I Voted; Did You?

Posted November 8, 2016, 11:53 a.m.

I Voted (by Melissa Lew)

I voted this morning at my polling place in South Riding, Virginia. If you are eligible to vote, you should do so too.

There are many important races and issues on the ballot across the United States. Here in Loudoun County, Virginia, we are voting for electors for president, our House representatives, two statewide ballot issues, and four local ballot issues.

Take the time to research the candidates and issues on your ballot and make informed choices. Don’t let anybody tell you that your vote doesn’t matter. Don’t let anybody tell you that your choice is wrong. If you choose to vote ‘third party,’ don’t let anybody tell you that your vote is wasted. No informed vote is a wasted vote.

And let’s respect one another. I’ve made my choices—and I encourage you to read my reasons why—and you are free to make yours. I may not agree with you, but as long as you have seriously considered your choices, I respect them. I hope you’ll offer me the same courtesy in return.

Please come back to Off on a Tangent this evening for live results from the presidential race and the other races in my area, as well as a live blog with notable results from around the country.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

Quotes

The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.

James Madison

The essence of love is not a feeling but a choice, a willing.

Peter Kreeft

United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.

Patrick Henry

The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.

Hannah Arendt

God has created me to do him some definite service. . . . I have a part in this great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught.

John Henry Newman

Life is not fair. It is tempting to believe that government can rectify what nature has spawned. But it is also important to recognize how much we benefit from the very unfairness we deplore.

Milton Friedman

It makes little sense to condemn Christianity for its adherents’ and leaders’ hypocrisy; our faith is possibly the only one in the world that openly admits it is full of imperfect, sinful hypocrites.

Scott Bradford

Neurotics expect you to remember all the things that they tell you, and many that they don’t.

Mignon McLaughlin

Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.

C. S. Lewis

I am dumbfounded at how little philosophical and metaphysical importance the human mind has attached to the vital subject of excrement.

Salvador Dali

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.

George Orwell

There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.

Isaac Asimov

No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.

James Madison

A government, forever changing and changeable, is, indeed, in a state bordering upon anarchy and confusion.

Joseph Story

The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men—from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Nothing could be more jolting and discordant with the vision of today’s intellectuals than the fact that it was businessmen, devout religious leaders, and Western imperialists who together destroyed slavery around the world.

Thomas Sowell

Thus many were shot—thousands at first, then hundreds of thousands. We divide, we multiply, we sigh, we curse. But still and all, these are just numbers. They overwhelm the mind and then are easily forgotten.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.

Adlai Stevenson II

The two greatest institutions ever devised for lifting people out of poverty and enabling them to live in dignity are the market economy and the institution of marriage. These institutions will stand together, or they will fall together.

Robert George

Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

Maya Angelou