… a few choice election-related readings:
–Redoubtable Illinois Democrat Archpundit goes off on Alan Keyes and his suggestion that he intends to stay in Illinois after his electoral thrashing to help remake the Republican Party in his own (ultra-right, ultra-fundamentalist, ultra-Christian, ultra-zealot) image.
–Voters tell Kottke.org about their polling-place experiences today.
–A June 2003 talk by Bill Moyers on the battle to keep a progressive agenda alive in the United States:
“Ideas have power – as long as they are not frozen in doctrine. But ideas need legs. The eight-hour day, the minimum wage, the conservation of natural resources and the protection of our air, water, and land, women’s rights and civil rights, free trade unions, Social Security and a civil service based on merit – all these were launched as citizen’s movements and won the endorsement of the political class only after long struggles and in the face of bitter opposition and sneering attacks. It’s just a fact: Democracy doesn’t work without citizen activism and participation, starting at the community. Trickle down politics doesn’t work much better than trickle down economics. It’s also a fact that civilization happens because we don’t leave things to other people. What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it – as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit – to believe that the flame of democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.”
–And last, while we contemplate the electoral mess many fear could come out of today, Smithsonian magazine has a good piece on the election of 1800, decided by a single man who decided not to vote.