On Wednesday I received a message in my e-mail from Jake Brewer at the Sunlight Foundation, breathlessly telling me:
Exciting news.
At 11:30 this morning, we’re going to march up to Capitol Hill and hand over the signatures of more than 21,000 of you who have signed our Read the Bill petition.
For the last several months, you’ve been making sure that your representatives know you want legislation to be online for at least 72 hours before it’s debated – so that citizens and our representatives alike have time to actually read it.
Today, we’re making sure they hear that it’s time to Read the Bill.
Trust me, I’m not writing this to pick on the Sunlight Foundation because I happen to agree with their stance on the issue.
However, I probably get a couple dozen e-mails a day from various groups, all pushing one issue or another in Congress. Many also ask for donations (in this case the Sunlight Foundation did not), and the question which naturally occurs to me is just who has the money or time to do everything for all these groups? Honestly, in many of these cases I recieve the e-mail for my personal writing ideas and news tips, so I guess to quote the Bob Seger song “Night Moves”, “I used her, she used me, neither one cared.”
Certainly citizen activism has its place – last month gave us over a million reasons to remind ourselves of this fact. (Although to the partisan media it was only “tens of thousands” of reasons. Yep, I get e-mail from the Media Research Center too.)
But sometimes I wonder if our overall movement remains too fragmented to have the laserlike focus it needs (a metaphor inspired by a recent e-mail from the local Americans for Prosperity chapter). In a way, it’s the flip side of the government we all detest: thousands of lobbyists who produce nothing but e-mails and requests for donations; each totally convinced of their self-importance because theirs is the singular issue every thinking American should be thinking about.
Obviously I have a self-interest in writing this too, well, besides the obvious of bringing as many eyes as I can to this website and any others where I may publish this. So in a way I’m my own one-man lobbying operation who wouldn’t mind making a decent living at this kind of stuff. (Some people have a talent for this, so why not believe my supporters who say I do too?) Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! But at least I’ll admit it.
As events continue and perhaps the conservative resurgence promised for 2010 and 2012 bears fruit (why not a President Palin?) it would be interesting to see if some of these groups go by the wayside because their work is completed and successful. Unfortunately, restoring government to a modern-day version of what our Founding Fathers intended will be such a long-term project that we’re likely stuck with groups like these for awhile.
On the whole, though, it would be nice to have a prosperity which would allow people like Jake Brewer to have honest work instead of lobbying government. Getting there will be the hard part.
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Just as a closing note, you may also have noticed an increased operational tempo this week. Hey, I had lots of ideas! Anyway, I’m doing FNV tonight, but taking a day off tomorrow. Consider it fair warning.
