Take Pride in Your Country, VOTE!

Alright, I probably should have posted this back when it was time to register to vote, or absentee vote, but just as this is my last chance, today is your last chance.  If you're a U. S. citizen, vote today.  If you think it doesn't matter who is running the government, you're wrong.  The government affects every minuscule aspect of your life from the legal drinking, smoking, voting and driving ages to whether or not a bureaucrat working for Homeland security gets to listen to your embarrassing calls to your grandmother.  The government decides how many police go on the streets, how much money goes to local schools, whether or not a shopping mall or housing development goes up near your house, how much you pay in taxes and how that money's spent, whether you have affordable healthcare, whether your retirement savings are relatively secure, whether you'll have a job tomorrow, whether your friends and neighbors will be sent to war, whether there will be clear skies and clean water, whether roads and bridges will be repaired and maintained much less built at all, who gets how much from social security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, etc, the fate of capital punishment, what gets taught in schools, who can marry whom, whether emergency services are run by the competent...

Surely you can find some reason!

Most importantly, it's why our forebearers fought a revolution.  It's why civil rights leaders braved hostile mobs, the police, high pressure hoses, and attack dogs.  It's why the suffragettes suffered imprisonment and force-feeding, trials, and ridicule.  So many have fought so long for this right.  It is the freedom and liberty we claim to be so proud of.  America is so diverse in history, region, religion, and ethnicity that the only thing that ties us together is this determination to make this idea called democracy work.  That thing that makes us American is this.  Vote, vote, VOTE, do your duty, love your country, and vote.

Vote for the president, vote for your senators, vote for your congress representatives, vote for your governors, vote for your state senators and representatives, vote for your district attorneys, your mayors, your city council members, and every ballot initiative.  Please.  This is your country, your state, your county, and your town.  It's your responsibility too.

This is why my mother is working at the polls and I'm working at the campaign office and calling people up saying "Have you voted yet?"

Please, please, please vote.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Next President of the United States

This is not a time for levity or apathy. I have tried to keep my posts apolitical, though I have made no secret of my political leanings, but this is goes beyond party and partisanship. It goes beyond the ordinary feelings of our lives and beyond the words for those times. I cannot write words big enough for this, or luminous enough for this shining moment.

We have elected the best man possible to lead our nation. Barack Obama is the man to restore the moral certitude of the world’s most powerful state, but this night, we proved even more than that.

Tonight, my country became my country again, and lived up to its magnificent ideals. America is a nation founded not on history, ethnicity, or religion, but of ideals, and it is only when we live up to those ideals can we call ourselves American. Ladies and gentlemen, we are Americans.

America is the grand experiment, and its successes are a beacon for the world. This election is our redemption.