Who am I?

"Who am I?" is a question I have been asking myself for many years.  When one peels back the layers of skin of oneself, each layer consisting of past experiences and influences (both positive and negative), motives, ambitions, dreams, realities and freedom to be who we are meant to be while at the same time being able to step outside of all those things that have been in our past which influence our decisions and look back at them in an unbiased manner and say to ourselves "Is that really who I am and what I believe or is it what the influencers in my life believe?".


When it comes to politics, many times we are affected by our parents, our relatives, our friends, our boss, or even our race but how can we really support something that we don't believe in ourselves?  We should understand completely what we believe in before we can truly get behind it and in order to completely understand what we believe in we first have to completely separate ourselves of our biased natures and past experiences and seek truth; then compare those truths to what we were taught.  You may very well find out that you were raised a republican and you have come to know yourself and that you are still a republican or maybe you are a democrat or a Tea Party person, or maybe you're like me and you are getting closer to who you are and you realize that quite possibly you wish there were another party out there which believed in what you believed in.


The problem we run into is if we are not either 100% Republican or 100% Democrat then we don't truly believe in either party, therefore we don't get as excited and support them like we would if we were 100% believers.  People still vote however for both parties, so there is some belief or that wouldn't happen at all.  I've heard people say "I'll just vote for the lesser of two evils", and that statement in itself is quite scary to me.  Jesus Christ stated a very profound reality in Matthew 17:20 - "Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."  If we really believed in our party and the candidates themselves really believed in their party, then they could certainly be the "movers and shakers" of our society, but instead they don't truly believe, and likewise a lot of corruption, complacency, and self interests have infiltrated the leadership in our society.  My point is, if they really believed, then the United States would continue to be a very influential world leader for many years into the future.  This country, the United States of America, would hold every diligent politician's heart and it would be extremely hard for any of those "other" distracting things to enter in.  If only we had the faith of a mustard seed, we could move mountains.


As far as the Tea Party, no, I'm not quite ready for them, although I am inspired by their spirit and I do believe our country could and should learn a lot from our ancestral leaders like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others.  There might just be a time for the Tea Party if things don't change but unfortunately, as inspiring as it is, the Tea Party is only a very delayed knee jerk reaction to a country and politics that have been slipping without true and effective leadership for years.  It's very name symbolizes revolution.  Do we need a revolution or civil war in this country?  No, and the separation and variation between the Democrats and the Republican parties are growing larger.  I would most rather support a new party that took the best of "both" the Democrats and the Republicans and applied them to the ideals of the party forming something more "balance" and less "rebellious".  A lot of thought would have to go into the name of this new party however because the name "Tea Party" smells like revolt and rebellion and isn't really a "long term" party designation.  Maybe something a little more unified like the Unification Party? No, not really a good idea; people would confuse us with Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church a worldwide political and religious cult who owns the famous newspaper, the Washington Post and also has given large sums of money to both political and religious leaders alike.  Not a very good idea to take money from this fellow since he believes he is the new "Saviour" and "Messiah" and should run the world.  So, let's consider some other names such as the United Alliance Party, the Party of the United States, the United Republic, the United Democracy, or the Party of Change?


So, who am I?  I suppose for now, I should call myself an independent.  I am myself.  I am me.  Some might accuse me of riding the fence, however the truth is that I don't care much about the fences, only the "big picture" seen outside of all the fences.  All I care about it what I think is right based on unbiased observations of what I believe will work, won't work, what is strengthening us and what is weakening us.  When I speak of "us", I'm speaking of firstly the "United States of America" and secondly "the rest of the world"; the people, the animals, the economy and the environment are just a few of those things I am speaking of that add up to the United States of America, the country that I love.