Words Mean Things

from House of Eratosthenes (edited):

The paradox is this: The electorate wants to make the final decision. But they need to be led like a child. If they aren’t led like a child, they end up picking whoever is taller. Or whoever they’d most like to see on American Idol. These are symptoms not quite so much of a dissolving society (although it is that), as a lack of leadership.

Look at Ronald Reagan. Yes, he was more "fun" than Jimmy Carter, and he was more fun than Walter Mondale. But he didn’t win those elections because he was a fun guy; we didn’t talk that much about hopey-changey charismatic goodness in 1980 and 1984. He won them because we had spirited debates about policies. We had spirited debates about policies because Reagan took control of the debates and made sure that’s what they were about. And then it became blindingly obvious that his opponents’ policies were just-plain-bad.

(Elections have) descended into a high-school popularity contest, and it’s done that because of a lack of leadership from all of the candidates...

---

Things that we should be hearing about all the time, not just during election campaigns... but during election campaigns especially. The air should be thick with these words.

• Liberty.
• Freedom.
• Opportunities.
• Individual Ambition.
• The chance to make yourself all you can be.
• Higher standard of living.
• Defense.
• Victory.
• Limited government.
• States’ rights.
• Sovereignty.

Those will fit on bumper stickers... although, by themselves, they do not quite make the point. The point is that, as Americans, whether we lean right or lean left, we all should be living and breathing these things, every waking moment of every day — and then dreaming about them as we sleep. Something is viciously wrong with our country if & when that is not the case.

update re "they need to be led like a child": I think a better way of stating this would be that, as Thomas Jefferson said, the electorate needs to be well-informed.

"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government;... whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights."

Hence the leftists' perpetual push to take over schools and the media, and silence all opposition.