Fight Back Fundraiser Speech

Good afternoon.  I want to speak to you today on what makes a good citizen.  There are two different areas where we can demonstrate good citizenship.  Both are important , but I will spend most of my time today on the second. 

The first area is community involvement.  I think this is best summed up as  loving your neighbor.  All of us should be involved to some degree with making our communities better places to live.  This can range from literally helping out those who live next door when they are down on their luck to being involved in the churches and private organizations that help others and improve our communities.  I know that we have a mixed crowd here politically, but most people who know me or read my column know that I’m a conservative.  As a conservative, I believe in limited government.  I think that we as citizens have abdicated our responsibilities of caring for the poor and improving our communities to the government when it  is not the government’s job.  Government is a poor substitute for human beings helping other human beings.  We need to remember that and see community involvement as  part of being a good citizen. 

The other area of good citizenship is being involved in the public square. I think most people, if they think about being a good citizen at all, think they are doing their duty just by voting.  I thought this way for a long time.  I realize now though that good citizenship is much more than voting.  

We all know the preamble of the Constitution.  It doesn’t say, "We the government."  It doesn’t say, "We the media."  It says, "We the People. "  Our founders created a system of self government, but they intended for us to be active informed participants in that government.  We have instead become ignorant passive spectators.    I wrote  a  column recently about tyranny.  One of the commenters online said that any thinking person knows that tyranny and self governance are mutually exclusive.  That commenter is missing the point.  Self governance only works to prevent tyranny if the citizens remain informed and active.  Trumbull County is evidence of that.

 We have a health department that targets people for daring to question them.

We have the malicious ineptitude of a children’s services board (aided by commissioners who, realizing that foster children don’t vote, look the other way). 

Some of our townships are seeing their land bought up by the state of Ohio to a point where they struggle to  provide basic services to their residents.

 We are bound by a consent decree that has created septic rules in our county that are punitive and the strictest in our state.  No elected official has lifted a finger to try to get us out from under this decree. 

So what do we do?  Some look at the mess we’re in and say it is too late.  We can’t fix this.  Not enough people care.  I don’t believe that.  In the year that I’ve been writing my column, I’ve gotten to know Trumbull County much better.  While I’ve held a magnifying glass to its faults and seen those more clearly than I ever have or really ever wanted to, I’ve also seen the people here more clearly than I ever have.   When I spoke at the last fundraiser, I said that I love this county.  Seven months later, I think I love it now even more as I have met so many good decent people who are working to make this a better place to live.

But how do we do fix this?  I think we start by being the kind of citizens our founders intended.  We must educate ourselves as to what is happening locally.  Every person should know who his or her elected officials are-what they are doing right, what they are doing wrong.  Go to trustee or council meetings.  Know the issues that are facing your community.

Last year, I was speaking to someone about how people didn’t know who their state representative was.  He said, “People just don’t care.”  I replied, “I will make them care.”

I like to think that my column has done that maybe even for some of you. I can’t do it alone.  We all must work to make others care. Each of us has a circle of influence-people we can talk to and encourage to get involved and to become good citizens. 

Jefferson said, “if once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and assemblies, judges and governors, shall become as wolves.”  We sure do have a lot of wolves here in Trumbull County.  We need an army of people willing to become good citizens, willing to influence others and get them involved.  We need people willing to run for office who want to be public servants.  Only then will we drive out the wolves and fix this county.