At 6:30am this morning, my wife and I walked out into the pre-dawn chill, past our garage and across the back yard, up the hill and through the door of the community center that serves as our village's polling place.A hundred paces, give or take, covered the distance from living in liberty to raising a citizen's voice in support of it.
As I stood at my assigned touch-screen voting machine, I thought back to a time when I didn't value this rite of democracy the way I do today. I was a comfortable youth, complacent about my freedom and shamefully dismissive of its price.
Those days, I'm glad to say, are behind me. Now I rise on Election Day with as much joy as I do on the Fourth of July.
I encourage my fellow independent citizen-patriots to join me in celebration -- vote!
