Election year -- just what does that mean to you?
Does it mean your favorite television shows will be interspersed with political ads that annoy you?
Or does it make you grateful that you live in a free country in which you have the right, responsibility and privilege to vote?
In Pea Ridge, none of the three seats that came open for election/re-election are contested. There are several contested seats in Garfield and Gateway. There are three men running for one seat on the Pea Ridge School Board.
Voter turnout has not been high in the last few elections. People offer a variety of excuses from the "too busy" excuse to the "I wouldn't know who to vote for" excuse.
Has our freedom come too cheaply?
Just this week a good man, a war hero, died. Russell Walker was 97. He was one of five Walker brothers to serve the United States of America on foreign soil during World War II. He didn't talk much of the war, but he deserves our gratitude.
A few months ago, another Pea Ridge resident, Col. Joe Hart, died. He, too, fought and suffered in WWII.
There are many veterans in this community -- men and women who know how costly our freedoms are, men and women who know that in other countries, people don't have the freedom to vote, to elect their leaders.
We need to study our American history again. We need to realize that our comparatively young country was founded on a belief of personal freedoms and know that many people died in the course of founding and later defending those freedoms and this country.
Over the course of American history, the privilege to vote has been extended to different persons. Originally, only people who owned property could vote. The privilege of voting has been denied to people based on their skin color or their gender, but that has changed. In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution gave women the right to vote. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed prohibiting racial discrimination in voting.
And yet, today, in 2014, there are people who are eligible to vote, but not registered. There are those who are registered who won't get out and vote.
It is said that a man who does not read is no better than a man who can not read.
It could be said that a person who will not vote does not deserve the freedoms that our nation affords its citizens.
"Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education." --Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd president of the United States
Roosevelt also said: "Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting."
"The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men." -- Lyndon B. Johnson,
William Simon (1927-2000, businessman, Secretary of the Treasury of the U.S., and philanthropist) said: "Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don't vote."
On Sept. 16, go to the polls and elect your next School Board member.
On Nov. 4, go to the polls to vote.
Do not take this privilege lightly. Educate yourself on the people running. Talk with your children about what you're doing. Give them an example of how to be a responsible citizen.
Editorial on 08/20/2014