Issue 30.14
When we hear the word “pioneer” we usually think about the people in wagon trains or pushing hand carts travelling the dirt roads of the old west to a destination far away. Modern day pioneers have a number of things in common with those worthy ancestors, and some of them you may not have thought about.
Vision – whether someone is a wild west pioneer, a space pioneer, an internet pioneer or any other kind, they need a vision of what could be or of what should be. Bobby Kennedy famously said, “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were, and ask why not? Pasteur, Gandhi, Curie, Alexander Graham Bell and others were pioneers because they had a vision or a mission that drove them. They found something that mattered and gave themselves to it.
Courage – This is not always the courage that allows men to fight battles and win wars at great personal risk. This is also the courage to walk away from or stop supporting something that is not working or even things that are working in order to create something better for self, family or posterity. This type of courage also often comes with great personal risk and possibility of loss. Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were not warriors or soldiers, but every one of them were pioneers and showed the courage that what they were creating was important enough to pledge and risk losing “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”
Integrity – This quality of true pioneers is what allows them to stand up and be counted, even if everyone around them thinks they are crazy or wrong. Whether it was following a new religion into the wilderness, saying the earth revolved around the sun, believing that invisible organisms caused much of the disease we suffer from or any other principle of truth, pioneers do what they believe is best. They seldom compromise when principles are involved.
Determination – Pioneers don’t quit when the road is long, the going is tough or the opposition is powerful. They keep trying for one more step, one more experiment or one more challenge. They realize that what we create by our actions or our inaction is our responsibility and will affect us and our posterity. They are willing to take that responsibility.
Are you a pioneer? Are you willing to walk away from things that don’t work, even if they are comfortable? Are you willing to sacrifice to support truth or freedom or other people’s unalienable rights? Are you willing to actually inform yourself about the candidates and issues before you vote – and then vote for the person or principle that is best, even if the polls or the parties tell you that it is foolish to do so? There have been elections in recent memory that, had everyone voted their conscience and informed themselves, the person that had no chance might just have been elected. We are responsible for the problems we are experiencing if we don’t cast informed votes and work for the people and principles that we believe in. Vision, courage and integrity demand no less determination from us than they did of those who came before and sacrificed that we could have a great country and comfortable lives.
Lynn West is a thinker, a teacher and a patriot. You can reach him through email at forgingthefuture2021@gmail.com or through this newspaper. Liberty is a state of being which must be continually created. These articles can help all of us discover the ways we can contribute to that outcome.