Free

Whenever I see an offer that begins with the claim that something is free, my instant reaction is, sad to say, a cynical one. What's the catch? Like most of you, I suspect, I learned that nothing is truly free, everything comes at a cost. This is especially true when it comes to our rights--many of which are under attack and still others which have been infringed in recent years. Most of us, you see, paid nothing for those rights they came with our fortunate birth in a part of the world that appeared to guarantee them to every citizen.

We should know better. Those rights have not always been ours and have not always been extended to everyone. We fought a civil war to obtain them in one case and many have sacrificed their lives and welfare to maintain them over the course of our history. But still, we take for granted they are ours to have and do with what we will. It is only when our rights have been taken away, by the courts, laws and regulations promulgated after the fact that we are outraged--but few raise their voices while the insidious practice of marginalization compromises or obscures the unceasing erosion of what we should hold as fundamental.

Soon we will see this in action when our right to elect our government and our leadership will be put to the test. While I am deeply concerned, as we all should be, over the outcome of this election--which has put into play our form of government and the principles that brought it into being, but even more so about those who will throw away their right. I am not so old that I have forgotten what it feels like to be disenfranchised, to view the process and the candidates--the entire institution perhaps, as corrupt and divorced of relevance to my situation in life. I remember wanting to close my eyes and ears to politics and abstain from exercising my birthright.

Let me say, I was wrong. Not to want better for our country, not to see what must change, but to treat the choice that must be made as just another falsehood. My vote matters. It matters for precisely the reason too many decide it is something of little worth. Our choices in any election are often imperfect. No candidate--even those for the highest of offices cannot possibly deliver the sweeping changes we need to stay on course, to fully preserve all that is good and right in our country. At best what they can do is move us in a direction for better or worse. The rest is up to us--not to them.

It is up to us to make our views known, to engage in constructive efforts with unyielding, unceasing insistence on doing what is right, of securing our real freedoms, and the rights of our fellow human beings. And we do that by voting, by promoting candidates whose values and principles are aligned with the best of who we are, and by rejecting anyone for any office who supports the dissolution of our foundational principles, the Constitution, the rule of law, the limits of government to infringe upon us.

I say to any who are considering what their vote is worth in the upcoming election what Lyndon Johnson said in July of 1964 on the signing of the landmark Civil Rights Act:

"One hundred and eighty-eight years ago this week a small band of valiant men began a long struggle for freedom. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor not only to found a nation, but to forge an ideal of freedom—not only for political independence, but for personal liberty—not only to eliminate foreign rule, but to establish the rule of justice in the affairs of men.That struggle was a turning point in our history. Today in far corners of distant continents, the ideals of those American patriots still shape the struggles of men who hunger for freedom.

This is a proud triumph. Yet those who founded our country knew that freedom would be secure only if each generation fought to renew and enlarge its meaning."