Reforming America: Speaking Up

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good. - Mohandas Gandhi

To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice. - Confucius

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke

When you talk of making positive change it has to include changes to your personal life and actions at a deep level. Many of us allow great wrongs to be done out of fear of ridicule if we speak up. If we truly want things to change for the better we have to conquer that fear and begin to speak up not just some of the time but virtually all of the time.

There is an old saying that "The squeaky wheel gets the oil." When it comes to change nothing could be truer. Persistence and insistence are at the heart of change. As agents of change we must insist that change is necessary and we have to keep at it even in the face of constant rejection. Nobody worth listening to ever said change would be easy because the reality of the situation is that change will always meet with resistance and overcoming resistance is not easy.

One of the problems faced by agents of change is getting people more actively involved. It is very easy to go with the flow and not worry about problems if they don’t directly affect you. The problem with that course of action is that in most cases if a wrong is being done to someone else it could someday be done to you in some way. If we don’t speak up when we see it happening we are giving passive approval and those committing the wrongs think their actions are acceptable.

Since we don’t want the wrongs of our society to continue, we as the agents of change need to speak out. Make no mistake that it does require bravery to stand up and speak out against wrongs that may be done with the approval of many if not most. It requires the most dedicated souls to bring real, substantial, positive change to any society. The reason that people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi are so revered is that they took the incredible risks to fight injustice and through their perseverance brought about real positive change for the people they were fighting for.

Silence in the face of injustice is unacceptable. If we truly want change we need to stand up and fight for it. That means we need to call out those who hide unspeakable wrongs in popular opinion and show others the ugliness that truly motivates them. We have to be the ones who draw the line in the sand with the purveyors of hatred and say "You shall not pass. This far and no further! We will no longer be fooled by your lies and deceptions." If we want our children to live in a better world we have to be the architects of that world. Hatred and evil are like grains of sand, they cannot hold together any great structure because they have no cohesiveness. If we choose to build our society on hatred and evil it will collapse like a house made of sand. If we choose instead to speak up against wrongs and fight for justice for all of the people around us everyone wins and we build a house that cannot be torn down and will stand for all time as a testament to what is good and right in the world.

Troy Wilson-Ripsom | Staff Writer | E-mail Comments on this column. | Click icon to Digg this article

Get Involved Do you sit and yell at the TV when politicians come on? Do you shake your head sadly whenever you see a homeless veteran? Is that all you tend to do? It's time to put up or shut up America. We all love to talk about how we could do things better or how we would do it if we were in charge. Well, it's time to put your money where your mouth is. If you can think of it, you can write it down. If you can write it down, you can type it. If you can type it, you can e-mail it and if you can e-mail it, you can send it here. We at Reform America are committed to giving voice to anyone who wants to put their ideas out there to make our nation a better place. As the readership grows, we are able to take those views to a wider and wider audience. Grassroots campaigns begin with voices speaking out. You have opinions. Voice them. We aren't about conservative or liberal. We aren't about pro-this or anti-that. We're about Americans and the First Amendment. Reform America is about politics by, for and of the people. You are the people. You only need to speak up. America is listening. Send your article to: stories@reform-america.net

Have You Been Downsized Due to Outsourcing? For several years now we have listened to some within the business community tell us that America can't compete on a global scale unless they send our jobs overseas where they can be done cheaper. The question becomes, if we don't have good paying jobs here, how can we sustain our own economy? We want to hear from you. Have you lost your job? Have you been forced into a lower wage job due to outsourcing? Has outsourcing been a success for you? Did you end up in a better job? Tell us your story so we can make sure the politicians see how outsourcing really impacts the workers who are backbone of America. Send your story to stories@reform-america.net