Education only became political when the politics of some began to rely on the ignorance of others. In the age of misinformation, the pursuit of education is very much a political act.

Where a liberal will try to change how a man thinks, a conservative will try to change how a man is. A liberal makes war upon mankind’s ignorance, a conservative makes war on mankind itself.

Politics is merely the fight for principle, through thoroughly unprincipled means.

Politics is the means in which realists fight for ideals.

To stand for elections is the means to be a politician, in standing for principle however is the means in which one is called a leader.

To be respected is to obtain mastery of the past, to be feared is to make ones domain of the future. To be both however, is to take command of the crossroads that between both past and future, the present.

I think the problem between the Liberals and Conservatives and what separates them is that we have not fundamentally defined what it means to be patriotic, or more succinctly what compromises our nation. This philosophical divide is no more better illustrated than in the reactions towards the taking a knee by Colin Kaepernick. The right wing see it as an attack on its nation, for them the idea of nation is rooted in tradition and symbolism and in its worship yet, the left sees an an act of extreme devotion to nation, of patriotism, for the idea of nation resides in the humanity living in it and in the drive toward their betterment. I cannot speak to which is true and false, but what I can say is that particular issue will be no doubt inform the greater struggles of our era.

Power is but a mere stage and nothing more, in which a man puts on display not a character, but the nature of his own character, the very nakedness of a man’s soul for all the world to see.

Every man who takes the breathe of life, has conflict written for him. A boy makes his conflict about power and the school yard his battlefield he will be a bully, yet mere meters away another man makes war against ignorance and the classroom his front line, he emerges the teacher. It is the great separator of men, not race, nor class but what he fights for and where he stages it.

It seems to many that Sikhs in politics is a brand new development a product of the 21st century, with our recent migration to the west. I frankly disagree with that assessment. We are Sikhs, to the word Sikh means to learn, and only the way to learn is to question, to question those in power and their beliefs is very a political act. Sikhism from its very foundation with Guru Nanak in questioned the logic of the caste system when in his eyes all humans were the same, the idea that women are equal and that money should be earned honestly or not at all, ideas radical then and in many ways still are now. These challenges to power formalized after the execution of the Fifth Guru Arjan, his son Guru Hargobind set aside the seli topi (caps of holy men) asked for a sword i and the kalgi of a king instead. He was given one but it was put on the wrong side, so he asked for another as well. Those two swords would represent Miri and Piri, the need to be powerful in the spiritual world so as to know injustice, and the physical world so as to have the means to actively oppose it. With that Sikhism challenged the might of the Mughal empire and opposed the religious intolerance of it. Time and time again our faith challenged those that sought to oppress whether they were the Afghan kings or the British empire. To say being political is in conflict with our beliefs would ignore that long history of active opposition to injustice and oppression. No, to be political is a consequence of who we are, where we come from and what we believe.