Election 2004

Make sure you get out to the polls on November 2 and VOTE!!! It's too late to register this year, but do it now so you're ready for 2008. Check out the League of Women Voters to find out registration deadlines in your state. The LWV also lists the candidate's positions on a broad spectrum of issues, as reported by the candidates themselves (and in no way influenced by the LWV). Go ask your local county clerk for an absentee voter's ballot if you can't get to the polls.

If you want to know where I'll be on the first Tuesday in November, I'll be celebrating my right to vote at the Election Connection, a party thrown by my former college roommate each election year. He also hosts Primary Parties. I'm in charge of refreshments. This year we'll be serving Bush's Baked Beans, "Massachusett's Crab"-cakes, salad Greens, Cheney's Artery-cloggers, and Edwards's Carolina Juleps. There will also be Texan Dip'n'chips and Purple Heart cookies :)

Finally, when considering the candidates, I recommend you visit a local affiliate of National Right to Life. There you will find the RTL endorsements for this year's candidates in your voting district. By no means must you vote for a certain candidate because the RTL says so. But you should know where your favorite candidate's stand on this most fundamental issue of social justice. The right to life is the bedrock of a just society, and the lengths to which a state will go to preserve and protect the right to life is the belwether of its moral condition. We cannot guarantee human dignity and freedom at all if we cannot safeguard access to that same dignity and freedom to every member of our society, especially the least of these. Jesus Christ came into the world when He was conceived, and it His Blood being shed. "Whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters you do to me."

The Supreme Court would have us believe that children not yet born are the property of their mother, and therefore her choice to murder her child is protected under the Constitution as the right to privacy (a dubious interpretation of the 14th Amendment). But natural law and common sense dictate that human life begins at conception, not birth. And every human life must be accorded the same dignity and freedoms and rights. If a nation truly dedicates itself to the rights of its citizens, it will do all it can to protect and enable not only the child, but the mother, the family, and their total wellbeing. I want a government that does it all, that fulfills the potential accorded to it by the Lord Almighty. I want a government unswervingly dedicated to justice. Because then and only then can we hope to live in PEACE.