Well, I have my political endorsements up for the November 2 election. I created a new subsection within my nonfiction section called “political endorsements” where these go, although my Presidential endorsement appears on my front page in the place of the Front Page Rant.
You will also find an “election 2004” blurble on the right sidebar of my site. It tells you when to vote, where to get registration information, and buttons for the candidates I support (as well as links to my reasons why).
This election cycle is particularly contentious and there are a lot of important issues on the table. You don’t have to agree with me about what candidates I support and why, and I encourage you to use the comment feature on my endorsements to tell me what you think. I demand, however, that we all remain civil and polite about it (any rude or inappropriate comments will be deleted).
Too often at GMU, I would make a comment in class which contradicted the political thinking of my classmates. Rather than listening to what I had to say and giving it fair consideration, they shut me out. This behavior is counterproductive and happens too often today on both sides of the political spectrum. The point of our representative democracy is that people on opposite sides of an issue can come together and find some sort of compromise. People can only compromise when they listen to one another.
So read my endorsements and give them serious thought. In each one of them, I link both to the candidate I support and their opponent. Click both links and read what they all have to say. Go into the iTunes Audiobooks segment and listen to some of the speeches from both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions (free downloads). Go into this election season with an open mind, learn what you can about all of the candidates and issues, and make an honest decision about who you support and why.
Most importantly, you must put your decisions into action. Register to vote if you have not done so already. Take a day off from work and school on November 2 and cast your ballot for the candidates and issues that you believe in. If you are in college or away from home, vote absentee (your local registrar can tell you how). The 2000 election was won by only a few hundred ballots in Florida. This year, it might come down to Virginia . . . or North Dakota . . . or Arizona. Every vote counts; don’t let any cynic convince you otherwise.
I believe that it is our civic duty as Americans to cast our ballots, but we must make the effort to be informed when we do. Today, I tell you who I support and why. That’s a piece of information. You might have come here as a regular reader of my site, our you may have found your way here by accident, but either way it is your job to go a step further. It is your job to figure out what you believe, and it is your job to vote accordingly on November 2.