(Editor’s note: This is the 10th of 10 articles serializing Executive Editor Michael Ryan’s ebook YouRule: How Saving America Depends Entirely on You And What You Can Do About It.)
Let’s expand a bit on our quick-starter kit (in an earlier YouRule! article) for those striving to be sovereign:
- Take good care of yourself. Self-care and healthy lifestyles help hold down health-care costs, increase self-reliance, and make the whole country stronger.
- Know what you believe. If we all did that, it would prevent national mood swings, erratic election results and back-and-forth public policy shifts that drive businesses and foreign allies crazy. As they say, if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.
- Be willing to change your beliefs if facts warrant. You can and should adhere to solid core principles, but be open-minded at the same time. Otherwise you’re chasing a parked car.
- Know how our system of government works. Your knowledge of it is the only way it can work. Know the Bill of Rights. Study the government’s structure. Understand a government’s responsibilities and limitations. Attend city and county meetings; follow your state legislature online and in person if possible; observe Congress on C-SPAN.
- Keep up on the news and newsmakers. Be your own fact-checker/lie detector. Check multiple news sources and perspectives and make up your own mind about who’s right. Tyrants and tricksters rely on your being uninformed.
- Engage each other civilly. Listen to others from a place of respect and caring, even if you disagree with them. Walk away from online name-calling. Let your elected representatives know you want them to be civil with each other, and that you vote.
- Get involved in civic clubs and projects. That’s the foundation of America. If you don’t work to make your community and country better, who will? Look into Rotary and other civic clubs, some of which have youth affiliates.
- Volunteer for a candidate or run yourself. Freedom isn’t a spectator sport. Get in the game!
- Don’t follow the herd; think for yourself. Research shows that, as a crowd’s size increases, its proportion of informed individuals decreases. Think about that the next time the wildebeest horde bolts past you!
- Spread love and kindness. Without it we get nowhere. With it, we can get anywhere.
About the Author
Michael F. Ryan is executive editor of The Heartlander, as well as a longtime newspaper journalist and editorial writer, frequent speaker, and author of the international novel The Last Freedom on Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl.
His award-winning work has appeared in newspapers and magazines since the 1980s, as he has made a decades-long study of civic engagement and its decline.
The full YouRule! ebook is available for 99 cents at either BookBaby or Amazon.
