Break the Left vs. Right Paradigm

The Ruling Elite are in conflict with the citizens in America.  They simply don’t represent us.  These elected officials use the Left v. Right battle to keep the citizens distracted with partisan politics to keep us from holding them accountable for their self-serving decisions.

For far too long, Americans have been told they exist only as members of warring camps—as Republican or Democrat, red state or blue, conservative or liberal, right or left, religious or secular, urban or rural, majority, minority and even minority/majority. It’s no coincidence that we are described by these labels—as if these labels defined us—by elites who alone stand to benefit from the very divisions they promote.

If they can convince the rest of us that we are at each other’s throats, on the verge of civil strife, these elites can make us believe our own neighbors are our enemies and that we have nothing in common but our hatred of each other.

By herding us into these warring camps, by pitting us against one another, these elites can also distract us from the real forces tearing this society apart—the unaccountable, irresponsible political establishment that now presumes to govern in our name, with no concern for anything but its own interests. By sowing these seeds of distrust, they divide and conquer, and for too long, they have succeeded.

At Citizens for Self Governance, we take a different, and far more realistic as well as more humane, view of our people and the culture they have created over more than two centuries of democratic self-rule. . We acknowledge our differences—ours is a large and diverse society where people of good will can disagree about many things—but we also recognize what unites us: a genuine concern for our family and friends, for our communities, for our nation, and for the health and safety of the culture in which we raise our children.

Democracy has always been a wonderfully argumentative way to organize a society. We can enjoy the sometime raucous chorus of voices that characterize our spirited debates. But we reject the notion that there are only two sides to any debate, and we deny to the political class in Washington the power to tell us what those two sides are and assign us each to one or the other.

We reject, that is, the choices placed before us—choices that pit neighbor against neighbor, in the hope of leaving us divided and powerless, as the political establishment systematically assumes more and more power over our government and our lives.

We affirm our rights as free members of a free society. Among these are the rights to organize ourselves as we see fit without checking first with our overlords in Washington; to express ourselves in our own voices; and to come together in voluntary associations that will surprise, confuse and threaten the political establishment.

In fact, we not only assert these rights—we look forward to exercising them. Now.