far more to fear, at this point in history, from the enemies within our country who are trying to fundamentally change who we are as a nation, to change us from a democratic republic to a socialist one. I used to be one of those who was inattentive, and too confident that my repesentatives would never do anything to dismantle the foundation our founding fathers laid for us. I'm not inattentive anymore!! Mr Franks earned a degree of respect and trust from me last night, but I'll still be watching closely, I will never have implicit trust in a public servant again.

I want my children to see their mother as a woman who is politically informed, active and willing to speak to up. I want to be an example to them, so that they will never make the mistake that I did of being complacent and inattentive. That they question everything their government is doing to insure that they understand it, and know when they need to speak up in dissent. I LOVE my country, but I worry that if not enough of us wake up, and SPEAK up, my children will inherit a country that is nothing like the free country I grew up in.