Civics 101....

Adrienne's post today gets a definite A+ and a gold star.

How about a show of hands....?

How many of you write your elected representatives on a regular basis?  C'mon, put your hands in the air....

Our form of government is a participatory representative Republic.  That means that we elect people to represent our wishes in Washington and in Statehouses across the land.  After we elect them we are expected to participate in the process.  Problem is that we vote and then sit back and bitch that they aren't following our wishes.  Write, email, call your Senators and Representatives and let them know how you feel about every issue.   Get your friends and neighbors to do the same thing.  It can make a difference.  Once you've voted, you have to follow through with the calls and letters.  You all vote, right?

I remember the first time I wrote my Congressmen.  I was a young Buck Sergeant stationed with an MP company at Fort Hood, Texas.  I was nervous.  A congressman ranked up there somewhere near a Sergeant Major!  It was a long time ago, trust me.

The topic was gun control, if you can imagine that.  My Congressman was a young fellow from just down the road a piece from my home town.  Charles R. Grassley.

We used snail mail back then.  A Texas Instruments calculator like the ones you buy at the check out counter at Wal Mart for $5 today were about $100 in the PX then.  Hadn't even heard of a computer.  Times change.

Anyway, within 2 weeks of sending my letter to the Congressman, I had a response.  I was impressed.  I was so excited that I was shaking.  Surprisingly, Congressman Grassley wrote a nice letter to me and said that he agreed with me on the things I had talked about and that he would pursue them in the House.  (which he did)  I continued writing and he told me that if he received 5 letters a week it was a lot.  That shocked me.  People are basically lazy and don't want to follow up on those aggravating small details....

Anyway, Congressman Grassley is now a senior Senator and I still write to him regularly.  We agree on most things.  Your representatives like to hear from you.  They want to hear from you.  They wish that they heard from more of you, more often.

My other Senator is a Democrat.  Tom Harkin.  He doesn't usually respond to my emails, but that doesn't stop me from writing to him.  When he does respond, he's usually off topic.  We don't agree on much.

Iowa became a "Shall Issue" state this year.  Thought that would never happen.  Pretty liberal here....  (Half of the population is in Des Moines and Iowa City.  Two hotbeds of Liberalism)  A lot of letters were written to our former Governor and all of the representatives.  He was a Democrat.  He signed it.

Point is that it works.  Persistance pays off.

My second point is that we Conservatives have been reactive rather than being proactive for the last 10 years.  That has to change.  We cannot continue to put ourselves in a position where we have to defend ourselves to the Liberals all the time.  If they are full of shit they have to be told they are full of shit.  If you don't like to cuss just tell them that their "Poopbox is full".  Means the same thing.

By "we conservatives" I mean all of us, but especially our elected representatives.  They've been pushed around like a cheap whore in the House and the Senate for years.  obama has berated them and called them names since he took office.  Pelosi and Reid did the same thing to them.  When you write to them, let them know that you appreciate what they are doing and let them know also that you expect them to represent YOU.  Don't be afraid to write letters to those that you disagree with.  Don't be afraid to write to representatives that aren't from your state or district.

It's time to stop being the "silent majority".

This is the point of what Mr. Davis  and The Guardians of Liberty are trying to do with The Seige.  Talking to our representatives face to face in Washington D.C..

Talk to them.  Let them know how you feel.  Be persistant.  Treat it like it's a matter of the life or death of the Conservative ideal.  It may very well be, ya know.

An email takes only 5 minutes to write.  Dead is forever.

Read Adrienne's post from today.  Think about what she says.  We have the momentum right now, lets not waste it.

Stay safe.