Photo by AndreJenny of Flickr

I’ve been thinking about what I actually want to do here at SoundTheBell.
I have always considered myself a conservative of some sort - it just made sense to me. (Insert here people automatically closing their browsers and blowing me off as a right-wing extremist simply because I’ve mentioned the words “right” and “conservative”. Well, *waves* see ya.)

America was founded on Principles. The strong underlying theme of the Declaration of Independence is stated right in its name: Independence.
I don’t support you, you don’t support me. We’re independent of each other. We can interact with each other in any capacity that we wish to and initiate, but we are not bound to be dependent on each other for any reason whatsoever.

The Republicans, with all of their rhetoric, seemed to support that ever since I was mature enough to sit and listen through an entire speech without thinking that playing with my Star Wars toys would be a better investment of my time. The Democrats… well, they simply didn’t seem to support it at all. Probably the two most polarizing figures in that time were Presidents Reagan and Clinton. Take Reagan’s stance on smaller government, less taxes, and personal responsibility. Put it up against Clinton’s stance of “nationalized” health care (bigger government), “necessary” tax raises to pay for programs (more taxes), and our responsibility to help out everyone else - except, it seemed, ourselves (no personal responsibility). For a long time, the two parties seemed to be - seemed to be - separated on those basic issues.

In 2000 Al Gore scared the shit out of me with his talk of national ID cards and national health care. Moreso the ID cards. It was like hearing “Here’s your papers, ma’am”, or “Hold out your wrist so we can tattoo your number there”. As if our Social Security numbers aren’t bad enough, and being exploited and used against us for identification; let’s just get the pretences over with and slap everyone with a number for the explicit purpose of easier government tracking. The doors that this would have opened for the government to trample on our individual liberties literally shook me to the core.

That election was the last one that really strikes me as the two parties having a shining demarcation, where the Republicans held the line on our rights and personal responsibilities.

Fast forward to 2007, with Bush having taken opportunities to erode our liberties left and right, and both Obama and McCain jawing about how “we have to” do something about health care, gov’t programs, yadda yadda. Even when McCain was advocating lower taxes and smaller government, he was also advocating more governmental programs to solve this issue or another (that could be solved better with a healthy dose of personal responsibility and private sources, such as churches and non-profits). The two approaches he was advocating were polar opposites, and there was no way for them to meet. You cannot have smaller government and less taxes if you’re giving more funding to federal programs and even creating more federal programs to solve society’s woes. It takes more government employees to run those programs, and it takes taxes to pay those employees as well as pay for all of the overhead (office space, electricity, computers, etc) and varied expenses (flyers, pamphlets, advertising, etc) of running those programs. You can’t have them both.

I realized, during that (obsessively long) campaign… that I was afraid of both parties. They were saying the same things, just with different candy coatings to make the pill easier to swallow. Sarah Palin was the only bright moment between the two parties; her no-bullshit attitude and straight talking was a refreshing change and she actually spurred the two candidates into attempting to appear more “to the right”, which was really just thicker candy coating, unfortunately.

Enter Doctor Ron Paul.
Here was a fellow I could listen to and actually shake my head yes, instead of angrily throwing my hands up and screaming at the tv screen “No! No! Don’t you GET IT?” He got it. I didn’t agree with him on every point, but the majority of what he said “hit home” with me.

And then I got to consciously observe the media completely wipe out his candidacy with an alarming proficiency… by simply ignoring him.
He would appear at state rallies with other candidates. They would get sound bytes and air time - he wouldn’t. The newspapers would print paragraph after paragraph of what other candidates said… but the only mention that he was there would be his name stuck in the middle of all of the attendees. Radio shows were busy waving the red flag in front of the bull that is this country, going on for hours about Hillary’s hair or how her Presidency would actually be Bill’s third term, completely distracting the public from noticing that unassuming, gentle-spoken man who said simply that our liberties were being eaten away and we had been trained to forget what personal responsibility meant.

In the end, it came down to “the media sensation with less tarnish” versus “the most ‘centrist’ [ie:left-leaning] guy in the party that we could find”.
And both of them had their feet planted firmly on the left side of the aisle, regardless of what their labels said.
For years McCain had been hosting little radio clips “debating” Ted Kennedy on political issues. Kennedy would give his thick, left-leaning stance, and then McCain would begin his “rebuttal”. More often than not it began “I agree with Senator Kennedy…”
A wolf in sheep’s clothing, that one was.
Nevertheless, he got my vote. Damn him.

The truth is, we are in a two-party system. Oh sure, we have the freedom to sprout up any number of parties that we wish; but in the end the only ones that will be reported on and have information disseminated about them to the public are two parties: Democrats and Republicans. If any other parties are mentioned at all, it will either be an indifferent passing, or an all-out mockery.
I could not stand the thought of my vote going to either candidate, but knowing full well that voting for Ron Paul would be “throwing my vote away” and in effect strengthening the Democratic side, I felt forced to choose “the lesser of two evils”, and voted for McCain.

No more.

The Republican party hasn’t “left me behind”, as the media loves to say.
The entire government has left me behind.
It’s steaming down the rails full-bore towards an end that is diametrically opposed to what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution stand for.
Some media pundits would say that I’ve “gone fringe” and simply moved further to the right.
Not so.

I have stayed the course.
Individual rights and responsibility. Freedom. The pursuit of happiness - my own version of it, as long as it doesn’t infringe on someone else’s rights.
That’s what I’ve always believed in, it’s what I’ve always stood for.
I haven’t moved. I did waver once - I voted for Clinton in his first term, but that’s a long story and a large regret. Suffice to say there were a LOT of outside influences and I paid more attention to them than to my own common sense and reason.
Other than that, I’ve stood solid… and my government has left me behind. It left me behind generations ago; it just took me about 30 years to realize it.

So what I hope to do with SoundTheBell is to point out those areas where the government is purposely leaving behind its founding articles and principles, where it’s making incremental steps towards infringing further upon our rights, and to hopefully… sound the bell.

Wake up, boys! The redcoats are coming… and we the people voted them in.
Such fools we are.

No more.