Stop the Presses!!! Oh my God! An ordinary citizen needs to have a question answered! Well, I’ll be damned. All elected officials take heed. Stop whatever you are doing and throw all focus and energy into the act of answering each specific detailed question put to you!
Never mind that you were elected by more of the voting electorate (read – other ordinary citizens) than whomever you ran against. Never mind that the great majority of our elected officials were elected to positions with absolutely no compensation. Never mind that any one of you (paid or otherwise) may actually have families, jobs or other demands on your time – aside from the various queries of ‘ordinary citizens’. Wait, weren’t you just ‘an ordinary citizen’ just a short time ago? … ‘an ordinary citizen’ that answered the call of the public service of your fellow townspeople?
I’m pretty sure the oath of office that your vowed to uphold did not include your obsequious attention to each and every inquiry. I do believe you were elected to perform a certain functionary task to whatever board/position to which you were elected. So though you may have experienced a fair amount of contrary-ness from a small number of the total electorate that you represent, it is not reflective of the ‘all’ of us.
Now, for those who ‘cherish’ and hold dear above all their ‘right’ to hold their ‘elected officials’ accountable, maybe we should think about what we are asking and why… maybe we, should actually check our information before we open our squawking beaks… maybe we should apply the same standard of accountability to ourselves that we do to our officials. When people start talking about their ‘rights’ (I know nobody actually ‘talked’ about their rights, but the behaviours of speech and inquisition have supposed they are practicing the same), I am reminded of something my grandfather used to say – “Just because a person has the right to free speech does not mean he is obligated to let every thought that wanders into his mind fall out of his mouth.” The same philosophy can be applied to the questions asked of our elected officials. With a little due diligence on each of our parts most of our questions can be answered with the application of some common sense and just a wee bit of intelligence. Read the rest of this entry »
