And that, in a nutshell, is the problem.<p>We are the government, and if you choose not to help make it what you want, it gets made for you by people who don&#x27;t appreciate your point of view.<p>Look no further than the &quot;hell no&quot; Republican tea-party caucus in the US Congress for a really visible example of people making the government the way they want it made while we sit on the sidelines.<p>You don&#x27;t do it for the money, you do it because you believe the world can be better than it is. And if you do it right you can completely nullify the impact of people with a lot of money that try to force it to be different.<p>My grandfather told me that when the country was threatened by a Japanese invasion, the young men and women flocked to sign up to preserve their way of life. But when their way of life is threatened by their lack of participation in the governing of the country, they do nothing.<p>He was particularly disappointed with the youth of the 60&#x27;s who would rather &quot;drop out&quot; than take their passion with them into public service and actually pull the US out of its sillyness in Vietnam.<p>Its a time horizon thing, one of the greatest strengths of Martin Luther King was that he could help people see that while it would take time, more than they wanted, they could achieve meaningful change. But if someone believes themselves to be helpless, they will live up to their own expectations of helplessness.