The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves...” Those famous words pulled from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” might be a little more relevant today than we realize. Within the last century, we have become quick to point fingers at our politicians but seem to forget we are the ones who gave them this supposedly misused power.

As the architects of our own government, we are entrusted with the task of selecting who we use as the building blocks of our political tower. Therefore, if the tower falls, the fault is our own, right?

However, no one likes to be responsible when things go wrong. When our government goes awry and blame begins to be placed, a defensive battle often breaks out between the people and politicians, neither side wanting to be left with the smoking gun.

As a result, we have seen a great animosity rise toward our government — an animosity that has festered into a sort of antipathy on both sides, making it hard to empathize with each other.

This is a problem that could eventually lead to our downfall because, as President Abraham Lincoln warned, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” So, perhaps the solutions to our national woes are not as complicated as we are making them.

We may not need a new tax law, but we absolutely need respect for the families surrendering their income to pay them. We may not need a smaller Federal government, but we absolutely need one that holds a desire to serve its people above all else.

Somewhere along the way, politics stopped being about these relationships and started being about reputations. This was especially evident in last week’s GOP debate. It was made very clear that few are concerned with having productive conversations, focused on growing in understanding of one another. Instead, there seems to be an insatiable desire to mire the reputation of those around us.

CNBC’s John Harwood, for example, unashamedly asked Mike Huckabee during the debate to bash one of his fellow Republican candidates, Donald Trump, by asking Huckabee, “When you look at (Trump), do you see someone with the moral authority to unite the country?”

Now, I am not sure when it was decided Huckabee would serve as CNBC’s morality consultant for the evening, however I don’t think the candidates were the ones who needed to be morally evaluated.

By the end of the night, CNBC’s moderators had done quite the job of exemplifying the strife between politicians and the public. As outsiders to the political process, I fear some citizens may have forgotten that the men and women who volunteer to lead our country are, in fact, still men and women.

Even though Huckabee handled CNBC’s malicious question with grace, that doesn’t mean he, or any of the other candidates, will handle them that way all of the time. And when they don’t, we should not be penalizing them, but instead take comfort in their humanity. We want people leading our country who recognize the fallibility of human nature.

But, if we are going to expect them to recognize that, we should do the same in return. We must be quick to forgive, slow to forget, but steady in support of the men and women who put their necks out for us.

Yet, we still see so many striving to tear down our politicians and our government. By doing this, they do not realize they are compromising the integrity of the political tower they’ve helped build.

Instead of extending politicians the respect we expect ourselves to be treated with, the whole political process is too often made a mockery of by those who it was created to serve. In fact, this is one reason why our voter turnout rates are plummeting.

Any effort to take the election process seriously is undermined by those who cast an uninformed vote, focus on the personality of our candidates instead of their political prowess or antagonize the government they expect to protect them. Because of this, voting is becoming a terrible exercise in futility.

The Washington Post reported that only “36.4 percent of the voting-eligible population cast ballots” in the 2014 midterm election. This is because those who take elections seriously feel discouraged by the lack of reverence for our political process and those who do not take elections seriously are comfortable in their lack of involvement.

The author of this Washington Post article, Jose A. DelReal, added, “the last time voter turnout was so low during a midterm cycle was in 1942, when only 33.9 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.” That means our voter turnout rate this past year was only slightly higher than when the United States was preoccupied with World War II.

While I understand that right now we are similarly distracted with overseas fighting, we also have exponentially more information, resources and opportunities than we did in 1942 to educate ourselves on the activities of the federal government and the specifics of our elections.

Therefore, it is almost inexcusable for our voter turnout rates to be so lacking. What is especially troubling is the fact that the percentage of college-age students (ages 18 to 29) voting in presidential elections is declining, as shown in a diagram created by The Washington Post’s Kennedy Elliott and Scott Clement last October.

It is not like we are without opinions, though. Several University of Texas at Austin students, for example, have begun protesting the new campus carry law, or Senate Bill 11, which many feel extremely opposed to. However, this is a bill passed by the very legislature these students (and all of us) voted into office.

On top of that, some most likely refused to vote altogether, thus neglecting their civic duty and essentially forfeiting their right to criticize our senators and the decisions they make. We often wait too long to make choices that reflect our opinions, putting ourselves in situations like this. The time to speak up is not when the bill is already law, but long before it reaches that point.

So, as voting season comes into full swing, let’s try to make our voices heard not by bickering about those we have already voted into power, but instead by quietly standing up for the things we believe in by electing those who can protest for us.

By doing so, we will take a huge step toward rebuilding the reciprocal and respectful relationship the Founding Fathers intended us to have with our government. It is only when we are no longer fighting against the government, and fighting alongside it, that we will see the revival and political rebalancing of this great nation.