Franchise
After 229 years, we take it for granted. We are deluged with slick political advertising for months before an election, and we hear endless bickering over issues great and small. Those of us who bother to vote trudge off to the polls, often with a yawn and slight irritation at having one more chore to perform before we can head home from work. We don`t know how lucky we are.
That right was bought by the blood of our grandfathers, and is maintained by the blood of our neighbors today. We just don`t appreciate the enormity of the costs of the right to vote. Throughout the world, people will brave bullets, threats, attack dogs and pepper spray to go to the polls. Remember the students who died in Tianneman Square? They stood their ground (unsuccessfully) against tanks and machine guns to obtain the right we care so little for. Recently the Ukrainian People risked their necks to have a free and fair election; Ukrainian security people stopped an attack on citizens protesting the hijacking of the election; the pro-Russian lobby was going to massacre them. In Afghanistan and now Iraq people braved death threats and terrorism to vote. These people were prepared to do ANYTHING to exercise their newly won franchise. They could actually be part of the selection process of their leaders! Never had they been able to do this! This is a pearl of great price-worth blood and treasure. Here in America we`ve forgotten.
The franchise should be sacred to us. WE are the ones who opened it up to all, and we did this through wars and great sacrifice. WE fought the most powerful army in the world with squirrel guns and second-hand artillery for this right, and won. WE fought our own for this. WE stood up to the might of Europe and Asia in an epic conflict, and won. WE devoted 40 some odd years to fighting a protracted cold war throughout the world against the forces of statism, and won. We have paid dearly for our franchise; why do we value it so little?
The old adage ``vote early, vote often`` was the punch line to the Daly machine in Chicago, and is a shameful indictment of the careless view of Americans toward their franchise. Who went to jail in the 2000 elections for vote fraud? College democrats were crossing state lines to double vote, felons were voting, illegal aliens, and dead people; everyone laughed it off as a good joke. We should not hold such a thing as the franchise so lightly. We have bought it in blood; we should have greater respect for our fallen.
A word of caution is needed, however; one vote does not a franchise make. Many nations have had one successful vote, only to be dragged into a cesspool of corruption and repression. Consider Zimbabwe (former Rhodesia); they seem to have elected their president for life (and he is one mean mother!) The Greek city states all sided with Sparta against the democratic Athenians during the Peloponnesian Wars, because Athens had become corrupt and repressive, despite having a democratic system. Mussolini and Hitler were both duly elected by their respective countries.
Our Founding Fathers understood this. Benjamin Franklin, when asked by a woman what sort of government we were getting, replied, ``a Republic, madam, if you can keep it.`` They knew that the franchise depended on it`s citizenry. That citizenry had to understand that power emanated from God to the People, then to government, and it was paramount that the people understand this. Consider this quote from James Madison:
"In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example...of charters of power granted by liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world, may, with an honest praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch of its history, and the most consoling presage of its happiness." --James Madison
We must be dilligent in our work abroad, to make certain our new friends understand this principle. Freedom involves more than the franchise; freedom requires a mindset which places the individual over the State. The State serves at our pleasure, not the other way around. Those charters of power devolve from our God-given state of freedom. We often forget that these days.
Still, the winds of change have been blowing; from Kandahar to Kiev, the gales of Democracy have been stripping the deadwood of Statism from the tree of history. America has opened the window for these winds to blow. George Bush truly knows what he is doing, and will go down as one of history`s greatest leaders. We are witnessing a miracle; the birth of a free world!
Iraq has seen the dawning of a new era. They have been given the greatest of gifts-the ability to choose their own destiny. They have triumphantly exercised that most basic of yearnings in the human soul; the franchise!
Now they must keep it.
That right was bought by the blood of our grandfathers, and is maintained by the blood of our neighbors today. We just don`t appreciate the enormity of the costs of the right to vote. Throughout the world, people will brave bullets, threats, attack dogs and pepper spray to go to the polls. Remember the students who died in Tianneman Square? They stood their ground (unsuccessfully) against tanks and machine guns to obtain the right we care so little for. Recently the Ukrainian People risked their necks to have a free and fair election; Ukrainian security people stopped an attack on citizens protesting the hijacking of the election; the pro-Russian lobby was going to massacre them. In Afghanistan and now Iraq people braved death threats and terrorism to vote. These people were prepared to do ANYTHING to exercise their newly won franchise. They could actually be part of the selection process of their leaders! Never had they been able to do this! This is a pearl of great price-worth blood and treasure. Here in America we`ve forgotten.
The franchise should be sacred to us. WE are the ones who opened it up to all, and we did this through wars and great sacrifice. WE fought the most powerful army in the world with squirrel guns and second-hand artillery for this right, and won. WE fought our own for this. WE stood up to the might of Europe and Asia in an epic conflict, and won. WE devoted 40 some odd years to fighting a protracted cold war throughout the world against the forces of statism, and won. We have paid dearly for our franchise; why do we value it so little?
The old adage ``vote early, vote often`` was the punch line to the Daly machine in Chicago, and is a shameful indictment of the careless view of Americans toward their franchise. Who went to jail in the 2000 elections for vote fraud? College democrats were crossing state lines to double vote, felons were voting, illegal aliens, and dead people; everyone laughed it off as a good joke. We should not hold such a thing as the franchise so lightly. We have bought it in blood; we should have greater respect for our fallen.
A word of caution is needed, however; one vote does not a franchise make. Many nations have had one successful vote, only to be dragged into a cesspool of corruption and repression. Consider Zimbabwe (former Rhodesia); they seem to have elected their president for life (and he is one mean mother!) The Greek city states all sided with Sparta against the democratic Athenians during the Peloponnesian Wars, because Athens had become corrupt and repressive, despite having a democratic system. Mussolini and Hitler were both duly elected by their respective countries.
Our Founding Fathers understood this. Benjamin Franklin, when asked by a woman what sort of government we were getting, replied, ``a Republic, madam, if you can keep it.`` They knew that the franchise depended on it`s citizenry. That citizenry had to understand that power emanated from God to the People, then to government, and it was paramount that the people understand this. Consider this quote from James Madison:
"In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example...of charters of power granted by liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world, may, with an honest praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch of its history, and the most consoling presage of its happiness." --James Madison
We must be dilligent in our work abroad, to make certain our new friends understand this principle. Freedom involves more than the franchise; freedom requires a mindset which places the individual over the State. The State serves at our pleasure, not the other way around. Those charters of power devolve from our God-given state of freedom. We often forget that these days.
Still, the winds of change have been blowing; from Kandahar to Kiev, the gales of Democracy have been stripping the deadwood of Statism from the tree of history. America has opened the window for these winds to blow. George Bush truly knows what he is doing, and will go down as one of history`s greatest leaders. We are witnessing a miracle; the birth of a free world!
Iraq has seen the dawning of a new era. They have been given the greatest of gifts-the ability to choose their own destiny. They have triumphantly exercised that most basic of yearnings in the human soul; the franchise!
Now they must keep it.
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 5:27 AM
1 Comments:
I pray the newly empowered in Iraq and Afghanistan can resist the encroachment of the cynicism, which most Americans seem to suffer from. Of all the many ways we have fallen short of the hopes of the men who built this glorious republic we call home, this would be the most disheartening. "Freedom is not free," and inconveniencing ourselves to go to the polls is such minuscule price to pay to help sustain the very essence of this franchise bought in the blood.
I find it Ironic that the most powerful symbol of a new democracy given life by the people of Iraq is an upraised fingertip dyed purple. The Iraqis understand what it means, Do we?
This is an outstanding piece, one of the best I have read in quite some time. Keep them coming!
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