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November 4, 2008
Exclusive: America, it’s Up to You Today
The moment we’ve been waiting for is here. After nearly two years – the longest presidential campaign on record – the people get to have their say.
Surrogates for both candidates have run the gauntlet, making stump speech after stump speech. Media outlets are hunkering down, prepared to chain themselves to their desks until a winner is announced. Pundits’ faces are purple and their chests heave as they gasp for air. Even Peggy Noonan, who has bemoaned the “new vulgarization in American politics,” was heard to say “heck” on Good Morning America yesterday.
When a culture maven like Noonan resorts to using crude, almost Palinesque slang on-air, you know something big is about to go down.
But forget the hundreds of conflicting polls we’ve been subject to over the past few months. Forget Chris Matthews’ leg tingles. Forget about all of that. Today is all yours.
So what do you, the American people, have to think about as you head to the polls?
- The economy. What will help it rebound more quickly? Higher taxes? Spreading the wealth? Or allowing the free market to operate unfettered by endless regulation and oversight by “politicians … [rather] than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks.”
- Energy. America is rich with oil, coal and natural gas deposits, but for the last three decades Congress, egged on by radical environmentalists, has made it extremely difficult to access these energy sources – making us reliant on oil from countries in the Middle East and elsewhere that would like nothing better than for America to fall from its perch as the most powerful and influential nation on earth. And even if you support “green” energy such as wind and solar, should we ease into it or should “electricity prices necessarily skyrocket” in the name of ecological concerns by taxing coal and other energy industries to the point where their product is made unaffordable to consumers?
- National security. America is still engaged in two conflicts overseas. One candidate wants to win these conflicts. The other wants to end them “responsibly.” We’ve been warned that one candidate will likely be “tested” with an international crisis within six months and that we need to trust that he’ll know what he’s doing, even if it doesn’t look like he does. Al Qaeda, while severely curtailed, has not gone away, nor have other Jihadist groups bent on spreading radical Islam throughout the world and toppling the “Great Satan.”
These are just a few of the most important issues facing American voters today. It’s not about being more popular in the world than we are or have been. This is not high school; our picture will not appear in the yearbook in the superlatives section under “Nicest Smile” or “Class Clown.” Think about it, those of you who have children: when setting rules, curfews, etc., was it more important to you to be popular with your children or do what you thought was best for them?
While our problems with illegal immigration continue to plague us, do we want to continue to be the nation that others flock to, even in violation of our laws, in order to become a part of the great American dream? Or do we wish to become a nation that people flee for better opportunities elsewhere?
Today is the day that these questions and more will be answered – by you. Every election is important, but the idea that this is the most important election in a generation isn’t just political hype.
So get out and vote. And after the election, whatever its outcome, don’t go back into hibernation until October of 2010, because as someone much greater than I once said:
"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." –Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820.
Pam Meister is the editor of FamilySecurityMatters.org.
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