This week schools across America staged walkouts to protest gun violence. As with everything these days, people and the media began drawing political lines. Most people support the right of students to express their anger over the proliferation of gun violence in schools. However, others criticized the walkout as nothing more than insubordination and poor political theater. The fact is no matter where you stand politically, peaceful protest is one of the cornerstones of our democracy. In the sixties when Martin Luther King, Jr. staged marches to draw attention to civil rights, there were those who thought he should be incarcerated for stirring up trouble. Today, we erect monuments in his honor. Whether or not they are successful in the change they are seeking, the young students from Florida who organized the walkout gave their peers from across America a powerful lesson on how a movement is made.
Inflation has impacted all of us. The price of almost everything has spiked faster and harder than at any time since the 80s. Few things can obliterate a modern economy more than out-of-control inflation.
For most people, there is little upside to writing about the January 6th hearings, but as you probably know by now, I don’t worry about those things. We all must stand for something. The hearings have almost everyone taking sides before a single witness is called. Democrats believe that the events of January 6th were a calculated effort to undermine our democracy by demolishing two of the most sacred tenants of our nation, free elections, and the peaceful transition of power.
Most people consider themselves either a conservative or a liberal. I think if we forget political parties, which flip their positions on things all of the time, and instead focus on the actual definition of what it means to be a conservative and what it means to be a liberal, we might be able to temper the emotional reactions some of us have with political discourse.