If your take on this November’s election is, &uot;I just don’t do politics,&uot; or &uot;My vote doesn’t matter anyway,&uot; you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

With the 2000 Presidential election being determined by a mere 537 votes, it should be plainly obvious just how important each person’s vote really is, especially when there is so much riding on the future of this country.

In a time when so many voices are screaming for the ‘right’ to exercise their ‘freedom’ to ‘choose,’ you would think more people would be beating down the doors of Board of Elections Offices across the nation to exercise these rights they claim to hold so dear, but if the results of the last voter turnout is any indication of the kind of turnout we are going to see in this presidential election, I’d hate to see where we’ll be headed.

It never ceases to amaze me how opinionated people can be about the governmental decisions that affect their life, yet they are not registered to vote or worse yet are registered, but too lazy or apathetic to care enough to do something about it.

I have to laugh at the irony of such remarks because the freedom they use to speak their opinions were granted as a result of someone who cared enough to go before them and pave the way towards the creation of a government in which the people HAD a voice, yet they choose NOT to exercise that right.

While I was in Bible school, I had a professor who had a phrase for that kind of behavior, &uot;You don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater!&uot;

Just because you disagree with certain policies instituted in our government or the decisions of its leaders, doesn’t mean you give up on the whole parliamentary procedure altogether. How are you going to affect change if you don’t speak your mind in the channels provided to you?

Boy, what an ungrateful, insolent people we have become! We whine and complain about our situation, but when it comes time to do something about it, we disregard the means we were afforded to do so.

I’m sorry to put this bluntly, but if you’re one of those people who takes to complaining, but isn’t planning to vote, just remember that whatever decisions are made in your voluntary absence are the ones you will have to live with.

Unfortunately, the responsible citizens who answered the call to good stewardship will likely have to listen to you grumble about how you would have done it differently or better, but I am of the belief that as long as this is a democracy, everyone is entitled to their opinion…even if they’re wrong.

On the flip side, as a voting citizen I know that there is no law in place that says I have to stand there and listen to it.

Our government isn’t perfect, but it was bought and paid with the blood of brave men and women who knew the impact their decisions or indecisions would have on future generations and with activist judges threatening to shred the moral composition of this nation for a selfish political agenda. We owe it to our children and our children’s children to care enough to do what we can with what we have, while we still have it.

Ground may have been lost in the past, but there is no time like the present to redeem the future. With issues like the preservation of traditionally defined marriage, protection of religious liberty and the restoration of regard for tiny human beings who are robbed of their right to life while still in utero, how can we stay silent?