THE BEACONS CREED (A Promise for Civic Integrity)

I believe democracy is not sustained by institutions alone,

but by the character of the people who participate in it.

I believe the right to vote is sacred,

not because it is granted by law,

but because it is earned by responsibility.

I believe my voice matters,

and so does the voice of every other citizen,

especially those with whom I disagree.

I will seek truth before opinion.

I will verify before I share.

I will think before I react.

I understand that freedom without responsibility

leads to chaos,

and responsibility without freedom

leads to oppression.

Democracy requires both.

I will listen before I judge.

I will listen to understand, not to defeat.

I will respect differences without surrendering principles.

I recognize that elections are not battles to be won,

but moments of collective decision

that shape the future of our nation.

I will honor the privacy of the ballot,

because secrecy protects courage

and preserves independence of thought.

I acknowledge that money, media, and influence

must never outweigh honesty,

and I will remain vigilant against distortion and manipulation.

I will treat voting not as a transaction,

but as an act of public service.

I will resist cynicism,

for cynicism weakens democracy more than disagreement ever could.

I will protect the dignity of citizenship,

in myself and in others.

I accept that democracy is imperfect,

not because it fails,

but because humans are imperfect.

Its strength lies in our willingness to improve it.

I choose to be a Beacon.

A Beacon of clarity in confusion.

A Beacon of honesty in noise.

A Beacon of responsibility in freedom.

A Beacon of listening in division.

A Beacon of courage in silence.

I will stand for truth without cruelty,

for justice without arrogance,

for participation without fear.

My vote is my voice.

My conduct is my legacy.

My integrity is my contribution.

This is my Creed.

This is my responsibility.

This is my light.

By David W. Wygant 

NOTE:  This "CREED" captures the content and spirit of the Voting Alert Beacons I started this blog in 2012, and it has spanned four Presidential elections and three midterm elections. Please give it and its contents serious time and reflection.

IT'S TIME

These are difficult times, but we can take heart in our strength.  Many among us daily risk everything to help the few.  They work on our streets, in our hospitals, and generally our communities.  Some have sworn to serve and protect us from foreign aggressors.  They are all heroes.  Now, especially in this "voting season," all of us must rise up.  It’s our turn now, and our duty now.  There are changes that “WE THE PEOPLE,” must make. 

  

”We the People" (you and me) hunger for leadership, honesty, and the re-emergence of public service.  We don’t need more politicians who accumulate power and enrich themselves.  We have too many of those, and many are corrupt.  We need public servants to lead us.  We need public servants to work together, and to inspire us.  Elective office must be about people and public service, not power and politics.  The currency of our actions needs to be honesty, not influence or money.  Only then can WE focus on what we can become, and what we can achieve.  

In all of this, WE have a part to play too.  We need to stop peering outside ourselves.  Stop pointing our fingers.  We should spend more time looking at the person in the mirror, because what WE become as a nation begins with each of us individually.  Each of us, and all of us as a country, in support of our freedoms and liberties, need to focus on our individual responsibilities, and our individual actions.  

Indeed, it’s time to get back to basics.  It’s time to remember a few simple things.  Let’s begin by resurrecting two old, but important and timeless virtues. THEY are the virtues of HONESTY AND PUBLIC SERVICE.  

Let's all vote on November 5th!

David W. Wygant

(REPEAT POST) BEACONS OF COMMON SENSE-The Middle of the Road

Below is a post from 2018 about "the middle of the road."  I had posted it "a few short months" before the fall election.  Now we are close to the 2020 election.  Not much has changed, and I still think the message hits the bulls-eye.  What you think?
--------------------------

In a few short months, another election will be here.  We the People will have another chance to “speak,” and tell our leaders what we want them to do.  

When we elect representatives in our American Democracy, we ask them to represent us because they come from us, and are like us.  They should do their work on behalf of us.  They should serve, not rule.  They should serve briefly and then make room for others.  They shouldn’t have perks, literally, they should have what we have, and live as we do.  They should be honest so we can respect them. 

It’s time to begin a new era!  Elective office is a public service opportunity, not a career.  (REPEAT).  Elective office is a public service opportunity, not a career.

So now, please join me in the middle of the American road with a new focus on possibility and potential.  Let’s not drive on the left or right shoulders, but travel down the middle of the road, where the language spoken is common sense supported by HONESTY AND PUBLIC SERVICE.  While the shoulders certainly define the outer limits or extremes of the road, and every road has its shoulders, they aren’t where we should be traveling down, and certainly not governing from.  

Just as the speed bumps on the shoulders can shake a car apart, literally shake a car apart, in some kind of grand intramural tug of war, the left and right are shaking our country apart.  IT’S DISGUSTING AND JUST PLAIN WRONG!  IT NEEDS TO STOP!

If we can find balance in the middle of the road, a destiny of continued blessings for each of us, and for America, will be assured.  Yes!  Let’s meet in the middle of the road where common sense lives.  Let’s use our right to free speech responsibly.   However, with the right comes the responsibility to listen.  Even more, listening must mean we are willing to change.  We must be willing to let the other person, or the other argument, or the other viewpoint change us.  If we all come with that commitment, we will indeed meet in “the middle of the road,” and continue building an incredibly strong Common Sense for America.

. . .  remember that America’s best days aren’t behind her.   America’s best days are ahead of her.  They always have been and always will be.

Dave

Copyright © 2019 by David William Wygant. All rights reserved.

BE ON GUARD

We must live peaceably with the other 8 billion people on earth, but sometimes we must also stand apart and above in our words and actions. In any case, there should be peace. We should always answer the call of our higher angels, not our lower demons. That this really is a choice we have been given the power to make, speaks positively of our place in the universe, and our ultimate limitless potential.

Self-awareness means we carefully guard ourselves to avoid the negative influence and effects of those around us, including friends and family. It means we should guard against other’s words and actions by watching closely our own.

Lastly, we should know that there is an inverse relationship between honesty and selfishness. If we are increasingly selfish in our words, concerns, and deeds, then we become less honest. We become narrow and short-sighted. Our world shrinks. Ultimately, there will be fewer people in it until we are completely alone.  Run away from selfishness. Run toward unselfishness and selflessness as fast as you can!!

BE ON GUARD AND ALWAYS BE GOOD!!

. . .  remember that America’s best days aren’t behind her.   America’s best days are ahead of her.  They always have been and always will be.

David

Copyright © 2019 by David William Wygant. All rights reserved.

BEACONS OF LISTENING - The Responsibility for the Right to Free Speech

We desperately need a moment of national silence and reflection.  Silence should overwhelm, like a tsunami, the volume of our nasty and negative voices.  

Only when we hear with an ear that seriously and sincerely considers the possibility of change, are we truly listening.  We must have an open mind so that we can learn.  There is no progress without change, and the conscious effort to learn.  This approach and mindset supports two of our most basic and fundamental American virtues, honesty and public service.

What is the most important thing we can do to insure and preserve our right to free speech?  Listening is perhaps the most critical responsibility for preserving free speech.  What is free speech, really?  It is two things.  It is not only a right.  It also includes a responsibility to listen.

When do words become illegal?  When they are words uttered only for their own sake.  Our words should have a positive direction and force behind them.  They must simultaneously exercise and support our inalienable rights as articulated in the US Constitution.  We are 200+ million American voters.  When our collective voice calls us forward with a positive force, there is nothing we can’t accomplish.  Without this positive voice, there is little that we can accomplish.

Call to action 

There is a personal call to action here.  We should all hang a mirror in our minds and look in it often.  We should always see someone who is willing to listen.  Someone who thinks them not me.  This may seem counter intuitive, but this is the only way we can make personal progress and American progress.  This is the only way we can find personal happiness and happiness as a country.  

. . .  remember that America’s best days aren’t behind her.   America’s best days are ahead of her.  They always have been and always will be.

Dave

Copyright © 2019 by David William Wygant. All rights reserved.  

BEACON OF HOPE--Wanis Kabbaj

Recently, one of the things the press in America has been consumed by is the fact that President Trump declared that he was a nationalist.  When I heard him say it, images of walking on the moon, the building of our transnational railroad, the steady walk of settlers westward, and even the Civil War with the abolishment of slavery.  That the press would necessarily compare the Presidents statement to Hitler’s or see it as racist is really extreme.

I’m proud to be an American and feel a strong sense of nationalism within.  However, I am also a globalist.  I believe President Trump is a globalist too.  He is a generous person, and I believe he’s proud of America as the most generous nation on the planet.

So, it is with great confusion and with frustration settling in, that I read about another war within our psyche created by the press.  Fortunately, my inability to express all that I feel is rescued by Wanis Kabbaj.  His TED Talk is full of clear thinking and common sense.  I hope you will take a few minutes to listen to and view it.

“How Nationalism and Globalism Can Coexist”

LET’S ALL VOTE!!

. . .  and as we do, remember that America’s best days aren’t behind her.   America’s best days are ahead of her.  They always have been and always will be.

Dave

Copyright © 2018 by David William Wygant. All rights reserved.  

Beacons of Hope-SUSAN COLLINS SENATE SPEECH

Cornerstones of the Voting Alert Beacons are honesty and public service.  Recently, Senator Collins shined a bright light on both cornerstones and became a Beacon of Hope in the process.  

If you haven’t had a chance, or taken the time, to listen to the October 5th, 2018 Susan Collins Senate floor speech, below is a link giving you an easy opportunity.  Her speech is one more historic example of why over the years the Senate has come to be considered the “greatest deliberative body.”  That reputation has tattered in recent times, but Senator Collins repairs some of the frays in her speech.  

Thank you Senator Collins:

LET’S ALL VOTE!!

. . .  and as we do, remember that America’s best days aren’t behind her.   America’s best days are ahead of her.  They always have been and always will be.

Dave

Copyright © 2018 by David William Wygant. All rights reserved.  

IF by Rudyard Kipling

Written in earlier times when the use of pronouns was too one-sided, the message at that time, and the message for us today is the same.  

How do we keep calm when times are not calm?  How do we keep our faith when so many seem to have lost theirs?  How do we keep a steady focus when there is so much “noise” and “dust in the air?”  Indeed, how do we decide anything when those who claim honesty are the loudest, and they offer lies disguised as the truth?  In his poem IF, Rudyard Kipling offers a compass to help us find our way.

We should live by our own wits, seek the truth, count on the truth and live by the truth, have dreams and keep them close, know that there are trap-setters for fools — don’t be a fool, don’t worry about failure — be ready to start over, never quit — that you are human will sustain you, count on mankind — but count on yourself more, and fill every second of your life with all of your effort.

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

LET’S ALL VOTE!

. . .  and as we do, remember that America’s best days aren’t behind her.   America’s best days are ahead of her.  They always have been and always will be.

Dave

Copyright © 2018 by David William Wygant. All rights reserved.  

The Virtues of Honesty and Public Service

Honestly and public service are our most important virtues, individually and as a nation.  THEY are fundamentally critical to the functioning of a successful democracy.  THEY are the gears that drive our democracy, and we turn those gears with our RIGHT TO VOTE.  THEY are bedrock principles that can bring happiness and fulfillment to each of us, and to all of us as a nation when we live them out in our lives.  THEY give us the moral courage and energy we need to look deeper inside our basic natures, and to know better what it means to be human.  LASTLY, HONESTY AND PUBLIC SERVICE are assured only when they stand on actions of CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY.

We should not forget that in a very basic way …

• Public service grows only from the fertile soil of honesty and a charitable outlook.
• It follows that no position on any specific issue is a fair position without honesty and …
• That means we should first think of everyone else as we think of ourselves.  How would we want to be treated?  That’s the question.  Indeed, the answer to that question tells how we should treat everyone.  

When we are true to these three principles, in word and deed, there will be both HONESTY AND PUBLIC SERVICE in fact.  Our democracy will be enriched and strengthened.

Abraham Lincoln called attention to honesty and public service, and their relationship to citizenship, civility, and civic responsibility with a simple turn of words.  If he disagreed with someone, he said, “I don’t like that man (or women), I must get to know them better.”

It’s time for us to take that approach for a test drive too!!

. . .  remember that America’s best days aren’t behind her.   America’s best days are ahead of her.  They always have been and always will be.

Dave

Copyright © 2018 by David William Wygant. All rights reserved.  

BEACONS OF COMMON SENSE-INTRODUCTION

What is common sense?

In the weeks and months ahead, I plan to write a series of Voting Alert Beacons posts called “Beacons of Common Sense.”  Issue by issue, it will be my goal to find “common sense” expression of the challenges we face and what the solution(s) might look like.  This view of common sense will hopefully transform and take us to a higher plain of civics and civility.  A place where we aren’t Democrats, Republics, or Independents.  A place where we can all just be citizens of the United States of America.  

I find my inspiration for Beacons of Common Sense in the book written by Thomas Paine before the America Revolution.  At the time it was a best seller.  If you thought the British should go back to England and leave the Colonies alone, you thought it expressed common sense.  Interestingly, the thoughts Paine expressed proved to be truths through the American experience of self-government.  In many cases, common sense became common practice through the US Constitution.

I’m also taking advantage of the internet.  How could I not?  I’ve compiled a list of words that express different forms of common sense.  Here’s the list:  Good sense, native wit, sensibleness, judgment, levelheadedness, prudence, discernment, canines, astuteness, wisdom, insight, perception, practicality, horse sense, gumption, savvy, and street smarts. 

I plan to write about the topics and issues we should all watch closely as the next election approaches.  What are my goals as the author?  It is my hope that in a tiny way I can help people realize that even Common Sense must be willing to change.  It is critical that we all respectfully use our 1st Amendment right of free expression.  However, with the right comes the responsibility to listen.  Even more, listening must mean we are willing to change.  We must be willing to let the other person, or the other argument, or the other viewpoint change us.  If we all come with that commitment, we will indeed meet in “the middle of the road,” and build an incredibly strong Common Sense for America.

As one writer, and indeed one voter, I hope you will follow along in the weeks and months ahead.

. . .  remember that America’s best days aren’t behind her.   America’s best days are ahead of her.  They always have been and always will be.

Dave

Copyright © 2018 by David William Wygant. All rights reserved.  

BEACONS OF HOPE: Democracy by Random Selection

When did politics become a career field?  Why would anyone aspire to become a politician?  I know the answer to the second question.  They work for their interests and special interests, all the while making a great deal of money without producing anything.  In the work they have done, they created a new class called the “elite.”  It’s hard to understand, but some of them now see themselves as modern day rulers.

In the beginning, and for many years, we called this career field public service, didn’t we?  The people who entered the field were called public servants.  Who did they work for?  They worked for us, WE THE PEOPLE.  What did they do?  What did they make?  They swore an oath to the US Constitution, and worked diligently for each American Citizen they represented, and for America as a whole.  Then after they served their term of office, they went back to their career and job.  They returned to the body politic we call WE THE PEOPLE.  Best of all, these public servants were honest.  

Today, I’d like to dedicate this BEACON OF HOPE to the virtues of honesty and public service.  To the public servants we still have, this one’s for you.

WHAT IF WE REPLACED POLITICIANS WITH RANDOMLY SELECTED PEOPLE?

. . .  remember that America’s best days aren’t behind her.   America’s best days are ahead of her.  They always have been and always will be.

Dave

Copyright © 2018 by David William Wygant. All rights reserved.  

A HIDDEN BEACON OF HOPE

A hidden BEACON OF HOPE sometimes shines the brightest. 

Let's remember that we all bear a shared burden to guard our freedom and liberty. When either of these is diminished for one of us, it is diminished for all of us.

Equally important is the idea that one person can make a difference.  Each of us is one person.  Each of us can make a difference.  All it takes is deciding to.

Likewise, voting and one vote can make a difference.  How we conduct ourselves in our public discourse, and how we demand our public servants act, is tied ultimately to our votes.  Use the Voting Alert Beacons to dramatically increase the effectiveness of your vote and all of our votes.

. . .  remember that America’s best days aren’t behind her.   America’s best days are ahead of her.  They always have been and always will be.

Dave

Copyright © 2017 by David William Wygant. All rights reserved.