So you’re all excited or worked up about some issue, campaign or candidate and you decide it’s time to volunteer and try to make a difference. That’s great. But there’s always a risk that you’ll be overzealous, jump in to anything and everything with both feet and soon get burned out. When that happens, you won’t have much of an impact on anything.
Here are some political activism tips that will help you stick with it and make a difference for the things you care about.
Know why you’re involved
Knowing “why” you’re involved in something goes a long way towards keeping you involved. It’s that thing that will keep you motivated over the long haul. What’s motivating you? What impact do you want to have? How involved do you want to get? Just be a volunteer or become a leader? What skills do you want to learn or what issue do you want to learn more about? Who do you want to get to know?
If the “why” isn’t enough to make you want to “do”, then “don’t. If you don’t know “why”, you either need to figure it out or do something else.
Make reasonable commitments
It’s much better for you and any cause that you’re volunteering for that you be realistic about what you can do. Think about how you can achieve a happy medium between the time you’re really able to contribute and the needs of the cause or campaign that you’re getting involved with.
Don’t over-commit. In the end, it’s your dependability that’s most important.
Get to know everyone involved
Since politics is about people, personal relationships are the glue that holds everything together. So be sure to attend regular meetings and events as often as possible and get to know everyone involved.
Knowing and networking with other likeminded activists will help you be more effective both now and in the future.
Keep a good attitude
Sometimes “somebody” has to do the tedious, menial, “un-fun” work…like delivering literature all over creation, or calling voters you don’t know. But since it has to be done, attitude is everything. This is why you should be careful about “what” you volunteer to do. Make sure it’s the kind of thing that you can do and still keep a good attitude. As a result you’ll be more productive for the things you care about.
If you don’t stay positive about what you’re doing, you won’t last long.
Go the extra mile
People who are willing to give an extra effort and “fill in the gaps” when necessary are essential to making any cause or campaign a success, not to mention sustaining it. If you know why you’re involved and aren’t over-committed, it’s easier to do more when necessary.
People who go the extra mile stand out…and they go farther.
Recruit others
Any group or cause can never have too many volunteers, (and they never do). Share the vision with your friends, family, and others. Invite them to meetings. Send them updates. The more manpower, the better your group or cause will do.
The more conservatives that get involved in our political system, the better off the conservative movement will be as a whole. The more who get involved at the grassroots level, the more who will eventually be in positions of leadership at higher levels.
Be patient and persistent
If you’re not patient, you’ll probably get a bad attitude, won’t last long and won’t be able to keep at it long enough to make a difference. Remember, things don’t always run on your schedule, especially in politics. Also, persistence is the key to long-term political success. Other people quit. Don’t be one of them.
If you’re patient and persistent you’re more likely to make a difference.
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The purpose of this is not to discourage you from getting involved, but to get you to make sure that you volunteer in a way that you’re more likely to enjoy – and that will keep you involved in the long run.
Liberal Bullying and the War on Testosterone
From breathless accounts of how someone posted mean stories about someone else on Facebook, or how one kid teased another for being ugly or otherwise different, to national public awareness campaigns complete with websites and taxpayer funding, it’s everywhere.
If one didn’t know better it would be easy to think that America’s children have suddenly been infected with some new virus that’s running rampant throughout the population and that doom lies ahead.
But like so many other things in our culture today, the definition of what constitutes “bullying” is all over the map and has become entwined with issues as far ranging as weapons and sexual harassment.
At one school recently, a seven year old boy was suspended for gnawing his pop-tart into the shape of a gun. At another, a ten year old boy was suspended when a classmate told his teacher that he motioned with his arms as though shooting an imaginary bow and arrow, (so cowboys and Indians is definitely out as approved playground activity). Elsewhere, a six year old boy was suspended for sexual harassment because he kissed a female classmate on the hand.
We even have school districts with “mercy rule” policies against bullying in sports, (AKA running up the score), which teaches kids that if you can’t stop the other guy, the government will do it for you.
Most recently the bullying crisis even found its way into the NFL, with one player (weighing in a 320 pounds) quitting the Miami Dolphins and blaming it on being “bullied” by a fellow teammate. It’s bad enough that any red-blooded American male would use that as an excuse to quit, much less not feel any shame in admitting it publicly.
Increasingly it seems like much of the behavior that’s deemed a problem that needs to be controlled is that which relates to boys, such as being “hyper” or having lots of energy.
As for schools, which are increasingly called on to be parental substitutes, the geniuses who run them have decided to cut back on recess – which has pretty well tracked with the rise in supposed cases of “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder”. Go figure. And of course those that do still have recess, it is somewhat less testosterone oriented. Games like “tag” and “kickball” are on the outs, and dodge-ball is downright verboten, (as it’s said to be too prone to bullying).
Then there’s the twenty year push to put kids (especially boys) on psychotropic drugs because they’re “too hyper”. From Ritilin to Adderall, long-term prescriptions for ADHD related drugs are second only to asthma as the most frequent for kids, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Of course pharmaceutical companies have been right there cashing in. A recent New York Times article reported that they have been “targeting perhaps the most impressionable consumers of all: parents, especially mothers.” This all takes place against the backdrop of a society with fewer intact families – which doubles the likelihood that a child will be given such drugs, according to a study in the Canadian Medial Association Journal.
But as Solomon assured us, there’s nothing new under the sun, and since people have been having kids since creation it’s safe to assume that there’s nothing new about kids. Of course that just leaves the environment they’re raised in, but that points an unwelcome finger back at parents, the state of families (and any lack of discipline therein), so we look for scapegoats.
We’ve tamped down the testosterone, identified the symptoms of much of childhood as a problem, medicated the kids (introducing them to prescription drug abuse) and now teach them that doing your best to win or anything usually associated with valor and masculinity is undesirable and that they need to calm down and have another pill.
This in a nation with a military that recently decided to delay mandating that women in the Marines be required to do three pull-ups in order to qualify for future combat duty. Basically liberals want us to be France when we grow up.
In reality it’s liberals who are the bullies. They’re the ones who mandate policies against the realities of childhood to cover for the real problem of failing families. In the meantime, children learn fewer of the lessons that they will need in order to cope with life as adults. But if you’re a big government liberal who looks at citizens as children to be cared for anyway, it’s all good.
Life as extended childhood supervised by government is the dream, staffed by the smart people who know better than you do.