QUOTATION: People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote - a very different thing. - Walter H. Judd
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2004-07-05 - 2:30 p.m. On This Happy Day...Last night as we said the grace our family has said for the past forty years, I felt no confidence it would ever come to pass in my lifetime: "On this happy day, we are thankful for our blessings. We pray for renewed belief in ourselves and each other and hope this bond of love will expand to envelop the entire universe." Happy thought. If only... Newcomers to our table usually say something like, "Nice sentiment." Hope. "We hope this bond of love will expand to envelop the entire universe." Hope, when our world goes from one skirmish to another, from one feud to another, from one war to the next in a world where children go to bed hungry at night (if they have a bed in which to sleep), while in contrast in another part of the world the winner of Nathan's Famous hot-dog eating competition in Coney Island won by eating 53 1/2 hot dogs! in a country were teen-agers are wearing $250 designer tennis shoes and worrying about the price of gas for the gas-guzzling vehicles they drive to school, worrying not one whit about global warming. Hope seems such a futile word when our country has been led into a war that may not have been necessary. Are we safer today than we were before 9/11? We'll be electing a president and representatives for the House and Senate in a very short time. The tension so many of us feel comes from trying to be loving and forgiving when we are so mistrustful of our government, when we wonder whether our vote in the next election will make an appreciable difference, and whether in four years we will feel safer, whether the people in Sudan, Iraq, or North Korea will feel safer. On this happy day...let's all think about casting our vote wisely come November.
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