I really wasn’t sure if I was going to do the A to Z this year and I didn’t do a theme reveal. I don’t know if you remember but last year at this time I had to stop after the letter D to take care of my MIL. This year I don’t have any big life things going on until next month when hubby and I go on our first cruise…(maybe I’ll do an A to Z on that sometime!). I haven’t been blogging much at all lately but I do still have all the info I gathered for last year so maybe I will give it a shot. If I make it past the letter D, I’ll consider it a win. Here we go. 

My theme is Democracy and I am taking the basis from the speech given by House Representative Hakeem Jeffries when opening the 218th congress in 2023. I will admit that I have lost a little of my admiration for Rep. Jeffries as I think that he and Senator Schumer could/should do more to try to prevent the awful things that are happening to our country and at the same time, I realize that there isn’t much they can do given that they are the minority, for now. 

As I begin, let me get this out of the way…I am a Democrat but MORE IMPORTANTLY, I am a firm believer in democracy and the rule of law. If there was a Republican who was doing something good for our country, stood for something closer to my beliefs than a Democrat running for the same office, I might vote for the Republican. So far I am not seeing any of that. With the exception of Liz Chaney and Adam Kinzinger who both chose country over party, I can’t think of another Republican who was willing to turn his back on the dysfunctional group we have in control right now. Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t count. Too little, too late in my opinion. 

That being said, this is your trigger warning. If you are going to be bothered by my descriptions of what I believe America should look and feel like, please stop reading and come back next year when my topic may go back to music or scrapbooking or cruising. Please respect my space and DO NOT leave disinformation or inflammatory statements in the comments. It’s my blog and I will delete them. Thanks for your cooperation. 

Here we go then. 

It seems like common sense to me that a person would want to be able to make their own choices and live their life without having someone tell them what to do every step of the way or restricting access to things. Other than when raising a child, and even then most of the time it is a shared experience, I can’t think of any reason for one person to have total control over someone else. Even with parenting there comes a point where the child should be able to make some of their own choices, as long as it will not hurt them or others. I can remember letting my daughter choose her own outfits for school even though a) they were not things that I felt would go together or b) she was without a jacket when I thought it was a little chilly. If it made her feel good to dress this way then she would be more apt to able to focus on learning.   

We should be able to question the people governing us and to express our opinions without fear of being retaliated against. We should have the ability to choose our leaders and hold them accountable when their decisions are detrimental to our country and safety. We should be able to read whatever books we want, practice religion or not and love who we want. 

Live and let live is my core value. It is not my business to tell you how to live your life and no one’s business to tell me how to live mine. I believe we can be stronger as a community if we share our ideas and cooperate together. We may have different beliefs or ideas but mine are not necessarily better than yours and vice versa. Our uniqueness is what gives us strength when we work together.   

In the year since I wrote that, look how much closer we have gotten to the autocracy side of things and farther away from the American Values side! 

One down, 25 to go.  Happy April Fool’s Day!