Happy Birthday

Twelve years ago yesterday, I helped usher into the world the first of two main reasons I ended up getting involved in politics. Political activism is a difficult, thankless business with unlimited work needing to be done. Yet many of us feel passionately that it must be done. How does one become passionate about politics? You need a motive. Many in politics are motivated by power, or fame, or sometimes adventure. I'm motivated by my kids.

All parents want a better world for their children, but increasingly few are willing to set aside some time or resources or especially brainpower to help make it happen. As life becomes more complicated, people become less confident that they can see for themselves a path toward the better world they want. The hardest part about politics isn't the time commitment, or the money, or even rare hostility. The hardest part is knowing what you want from it.

The political world has come to address this complexity in the time-honored style of television-land, by packaging the choices in simple, colorful boxes known as ideologies. If you haven't yet decided what your political goals are, or how to work toward them, you can simply choose one of the pre-packaged value schemes off the shelf. Choose the "conservative" package and suddenly the most important thing in the world is whether two far away people whom you'll never meet get to marry without your blessing, or perhaps the fifth significant digit of Wal-Mart's quarterly earnings. Choose the "liberal" package and you're suddenly awake at night worrying that someone somewhere might get insulted by something somebody said, or that an obscure species of toad might go extinct. What, these aren't your priorities? Well, what's wrong with you? With 500 channels there must be something on, right?

I got involved in politics because the increasing mindlessness of it is harming my kids. When they are my age, I want my kids to live in a world where Americans are welcome anywhere. I want them to continue to share the earth happily and in good health with a vibrant diversity of plants, animals, and people. I want them to live in a culture that brings out the best in them. I want them to have a top-quality education and their own opportunities to change the world for the better.

My view is that government has seriously lost sight of these goals. It takes brains to find real solutions to complex needs in the real world, but smart people are staying out of politics in droves, and the ones remaining think mainly with their gonads and fists. We need to change that, and in Douglas County I think we are starting to. But we need many more people, who are secure in their own success, to come out of their houses and offices, and work with like-minded people to contribute to a larger success in driving the mindless fringes out of power. How about a government our kids can be proud of, one that has their future at heart?