From the diaries by Erick.

During the Presidential campaign, I made a comment on someone’s blog about why Sarah Palin garnered so much support by people from all walks of life. I’ve been wanting to expand on this for some time, but haven’t had the time do to so until now. That comment was,

Conservatives want to help those that can’t help themselves. Liberals want to help those that won’t help themselves.

Palin’s popularity shows that the majority of American people still support conservative values and freedom. This blog is not intended to be a rallying cry for Palin, but rather an introspective look at what Americans really want from their elected leaders, and why Republican candidates continue to fail. More importantly, I believe it can be a road map back to relevance and respect for our Party if we choose to follow it.

It should come as no surprise that Sarah Palin comes from the last frontier in the United States. Alaska is still a place where the independent, self-sufficient spirit still lives in our nation, at least to some degree. This spirit includes working hard for what you earn, and sharing with others that are less fortunate or have had a bad break. What really brought this to the forefront was her efforts to champion the cause of Down’s Syndrome children. For once, we found a politician that had genuine care about those that could not care for themselves, instead of just looking out for themselves our those that paid them to get there. But that’s the second part of freedom. I’ll get to that later.

The First Part of Freedom is Opportunity.

Opportunity is freedom. This simple truth has been proven countless times throughout out nation’s history. Now, there have certainly been times when opportunity has been denied to various groups of people during that time, but that only shows why we need to work towards making it available to everyone.

Opportunity offers the best avenue to success, but that avenue can also lead to failure. There are some that believe that the possibility of failure needs be eliminated if we care about people. The thing is, they go hand-in-hand. If you remove the possibility of failure, you also take away the possibility of long-term success.

Failure is one of the greatest teachers. Without it, we would be doomed to repeating our mistakes over and over again. It is also those failures that make our successes even more worthwhile. It also allows those around us to lend a helping hand in our time of need so we can get back on our feet again. This is what community is supposed to be about.

Our elected representatives have completely forgotten this over the past eight years. Democrats and Republicans alike have passed spending bill after spending bill, offering temporary help to their friends and supporters, while at the same time taking away everyone else’s opportunity at freedom. Rather than acknowledge the problem they’ve created, they only seek to exacerbate it by continuing to believe that they can prevent failure. This only delays the inevitable, and will hurt everyone even more. Almost everyone knows it, many acknowledge it, but it has become like a runaway train that no one seems to be able to stop.

The Second Part of Freedom is Responsibility.

Freedom isn’t free. It takes the commitment and sacrifice of every one of us to maintain it. Protecting freedom isn’t just for soldiers deployed halfway around the world, although they provide us with a wonderful example of what need to be doing here at home. Protecting freedom, means looking out for and helping those that are unable to help themselves.

How many of us complain about the public school system, but never offer to volunteer to help those that need a little extra guidance and support? Not every kid in town has the same wonderful, supportive parents that I’m sure you are to your children. The most treasured possession I have other than what my kids have given me is a bookmark I received from the parent of a special needs young girl that attended our summer vacation bible school a few years ago. As always seems to be the case, I know I received much more than she did in the exchange. For those of you that wonder why some of us are so adamantly pro-life, this is a primary reason why. We want to help those that are unable to help themselves. They have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness every bit as much as we do.

Our liberal representatives however, believe that these people are expendable. They want to give rights to terrorists who’s choices led to taking away the freedoms of so many, while at the same time doing everything they can to take away the rights of those that cannot obtain them for themselves. These people were given the responsibility to protect our rights, but seem to have forgotten that almost from the day they arrived in D.C. Reality has been turned in its head

The Third Part of Freedom is Accountability.

There are those that will tell you that all we need to do is trust the basic goodness of man. Most of us don’t really believe that though. It’s what we say to try to convince ourselves that we aren’t all that bad. Character is what we do when no one is watching. All too often we know that we fail ourselves and others when no one is looking.

Many of us that have come to this realization know that the only way we can do something about that is to make ourselves accountable to others. Knowing that we have someone to answer to when we’re alone causes us to think twice about what we’re doing.

For far too long now our representatives have failed to live up to their responsibilities. But who can blame them? We have failed to hold them accountable time, and time again. You can’t pick up a paper these days without reading about corruption at some level of government somewhere. Sure, we can point to a couple of recent instances where we tossed them out on their ear, but for those stories there are many, many more where we continue to send the same people back once again for expediency’s sake.

Perhaps its because we’ve forgotten that these people represent us. For those that have forgotten what that word means, here’s a handy definition.

To portray or depict; present the likeness of, as a picture does.

Perhaps we would do well to consider this definition of represent then next time we vote someone into a government position, whether a local school board member, or federal representative. For those that we’ve already sent, it is imperative that we hold these people accountable. Not only with their personal actions, but their votes. We can no longer stand idly by and let them give away our freedoms anymore. Technology offers us the ability to know what they’re doing and how they’re voting. Let’s use it for the good of ourselves and others.

Freedom. It’s difficult to obtain, easy to lose, and even more difficult to get back once we’ve lost it. Fight for it. For yourself, but more importantly for those that cannot fight for themselves.