Happy Election Day

Question: Is there any public school that contains a classroom that recites the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of the school day anymore?  Maybe each and every American should be required to live in a non-democratic country for some extended period of time. Maybe it wouldn't even have to be an extended period of time. Isn't that how most of us got here in the first place? It's why our families came here years ago and why the colonists drafted a Declaration of Independence. Maybe then we'd appreciate what we have in America. Maybe then we'd appreciate our ancestors and even people today who still choose to come here to buy into the system that gives them the opportunity to get involved. Maybe. I know, it's a stretch. [Even as I write this, I'm tempted to say, "Why would anyone want to come here?" I am so quick to complain, but so slow to take action.] And then, when we as Americans fail to take an active role as citizens of this country, we wonder why it's failing. It's not failing because our leaders are failing. It's failing because we are. At least that's what I think.

Read this, even if you don't want to. Read. It.

...It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 

[The Gettysburg Address. Abraham Lincoln]

It's impossible to have a government of the people and for the people if it's not by the people. So, vote. It's the least you can do. If you haven't today, there's always a next time. And if you don't next time...there may not me a next time.