The first organization to thank, and the one that is going to be fighting for our rights the next four years is the ACLU. The first people greatly affected by this ban were two Iraqi men named Hameed Khalid Darweesh and Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, both of these men had the right to be in the United States, yet they were detained. Immediately the ACLU responded by sending lawyers to JFK to fight for these men. At the time of writing this artcile Mr. Darweesh has been released, but Mr. Alshawi and others remain in detention. You can follow the ACLU’s response to this here. In addition to this I urge anyone that can to donate to the ACLU. This is the best organization to fight against those trying to destroy our liberties and I believe in them wholeheartedly.

The next people to thank are your everyday citizens whom are showing up to airports to exercise their first amendment rights to show peaceful that what Donald has done is wrong.

Crowds at JFK honking to support protesters #RefugeesWelcome #MuslimBan #jfkterminal4 pic.twitter.com/JK8u5X4bY9

— ACLU National (@ACLU) January 28, 2017

Reactions like this, like the wonderful women’s march, show that the hope that our previous President, Mr. Barack Obama instilled in us reigns supreme, and that we can move forward as a more unified country, against hate. The speed at which these protestors assembled is phenomenal, with only three hours since the executive order was executed at the writing of this article, and mass crowds assembling.

The last group of people I would like to thank is those Democratic Congressmen and Senators who aren’t being silenced by the party in power, and those that are realizing that despite all electoral efforts, the Democratic party represent the majority of Americans, and they will fight for all Americans. The support of those speaking out is needed, and we as Americans need to stick together to fight for the fabric of democracy.

At this point, it’s not the semantics of policy that the parties are arguing, it’s the essence of our American democracy. Let’s not forget this fact, and let’s not let false equivalencies reign in an error of the war on information.

Welcome to the live blog for the 2016 United States elections. Here’s our thoughts and information as the election day progresses.

Let’s take this from a perspective something Donald claims to be the most knowledgable about, the economy. Back in 2011, the Republican led congress fought the increase of the national debt ceiling. This fight ultimately faltered, but the delays over it caused S&P to downgrade the credit rating of the United States. Knowing that these delays cause a negative impact to our economy should have been enough for the Republicans to not let something like this happen again, but in 2013 they led another fight to not raise the debt ceiling. This time it started well before the deadline, so at this point it’s only words so to say. Yet, another credit agency, Fitch Ratings, warned that more deadlock over the debt ceiling would force them to consider lowering the credit rating. Four days after this warning a global credit agency, Dagong Global lowered the United States credit rating. This was all due to words and threats, with no actual delay, or action, to the debt ceiling at this point. Donald, words matter.

You may think this may seem a little distant, what does a national credit rating ultimately mean for the average person? And I agree that my example here is a little contrived, so let’s take a different approach. To quote Michelle Obama’s moving speech at the DNC, “this election, and every election, is about who will have the power to shape our children for the next four or eight years of their lives”. I truly believe in this sentiment with politics, so what is something children can relate to. We are in the age of social media, and there’s no denying the existence of cyberbullying. Well what is cyberbullying? It’s words. Donald, it’s only words. So by this logic it shouldn’t matter. Should it matter to Bart Palosz, a 15-year-old from Connecticut who was harassed online by his peers? Should it matter to Bart Palosz’s family who has to deal everyday with their son committing suicide due to just words? Or should it matter to Viviana Aguirre and her family who suffered the same fate? Donald, words matter. (As an aside I would like to urge anyone that has spare money to contribute to wonderful anti-bullying charities such as Stomp Out Bullying or It Gets Better).

If it’s not clear enough actions aren’t the only thing we should judge people on. Now let’s look at what you’ve said. What kicked this all off is when you used your words to essentially say sexual assault is okay if you’re a celebrity. You’ve insinuated that Ivanka should switch companies if sexually harassed such as those suffering from Roger Ailes at Fox News. You’ve insulted the family of a man who died serving this country and protecting our democracy. You’ve insulted already suffering veterans to feel even weaker for dealing with suicide and mental health issues. You’ve parroted a lie that our magnificent President, Barack Obama wasn’t born in this country and have further created a division in our country. You say you want to increase libel and slander laws to protect your image, but words don’t matter? And tonight. You were asked about Islamphobia in this country, and instead of discussing how to combat it you decided to use Islamphobia with your favorite phrase “radical Islamic terrorism”.  You lied about your position on the Iraq war. You openly disagreed with the one man in the country you should be unified with, your running mate Mike Pence. But worst of all, you said you would hire a special prosecutor to jail your opponent Hillary Clinton. This is the thing of tyrants. The kind of people who we learn about in history so we don’t repeat those mistakes. Donald, words matter.

Donald, when you present us with no record of success (tax returns please), no concrete policy that will tell us how you will improve our country, no actions showing you could be fit to be Commander in Chief, the only thing we have to judge you on is your words. Donald, words matter, so take responsibility for what you say.

Now that pragmatism is more well defined for this context, let’s talk about the death of it relative to US politics. If we look back to Bill Clinton’s administration, pragmatism was probably at it’s height in the modern era of politics. Congress had a Republican super majority, with a Democratic president. There were many issues that both sides had extreme disagreements on, yet we had a thriving economy, and a lot of progressive progress was made. I think the biggest attribution for both of these comes from the overall amount of political pragmatism from both Bill Clinton, and a Congress led by Speaker Newt Gingrich. Both sat down and discussed issues, and each issue had it’s own merit. Partisanship wasn’t that big of an issue when both sides of the aisle achieved progress from their relative view points. This willingness to compromise, when judged pragmatically, allowed everyone involved to be ethical.

After this era though, the usage of political pragmatism started to decline. During the George W. Bush’s presidency he had a Congress that was the same as his party, so this need to compromise was a lot less, so pragmatism wasn’t needed as often. Moving forward though, I think the major decline started after the 2010 elections with the Tea Party movement. This was the nail in the coffin to political pragmatism. This movement was moving forward with a message of obstructing the other side. This divisiveness came from a movement of conflicting virtue ethics. Both sides painted each other with character attacks, and a lot abandoned the act of looking at their actions and the issues as individual events relative to society. Most bills that make it through Congress seem to have unnecessary riders attached to them to try to progress unrelated causes. Congress should be able to pass a Zika bill to help those affected and hopefully prevent the spread of the virus, but every single bill to come through so far has had a rider attached with some sort of partisan language.

Since 2010, it has only gotten worse. Gerrymandering has allowed for many Congressional districts to be extremely uncompetitive, meaning a significant portion of Congress can keep their jobs without worrying about their political actions. The things that seem to bring down politicians now are entirely based on their characters, or from a virtue ethics standpoint. This has only gotten worse in this Presidential election thus far. On the left there was a battle between two candidates, one a champion of pragmatism, the other a ideologue who ran a campaign of character attacks. On the right there was a battle between seventeen candidates, all basing their ethics on one of the three frameworks discussed above, but a common theme was that they wouldn’t work with the remnants of the Obama administration, and wouldn’t compromise.

Here’s my plea to you. Bring back pragmatism. Use it with your vote. Look at all of the issues and figure out which candidate will do the best to improve society. Look at which candidate will be pragmatic too. Revolutionary change doesn’t happen without violence, but net change does happen with pragmatism. I urge you to fight for pragmatism, whether you agree with every issue or not.

If you’re not registered to vote, do so here: https://vote.usa.gov/. All I ask is that you go out research and vote.