What scares me most?

My boys are 10 and 13. The election has not only been a hot topic around the country, but around our house.  I'm impressed my boys are more political savvy than I was at their age, perhaps even still. Because I am not a very political person I worried that I wouldn't know how to guide them in understanding the system.

Then I decided that it didn't matter. Maybe figuring it out on their own will make them understand it better than I do. Most of what I know came from parents, grandparents, teachers, news outlets, and cynicism!

Like most things in our house, I asked them to take it in from all sides and from many sources. We talked about all the candidates - ALL of them. Why some are allowed in the debate and some are not. We encouraged them to ask questions and listen to the answers. To gather information, process it, and form their own opinion.

What we didn't do was tell them who to vote for or who we were voting for, not until the last minute. That is one thing I was taught that I do hold on to. Never ask people who they voted for.  My grandparents would be - heck they were appalled at a  lot before they died and this would set them over the edge. I can just hear my Grandpa Jack now, "First rock music and now this!"

The election is over and it is not the candidates who scare me - it's us. We the People.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I hope that this resurgence in political interest does not end after this election because your candidate won or lost. I hope that watching everything that politicians say and do does not end because the debates are over. Because what scares me is not the people in Washington DC, but the people that put them there.  My Uncle Chris one of the smartest people I know is very politically savvy and he taught me this. This government was created For the people, By the people. You have not only a voice with your vote but a responsibility to your future.

What scares me the most are not the candidates. What scares me the most is people giving up their power. That would cause these great men who risked their lives to build a new country - to surely turn over in their grave.

In Congress, July 4, 1776.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

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