To Vote for Freedom

Thoughts from the Middle

To Vote for Freedom

Robert James Fischer

Over the past few weeks I have been cleaning old file boxes.  In a box from my high school days I found a booklet distributed in my hometown by the Liberty Trust & Saving Bank.   The final page contained an article entitled “To Vote for Freedom.”  This short article is worth sharing.  Today, many Americans seem to have come to take our freedoms for granted.  This attitude has allowed interest groups (Political Action Committees, corporations, labor organizations, and other interest groups) to fill the void. The article is as follows.  I have taken the liberty of editing the article for clarity.

Most of us who can vote have plenty of other things to do on Election Day. We’re busy, too, on the other days when decisions affecting our health, security, welfare and taxes are being made—with or without our help—by the people who are elected.  Besides, we may feel that “one vote can’t make any difference” or that “politicians are all alike.”  But no matter how we explain it, the fact remains that voting intelligently is work, and however important that work may be, “it’s a free country;” there’s nobody around to make us do it.

Yes, it’s a free country—for one reason, because about half the people who can vote do take the time and make the effort to prepare themselves and go to the polls.  Freedom survives and grows today through the personal efforts of the dedicated in every nation.  We’re free because some of the first Americans believed strongly enough in the people and cared enough about the future to establish the principle of equality in representative government and then set out to make it work.

The experiment they started is still going on, and the issue is by no means decided.  Its challenge to each new generation is to seek and earn the privileges of freedom anew by living up to the responsibilities of free citizens. In a world much dominated by fear, poverty, and despotism, perhaps it behooves all of us Americans to vote for freedom by—

• Learning more about how our system works to give Americans the highest living standard, the greatest opportunities and the most freedom of any people on earth.
• Discovering and supporting those measures that resolve public issues in ways that work best for everyone. (Compromise, not confrontation.)
• Finding and supporting the candidacy of persons whom we can expect to work for all of the people if elected or re-elected to public office, and then voting for them! (Humans, not corporations/organizations.)

I suggest you follow your elected legislator’s voting record.  Are they representing your interests??  For a list of your federal legislators, see www.govtrack.us/congress/votes.