Celebrity Call-in

It is the eve of our primary election here in North Carolina and candidates are spending a lot of money on direct mail and direct phone and direct TV advertisement.
Just today I have been called by Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Andy Griffith, and a host of other people who didn’t talk to me except on a recorded tape played for my listening enjoyment. I have learned when the polls open, where I can call for a free ride to the polls, who will offer to lower gas prices, who will help to provide health care for all Americans, who will serve the state house with integrity, and in some ways I am very proud that they all want so much to serve the people of this great state and nation.

What I am also proud of is the opportunity we have to vote. I do my best to learn as much as I can about candidates, but to really learn about them is sometimes the hardest work of all. It is easy to hear the ways they spar with one another about those issues that “scream” for attention. Everyone wants lower taxes and no one wants to pay the ones they have. Everyone wants good government, but fewer and fewer seem to have the means to wage the kinds of campaigns that we have today…largely sound bites and snippets of phrases taken out of context used to “attack” fellow opponents. In reality,
the largest contributors to campaigns are often the largest corporations, and with some frequency they hedge their bets on who is “winning” and send money to both sides. It all seems a bit sleazy when you get down to the reality that contracts for government work and appointments to places of power are still big ticket items for plucking in the systems we have created.

But somewhere, down deep inside, the ideals of this nation remain strong. We can be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people…if we remember our own responsibilities to the process. From the town hall to the public square, from the gathering places of friends and neighbors, to the coffee shop conversations and hometown editorial pages, the information is able to be shared in ways that do inform and inspire us to carry out with distinction the processes of this republic. Democracy, while not always able to be “infused” by design, can be undertaken by those who believe in the highest ideals over the lowest common denominators of human endeavor.

Tomorrow will come and go, but the choices we make will be important ones as we exercise our freedoms and opportunity. Never take such gifts for granted.