A Tailor-made Blog

My Challenge to All of Us: “The Constitution of Me”.

When thinking about the future, particularly as I am in the youth wing of a political party (The Liberal Party of Canada), I wonder if I’ll ever become one of those classic ‘sleazy’ politicians or political operators that I just love to hate. It’s a menacing thought, especially considering that the memories of human beings suck, and often we can rationalize ourselves into believing things that we once couldn’t and ultimately shouldn’t. Thoughts such as perhaps unethical behaviour is alright if it isn’t against the law, that breaking the law is great if you don’t get caught, that selling out on your own personal values system is okay, and that ultimately, telling a lie is okay if it means you win at the end of it all.

But of course, how do you regulate that? How does anyone regulate that? We harp on about keeping governments in check with certain checks and balances, but we don’t do the same for ourselves. I don’t blame ourselves in particular, since we don’t really have the mechanism to keep us honest asides from the sheer force of our willpower, which at difficult times cannot be easy to come by.

So I came up with an idea. Well, I don’t know if I came up with it initially, but I sure did think it up independently. 

I call it “The Constitution of Me”, or or CoM for short. Think of how a government has a constitution that keeps itself in check. This is a constitution for yourself, and it can consist of any philosophy or principle towards politics you hold near and dear.

I want anyone who has interest in getting involved in the Canadian political scene, young or old, to open up a tumblr blog such as this. Only a tumblr blog. It can be a variety blog, which is fine. Just tag each “The Constitution of Me” post as CoM, and put “CoM:” as your title of each post. My reasoning, although as naive and stupid as it may sound, follows:

1. It allows us all to follow one another with ease in a centralized fashion.
2. It allows us to share our ideas and posts with great ease.
3. We all can see what you wrote and posted, as this entire exercise is to put some of your personal thoughts on your personal philosophy and principles towards politics on the public record.

Your job is to piece together your beliefs with regards to how you personally approach the world of politics and your political philosophies. You can do it however you want. Just share it. The reason why it should be on the public record is so that other people can keep you in check. They can be fellow party members, or they can be folks from other parties. The nature of politics is competitive, so if you go back on your declared principles, you’ll give cannon fodder to your opponents, and you don’t want that to happen.

Does this mean you have to put everything on record? Heavens no! You put whatever you feel that you want everyone else to hold you accountable on up on the public record that would be your tumblr. 

If you want it to be everything, then go for it. If you want it to be just a few things you deem important, that’s fine too. If you change your mind, that’s alright and I’m glad you aren’t so rigid in your views; just post on your tumblr as to why you changed your mind.

This is a transpartisan effort. I don’t care if you are a Dipper, Tory, Green, or Grit. You could live in another country for all I care. I think any of us want to lose sight of what we hold dear to our hearts as we enter the ravaging machinery of the political world. 

Ultimately, you might ask me “What makes you think I won’t delete my posts that don’t meld well with my politics in the future?”

Well, the enforcement officers for your beliefs are the other team’s oppo guys. Chances are, they’ll have archived what you’ve put up on the record the moment it goes on, or have remembered from reading it. Either way, your feet end up in the fire, and that’s honestly the purpose of it all since you want to avoid that.

The purpose of this exercise isn’t to keep us all believing the same beliefs; the purpose is to keep our own standards of ourselves high, and others hold us to said standards that we set out for ourselves. 

I hope y’all have the courage to take on this challenge. If you do, reblog this. If you don’t, I hope your willpower is strong enough to allow your integrity to withstand the test of time.

Ultimately, let us not become in the future the people we love to hate today. 

Ciao~!