The Obligation to Vote

Every presidential election, we’re told, is the most important one in our generation or in decades or this century. The 2020 presidential election is, no doubt, the most historic and important since 1860 when Abraham Lincoln was elected. This election we are given a stark choice between individual freedom and progressive paternalism. We will decide if we would rather keep our 1^st Amendment right to free speech or if we would rather have some arbitrary governmental bureaucrat decide if our speech, or other forms of expression are too hateful, hurtful or offensive to be allowed in public.

We will be able to decide if we want a government that protects its citizens, supports its law enforcement officers and the justice system or if we want that system torn down and replaced by whatever the mob from Antifa and Black Lives Matter thinks we need. This election will show whether we will continue the leftist trend to release criminals without bail before trial, so they can continue to commit crimes, with no reason to ever show up in court, or whether we go back to the tried and true requirement of bail when arrested.

Will we be one nation, under God or several separate tribes competing for government largess? That would effectively make the government our new god. Will we be a nation that supports and encourages the nuclear family or a country whose agenda encourages single parent families through welfare and the redistribution of wealth? This year we will decide if our country will promote the entrepreneurial spirit by encouraging and assisting small businesses or go back to the prior administrations’ crony capitalism. That type of so-called capitalism puts the government in the position to pick the winners and losers, and often does so by putting the taxpayer’s money at risk like in the Solyndra scandal.

This election will determine if we must send our poorest children to public schools that don’t teach them to read, write, calculate numbers and learn our revisionist history, but does teach them “diversity,” why America is evil, “moral equivalency” and victim-hood. Alternatively, we could send them to private or public schools that teach them how to read, write, arithmetic and our real history, through innovative policies like school vouchers, scholarship tax credits, charter schools and magnet schools, just to name a few.

This election will also effect our cultural and economic ways forward. Will we go the “woke” way and make our choices for jobs, school exams and elective positions by the color of skin, genitalia or sexual preference or should we return to the idea of awarding these things based on competency and character?

So many of the things we patriots hold dear will be decided in this next election, our obligation to vote is more critically important than ever before in our lifetime. In the midterm elections in 2018, so many conservatives didn’t vote, for whatever reason, that the Democrats are confident they can change our red state blue in the election this year. If conservatives fail to turn out this year, that could happen.

Thomas Jefferson pointed out, “We in America do not have government by the majority, we have government by the majority who participate…All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

In Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Chicago and many other cities and towns across this country, we have seen what the prelude to tyranny looks like. We have a solemn obligation to vote to ensure that it doesn’t gain any more of a foothold here.