My father once told me about how life was back in the ‘60’s when he was a teenager. The early sixties were not exceptional unless of course you remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. If you were asleep in history class, I’ll explain briefly.
The United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) had sent what appeared to be nuclear tipped missiles to the island of Cuba (controlled by communist dictator Fidel Castro) and hadn’t bothered to tell anyone. US reconnaissance planes found them and the Missile Crisis was born. My father and his classmates were taught to get down on their knees and climb under their desks if an attack was imminent. Anyone who has ever seen the old footage of what happens to structures subjected to a nuclear blast would realize this was only done to allow him and his classmates to think there was a way to survive and give them hope of doing so, when in fact, there was none. The Crisis was eventually solved and life tried to get back to normal.
Then on November 22 of 1963, a true national tragedy did happen. The President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was assassinated here in Dallas. Whether one had supported JFK or was against him, there was now a change in how the whole country saw itself. It was if the country was a young person who thinks they’re immortal, finally realized their mortality. The confidence of having won World War II less than twenty years before, was over.
Next came Viet Nam and the Civil Rights Movement. There were marches, it seemed like every day. The protesters were mostly against the “Establishment”. In other words, those who had power and wielded it were being challenged by those who didn’t appear to have any power individually, but when gathered as a whole could affect change. At the end of the day, some changes were affected and arguably most for the better of the country.
In today’s America, the above sounds quite familiar. There are groups that are still protesting and demanding changes. But are we surprised? Our country was founded to be a government ‘of, by and for the people’. While it is obvious that there are powerful people who influence how our country works and that there are plenty of people who are both for and against such people in power, let us remember what the founders had come from.
The founders were subjected to the whims of both King George III and his Parliament across an ocean over three thousand miles away. The intrigue of British politics at the time treated the American colonies like a dog treats its rag-doll play-toy. One minute shaking it viciously and then dropping it. Then picking it up again and shaking it again.
The founders were not perfect, but they envisioned a new type of government founded on the democratic principle they had learned about in their studies of ancient Greece and its form of democracy. They staked their lives on founding the country.
Realizing that there are all levels of peoples’ abilities, their creation of a Representative Democracy which is our Republic, blended the democratic process (where everyone votes on everything) with a filtering process of a representative who votes for what the people, who have voted them into office, want. The founders thought each congressman should represent 50,000 to 60,000 people. The Constitution states there can be no more than one congressperson for every 30,000 citizens.
In 1913 the current number of 435 congresspeople was set. In 1929 the Permanent Apportionment Act set the 435 number as sacrosanct. This results in the average congressperson now representing about 710,000 people.
When a congressperson who represents 771,000 citizens is elected by 50,595 votes out of 62,655 total votes, the total being only ~8.1% of those represented (this occurred in the 2016 election of OK-1 district), we must wonder do citizens care enough?
The Metroplex Civic & Business Association is committed to helping people remember and understand that their actions, voices, and votes do make a difference. Please take time to learn your community and your representation. It is only when citizens take the time to protect what matters to them, we can keep our country on a path unlike any other nation that has ever existed.
We must heed the famous words of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg and VOTE, so “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.