BLUF
\nLearn and memorize your rights, exercise them, and protect them every single day.
\nIf you truly want politics and government to leave you alone to live your life in peace, you have to pay attention. That is your ultimate responsibility.<\/p>\n
Citizen Responsibilities<\/a><\/p>\n As far back as elementary school, I remember teachers telling kids that we, as citizens of the United States, had responsibilities to ourselves and the country. I know that a lot of people would prefer to avoid politics and political topics altogether. I get it. Politics is frustrating, angering, annoying, and at times boring (ever try to read a policy proposal? I highly recommend them if you have insomnia and don\u2019t want to take any drugs). But we as adult citizens have a responsibility to keep this country running as well as possible, oppose bad policies, and most importantly, we have a responsibility to pay attention so that we are fully aware of what is going on with our politicians and institutions. It\u2019s our responsibility to pay attention and stop them from going off the rails.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t care that you don\u2019t want to pay attention to politics. YOU HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO DO SO. Especially if you want everything to become or remain \u201cnormal.\u201d<\/p>\n I will discuss equality of opportunity versus equity of outcomes in a future post. That is not the topic for today.<\/p>\n Responsibilities of citizenship go beyond simply turning up to vote every couple of years. Although that is one of the most important activities you can do. HOWEVER, if you are an uninformed voter, you are not helping anyone. Uninformed voters simply go along to get along and vote as they\u2019re told or as they always have without regard to any changes in party platforms, policies, candidates, funding sources, anything. All of those things should inform you, the voter, as to whether or not your preferred party is engaging in business as usual or has changed course. Or no longer matches your values and preferred outcomes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You as a citizen have a responsibility to find all necessary information for making a good decision. Nobody else, especially not the media, is going to give you the objective information you\u2019re expecting. These days, the mainstream media, as has been shown again and again, is in the tank for the progressive, left candidates and ideas. That means you have a responsibility to read\/watch sources OTHER THAN your usual sources. Sure, keep watching CNN, MSNBC, and the networks (if you can stomach that), read the NYT, WaPo, etc.. BUT you also need to be reading\/watching\u00a0RedState<\/a>,\u00a0Rantburg<\/a>,\u00a0Instapundit<\/a>,\u00a0The Washington Examiner<\/a>,\u00a0Daily Mail\u00a0<\/a>(yes, the Daily Mail), the\u00a0Epoch Times<\/a>, stay on X so that you\u2019re exposed to different opinions. You NEED to know what the opposition is thinking and saying with regard to those policies and politicians you support. You need to know why others object to what you support. And you need to not dismiss all objections as racist, sexist, and fascist. That\u2019s unthinking and lazy.<\/p>\n Failure to take alternative sources and viewpoints into account is a failure of your responsibilities as a functional citizen of the U.S.<\/p>\n Why is this so important now? Well, it\u2019s always important, but in the last eight years, the evidence has been publicly piling up showing the collusion between the traditional media sources (e.g. the NY Times, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC) and popular social media platforms, and the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n Yes, collusion. Failure to report the entire story for just about everything they cover, proof that comments, actions, etc. have been taken out of context again and again to show that conservatives, and Trump in particular, are evil fascists bent on destroying the country. (I\u2019m going to pause here and ask, if you\u2019re so worried about Trump ushering in a fascist government\u2026 why didn\u2019t that happen between 2016 and 2020? Please list what you found to be fascist in Trump\u2019s first term?)<\/p>\n Mark Zuckerburg testified before Congress that the Biden-Harris Administration had\u00a0officially<\/em>\u00a0requested that Meta platforms repress and censor any and all negative or disputed comments, information, and discussions regarding COVID, the border, funding for anything, Biden\u2019s health, etc. Anything that reflected negatively on the Biden-Harris Administration was to be suppressed. And Meta did that. That is government censorship at work. That should make you angry even if you loved all government policies surrounding any issue.<\/p>\n All<\/em>\u00a0of the institutions of the federal government are corrupted in one way or another and to one degree or another. It is your responsibility as a citizen to recognize that and support the cleaning out of corruption. In 2020, I saw many friends screaming\u00a0against<\/em>\u00a0electoral system audits. Another question those of you who objected to electoral audits: If you\u2019re so certain as to the infallibility of the electoral system, why are you objecting so strenuously to an audit? Auditing a clean institution or system will find that everything is working as it\u2019s supposed to. Do you object to\u00a0proving\u00a0<\/em>the system is functioning as designed? If so, why?<\/p>\n Your responsibilities as a citizen include\u00a0requiring<\/em>\u00a0the government to\u00a0prove\u00a0<\/em>that its institutions are functioning as designed and that any and all corruption, when discovered, is sanctioned and cleared out. Corruption includes a failure to do the job simply because they dislike the president. You also have a responsibility to\u00a0require<\/em>\u00a0Congress, within its responsibilities of institutional oversight, do its job and conduct periodic audits of every single institution in the bureaucracy.<\/p>\n Your responsibilities as a citizen also require that you ignore the politicians, celebrities and others who tell you\u00a0they<\/em>\u00a0know what\u2019s good for you (which is entirely different than a candidate saying they understand what you\u2019re upset about) and that you\u2019re not to worry your pretty little head about the complicated government, because they\u2019ll take care of all of it for you. You just be a good little peon and vote like they tell you too. Ignore that b.s.\u00a0You<\/em>\u00a0know what\u2019s good for your family and their future, not some politician living and working 3,000 miles away, or even 100 miles away.<\/p>\n Ignore those who call you racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or any other shaming term they can come up with simply because you dared to disagree with them. They\u2019re bullies and giving in to bullies never works out for anybody.<\/p>\n For God\u2019s sake, stand up for what you believe in! You have a spine\u2026 use it!<\/p>\n You have a responsibility to know what your rights are. And to know what isn\u2019t a right (free gender reassignment surgery is NOT a right). As I\u2019ve mentioned several times in other posts, as U.S. citizens, we have inalienable rights \u2013 free speech, freedom of religion, the right to assemble and\u00a0peacefully<\/em>\u00a0petition the government for a redress of wrongs, the right to bear arms, and everything else in the Constitution and Bill of Rights and every other Amendment (this was put in not because the founders feared each other, but because they feared what the government could become and\/or do).<\/p>\n Every single right listed in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the other Amendments, is an inherent right. You enjoy them because you are human. If a government\u00a0truly<\/em>\u00a0tries to suppress your rights, you have a responsibility to stop that from happening. But you can\u2019t be effective in that endeavor if you are not\u00a0fully<\/em>\u00a0informed.<\/p>\n Learn and memorize your rights, exercise them, and protect them every single day.<\/p>\n If you truly want politics and government to leave you alone to live your life in peace, you have to pay attention. That is your ultimate responsibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BLUF Learn and memorize your rights, exercise them, and protect them every single day. If you truly want politics and government to leave you alone to live your life in peace, you have to pay attention. That is your ultimate responsibility. Citizen Responsibilities As far back as elementary school, I remember teachers telling kids that … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,43,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-harsh-but-true","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=105849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105850,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105849\/revisions\/105850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=105849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=105849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=105849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}