Ahtanum Valley Museum

Well, our Founding Fathers sure seemed to understand the issues of power, dictator tyranny, human nature, primate politics, and government didn't they? Indeed, the documents they drew up were pretty decent along with their ideas for a citizen run government, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

A government shutdown would indeed be a failure: not of a single party but both parties. The parties lack the courage to propose a budget plan that will lose them political support, by imposing widespread government cuts, raising taxes, or engulfing us with even more debt. The options are not going to be easy, but we didn't send our representatives to Washington to make only easy choices for us.

Likewise consider if you will the citizens who'd be so duped into voting for such non-sense, and the unethical citizen that might promise such, knowing full well it's not achievable. We have an ethics and integrity problem in our society, and we must draw upon our citizens to volunteer to lead in our society.

A government shutdown would be little more than a complete shutdown of our political system. Unwilling to make tough decisions, unwilling to compromise for the common good, and unwilling to take a vote that will hinder the reelection efforts.

Viewed broadly, the United States government has a federal or national and state level of governance. These levels already make sure that people are provided with venues for participation in governance and politics both nationally and locally. But a closer scrutiny of this structure reveals that there is a more localized and devolutionized form of politics and governance. This is the local state or otherwise in the forms of cities, towns, counties, and districts. In these levels, government officials are more personally in touch with the citizens. The people personally feel the presence of their government as if it is just their neighbor that they can visit and talk to anytime of the day.

And most of all, we need leadership that will prove to us that the public good is not a means to a desired political "good."

Our founding fathers wanted a citizen government - that would mean all citizens could run for office. Many of them were of the wealthy class, and they considered themselves citizens too, as we all should. It only takes a little observation of the current political climate to see that there are many citizens who do not belong in public office and clearly do not have the ethical fiber to lead this great nation at any level of government. I hope you will consider this when you vote, and deeply think on the consequences of your previous voting actions.