Now that the election is over, I have a bone to pick with some of my fellow citizens. Let’s stop the tribalization of our nation. Let’s stop projecting the mental anguish caused by thinking that the other side will do terrible things to you. For too long our politics has developed into the morass of name calling and opposition hatred. It is nothing new in politics, yet as we have seen, one side is disparaged by being called “garbage,” “deplorable,” “Nazi,” and “un-American.” The other side is afraid of losing their body autonomy, except during the Wuhan lockdowns, their democracy otherwise known as mob rule, or being locked up in concentration camps, like when Franklin Delano Rosevelt wrote Executive Order 9066 incarcerating Americans of Japanese descent. Even if we see and experience this vitriol it manifests itself in counterproductive ways. Afterall, we are family, neighbors, friends, and the smallest minority of all, the individual. I am not suggesting that you stop fighting for your principles. I am suggesting we take the time to understand why we fight and how we use our skills of persuasion to change hearts and minds. Many people I know were taught that it’s not polite to talk about politics, religion, and rock-n-roll, yet these are exactly the types of dialogs we should learn to have. Civil conversations are a skill set that was dismissed when the family was dismantled during The Great Society and schools lost their focus to indoctrination rather than eduction. Good debates and discussions can be feisty, loud, and sometimes uncomfortable. Yet this is preferable to another internal conflict such as the American Civil War where brother slaughtered brother and over 700,000 of our fellow citizens were killed. I would rather be passionate in a debate than have firearms pointed my way whether it be by a fellow citizen or our government. It’s our fault that we have let our politics become more important than defending our rights as sovereign individuals. The purpose of a constitutional republic is to protect individual rights, including property both physical and intellectual. The only social system consistent with human nature is through Capitalism. Ask yourself then, what is Capitalism? It is a social system based on the recognition and protection of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. I can now hear you saying, “what about________” Fill in the blank. Kim Monson Show Sponsor As my friend and author Ander Ingemarson states in his book, “Think Right or Wrong. Not Left of Right,” he discusses the importance of individual responsibility and moral clarity. The key point of the book is to make decisions based on rational principles rooted in objective reality. He explores the nature of good and evil, the role of free will, and the impact of moral choices on personal and society’s well-being. Many people push the idea of the separation of church and state, and they never ask if we should therefore consider separating the economy and state? These ideas are worth exploring and considering if we wish to remain free. Many of our fellow citizens have no understanding or don’t take the time to investigate these concepts. They believe in collectivism and altruism, which by its very definition are focused on other people’s needs, and entails sacrificing the fruits of your labor for others by force. We should focus on upholding and protecting our rights as citizens, not on team blue or red or because of someone else’s need. I would suggest we should focus on building our character through the choices we make and the actions we take in life, not blaming others for our expedient and hedonistic decisions. We should build our traits of excellence and those classical virtues of prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude, not point our fingers at others because we lack the discipline of self-mastery. We are the most fortunate people on the face of the planet in human history. We are secure at night and have neighbors bordering to our north and south that are not lobbing bombs at us. We have all the accommodation and luxury that the richest kings and queens in human existence never had. Still, we fight over who will be the next president as if it should have mattered. We must examine how to best move past this siloed behavior and get to agreeing on what priorities matter most. Consider this. The sun will come out. Your kids and grandchildren will go out and play. You will still get to go to work and earn a living. We trust in these everyday occurrences. Likewise, we need to be able to trust our representatives by demanding they respect and know where their source of empowerment is given, by the People. Our elections should not matter as much as they have in our lifetime. Our representatives must understand that their fellow citizens do not need to be bought by graft or shiny things rather, they need to have their individual rights protected, PERIOD. Presidents and elected representatives are bound to protect and defend the Constitution, and we should hold them accountable within the law no matter who gets elected. Imagine if you got to choose how to best spend your wealth, rather than someone throwing bumper sticker slogans your way to get elected to office. Imagine a time when you could say something that was controversial, and your opponent would have the command of the English language to discuss it rather than try to cancel you because they are offended. Fellow citizens, it is time to rediscover and understand it is our duty to govern ourselves. If we take this challenge seriously and become informed by having personal responsibility to govern ourselves through benevolence, trust, and mutual respect we can prosper by using the source of our actual wealth, our minds. The opportunity is to make a personal commitment to working on yourself first and leave others to work on themselves. Make your life a shining example for others to mirror. The insightful Lawrence W. Reed, President Emeritus of the Foundation of Economic Education wrote, “If you do not govern yourself, you will be governed.” https://kimmonson.com/featured_articles/now-that-the-election-is-over/?vgo_ee=A5haMrmV70%2BQ2%2FilO3XWFUdVI1fHFeoASMACGejvBR82QeDGdfqjGnuO%3AQQk%2BmIso5eC%2BmUNu4JJ6lN6G35T1Z2Hc