Why Politics Must Matter to Everyday Women

How many times have you heard that politics should be  avoided and that politicians are corrupt and liars? Have you learned that politics are a waste of time and energy?

Then I have some news for you.

My personal experience in El Salvador showed me “politics” can be very powerful in the everyday life of everyday women, men, and families.  Here is what I saw personally about what the effects of politics can do:

• Ended my mother’s small business in El Salvador.
• Affected the budget of the university where my father worked reducing his income to a small pay check every few months.
• Created class warfare.
• Increased anti-American sentiment.
• Led people to want to remove free enterprise and individual rights to create “equality.”
• Made business owners move to other countries and stopped job creation where these businesses started.
• Increased taxes on everything possible including some groceries.
• Redistributed land and wealth in the name of social justice and income equality.
• Persuaded some that killing business owners was okay to punish the wealthy and anyone who had more than what they had.
• Isolated entire nations keeping them in poverty and without freedoms.
• Changed health care systems to become socialized and promised people medical care for everyone, but instead many died while waiting for government approval to see a doctor or to have a test.
• Caused some to be without food or not enough.
• Took away from parents the freedom to choose how they would educate their children.
• Took away their religious freedoms.
• Imposed dictators indefinitely.
• Produced the exodus of people escaping their own countries while others less fortunate remained captive.

Politics silenced people forever …UNTIL SOMEONE DECIDED TO SPEAK UP and not let others decide the future for them and their children and generations to come.  Are you that someone? 

Whether you want to accept it or not, the reality is politics define how you could live the next four years or the rest of your life.

My experience of having been born in another country, where in the name of social justice and equality we endured so much hardship and separation from our loved ones after having to leave abruptly, made me realize how politics affect lives and futures.

Thankfully, we had the United States to escape to, but where would you move if the United States ceased to be the “land of the free and the home of the brave?”

Unfortunately, many perceive politics as a distant cloud that will never be over their heads.  Ignoring politics is as significant as living in denial about the reality that one day each one of us will lay lifeless in a casket.  Politics are real, and death is real.

What we choose to stand for today, and to defend today are what will survive time and will influence not only our present but also the future of the world around us and other people.

One proof of this is found in the decisions the Founding Fathers made in producing the American Constitution.  Their ideals of freedom, individual rights, private property, prosperity through free enterprise, checks and balances, and many other priceless blessings are part of their legacy, and it is what has made our nation exceptional.

There is no other country as our country.  Those who want to deny this fact only need to look around at all the people from everywhere in the world who have come in the past and who continue to come seeking to be free and to prosper.

Who are everyday women?  They are both young and elderly.  They are the mother, the wife, the sister, the aunt, the professional, the woman whom works cleaning houses, the teacher, the secretary, waitress, the woman cooking at a school cafeteria, the student, the girlfriend. 

Each everyday woman makes a difference in their families, serving in their churches, or doing volunteer work.  They can also make a significant difference by participating in politics by educating others on how to choose for whom they will vote and why.

You can decide to be the American woman who will continue to inspire future generations with your actions of today.

Today and every day you can be the woman whom in five years, twenty, sixty, or two-hundred years from now others will be thankful you lived and you were able to see and to think beyond yourself.

The presidential elections are rapidly approaching, and it is urgent to realize this election is one of the most important elections of our times.  This election will define what our nation has been until today.

Politics and the participation of others will decide your fate.  Will you surrender to what others will decide for you and your children?  Or, with your participation will you say, “This assault on our freedoms and prosperity stops right here, with me.”

As one who can identify the leftist’s patterns of manipulation and traps behind the banners of social justice, income equality, wealth redistribution, and abolition of capitalism and conservatism, I urge you to participate and to become an agent of freedom and truth where you are.

Never forget what President Ronald Reagan warned, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream.  It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”

This is why politics must matter to everyday women.

Contact Reina Howard directly through We Are the Tortilla People and We are Americans.  (Photo Credit – Flickr Common)