Friday, October 1, 2004

Onward, Ho!

This started out as a comment in my previous entry.  As I typed it, I felt my thoughts growing too important (and long) to just leave it where no one would really see it.  

 

The goal here is simple....if you like the way the country is being handled today, vote for Bush.   If you dislike what's going on..vote for Kerry.   

 

The suffragists are rolling over in their graves, as are those other minorities who had to fight, and die trying, to get the right to vote (and for us today).  It really shouldn't be that hard to choose.  It is not that hard to get informed.  It is taking the time to do get informed that people don't want to do.   

 

I've heard all kinds of reasons why people don't vote.  Some are:  'It doesn't mean anything really' , 'My vote does not count' , 'I don't like politics' , 'I'm just one person'.   And there are many, many more.  Someone even suggested that they would vote if they were paid to do so!  This is what makes me ill about this country.  We are a bunch of hypocrits.  We claim to be the free-est society, but we let ourselves be controlled.  (We really want to go around the world and make everyone just like us?!?!)  Yet it seems the majority of the population has no clue of what it means to vote and could care less about participating.  Only the elderly and the rich.  Hmm... maybe that's why middle and lower classes, and impoverished feel they have no control?  Point being:  If you do not vote, you are not heard.  You have no control.  You are a pawn in the game.  You always have a choice to change that.  Use it!  

 

To those people with the excuses:  If you live in America, pay taxes, buy things, have kids in school, drive, own property, walk down the street wearing whatever you want, go to the church of your choice, speak your mind, write your uncensored thoughts,own a business, and go where you want to when you want to...you should thank voters.  Voters made laws, voters got tyranny overthrown, voters got church and state separated, voters made our way of life (good and bad) possible.  If it weren't for voting, where would women's and minorities' rights be today?  What about Child Labor Laws?  Sweat shops?  We would we be today had voters not made those things change?  

 

Children hold mock elections is schools, but if their parents could care less about elections and voting....those kids won't care either.  As goes the rest of their lives.  

 

My daughter may just be 3, but she has been voting with me every election (even primaries).  She even wears her Vote 2004 button her daddy made her everywhere she goes.  When people comment to her about her vote button..she asks them if they are going to vote, too.   If they say no, she'll ask them why not.  She may not understand it...but it will be forever imbedded in her brain that it is important and that it is 1000% necessary.  

 

Back to being hypocrits, I say this because we pride ourselves on being free..being free to do whatever we want to, even to break the law.  But we don't back it up by being loyal to our democratic system.  We take it for granted.  Every day!  Do we forget how many people were tortured, killed, and refused the right to vote?  Yes.  Do we forget Susan B. Anthony and her 'sisters in suffrage'?  Yes.  Do we forget the reason people risked their lives to create such a wonderful country?  Yes.  Do we forget the freed slaves who risked their lives going north for what was entitled to them?  Yes. 

 

We think in the here and now, and it's so obvious.    Other countries pride themselves on continuing to teach their children history as to what made their lives possible.  Do we?  No.  Most kids only hear about elections and voting from TVs and schools, not their parents..as it should be.  I'm not surprised.  Most of these same parents expect the schools teach their kids everything, with little or no input from them.   Why don't we as parents insist our children know the importance of voting? 

 

It all a big circle, you know.  Citizen's vote for candidates, candidates make voters wishes known, wishes becomes laws, laws govern people.  Vicious? Yeah..sometimes.  But we as a people will never tolerate outrageous behavior on the government's part.  We have stood up to government before and won.  It is the people who stand up for right and 'government' (gov't as all three branches..... Executive, Judicial, and Legislative) must respond:  Civil Rights, Roe V. Wade, Vietnam, Women's Rights, Affirmative Action, Consumer Protection Laws, the Food and Drug Administration. I could go on and on, but you get the point.   

 

We have a misconception that government is in control of us.  In reality, we are in control of them.  But we have forgotten and feel we are lost in the system, my one vote doesn't make a difference.   

 

Well, wake up people.  Our Constitution says it very clear:   We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessingsof Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.   As does the Declaration of IndependenceWe hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. 

 

Do we get that today?  No.   Let me write it again:  GOVERNMENTS ARE INSTITUTED AMONG MEN, DERIVING THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.  

 

It saddens me so.  I wonder had those who fought so hard known people would just throw the right to vote away, would they have even tried?  

 

Always think about the past....history repeats itself.  

Cat

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Goodness Gracious.....AMEN SISTA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nicely put!!!!

Stacy

Anonymous said...

I completely agree with u, but I still don't vote. Like I said before, I feel that my vote would be wrong, because I am so unimformed on where the parties stand.  Do I hate the direction this country is going in?  Maybe, but I don't complain about it. I don't have time to worry about it, I leave it to those who know what they are doing.  

Anonymous said...

Standing ovation!!!  Way to go!!  Hubby and I vote... It's important!!  And never think that your vote doesn't count...what if everyone thought that way...where would we be then???
*hugs*