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I posted an essay about a concept know as "locus of control." Briefly, individuals tend to believe that the locus of control in their lives is either largely internal or external. In other words, most people believe one of two things: that they are pretty much in control of dealing with circumstances in their lives, or that they are pretty much the victim of circumstances imposed by outside forces.
It's interesting to note that in the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, the definition of "locus" includes the example that in a democracy, the locus of power is in the people. By no coincidence, that is exactly what the progressive thinkers among the Founding Father's recognized, and intended the US Constitution -- and especially that Bill of Rights -- to insure.
They knew that in order for our democracy to survive the constant threats it would face (and they knew those threats were going to be primarily internal), that citizens would need to constantly exercise those democratic muscles defined in, for example, Amendment 1.
So when you write to an elected official in Washington, DC; or call the governor's office; or attend a public hearing; or march in a demonstration; or write a letter-to-the-editor, you are doing your part. We should never take the position that those things aren't working. You are responsible for your actions, not those of the elected official. So if you do your best to tell the truth as you understand it (say on the war in Iraq), you have met your responsibility. You can not control what the elected officialdoes with that truth you expressed to him or her.
Our nation will only be transformed when enough individuals at the grass-roots level exercise their internal locus of control, and exercise their Constitutional rights. The elections in '06 were but the first step in the correct direction. That step came by way of the individuals at the grass roots level, not from the goodness of the bureaucrats in Washington. And the next step will come by means of that same democratic force.
I, for one, and mighty glad to be on the same team as you and other DUers. It makes me happy, because it provides us the opportunity to remember what Robert Kennedy said in South Africa, when he urged people not to be discouraged by "the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills -- against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence .... Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
Those "centres of energy" are the individual's locus of control. RFK was right. He knew exactly what he was talking about on the day he gave that speech.
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