| A general strike is exceedingly difficult to attain, especially with our current unemployment rates. It's a pipe dream if one thinks that such an action is the best - nigh, only - way to go about fomenting change. Our current task is one of education. Grassroots projects are unfeasible because of the size of the whole - how are you going to mobilize 1.3 million people, country-wide, to act against their shared employer? - but electing congressmen is a fine way of getting things done. The problem is two-fold: One, that the current system is set up so that the 'people' are only directly represented by one half of one third of the national role; two, that there are far too many moderates that are diluting the debates and cheapening politicians' stands by yanking them all to a centrist non-action.
The former is the fault of our founding fathers, and can't be readily reformed, but the latter is a societal ill that is self-serving and ultimately self-destructive. They bring everyone to the center and then complain that the politicians are identical, and they are utterly complacent unless a disaster hits on their front door. It's like how you cook a rat: drop it in a pot of boiling water, and he escapes for his life, but put him in a pot and slowly heat the water around him, and he'll cook quite nicely.
. . . whenever any government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. |