Today, I spent some time with Esther and Alan, laid-off workers from southwestern Virginia’s coal mining country. These Virginians, and many of their fellow miners, drove six hours to spend as long knocking doors in Henrico County. They not only know what’s at stake Tuesday… they live it. Esther and Alan are among 1,800 miners and 200 railroad personnel whose jobs were sacrificed to the Obama Administration’s war on fossil fuels. This across-the-board ideological bullying abuses the great power of the public trust to move an agenda forward, ignoring the best interests of our nation and its citizens.

I also shared a recent moment with a Virginian who ranks at the top of my own informal listing of those actively dedicated to confronting the sheer power of what Washington is today. He and I share very similar thoughts regarding a renewed, self-governing approach to the months and years after each and every Election Day. During this visit, as we spoke of next Tuesday, each of us was hyper-aware that our nation is just days away from making a critical choice. For the first time since we’d met, I watched this man fight back tears a few times as he spoke of God, country, his children and the future. Regaining his composure, he compared the need for concerned Americans to vote to the parable of the bundle of sticks.

My friend is absolutely correct. Through the sheer power of an unbridled government, we can surely be defeated as individuals, and we will likely live that reality absent Mitt Romney’s election Tuesday. And yet, we can accomplish Tuesday’s task as individuals who, one vote at a time, form a force for democracy which cannot be beaten by cynical duplicity and wholesale deceit. We can begin, Wednesday morning, to restore those qualities which once mattered to each American, be he or she a voter, a politician, a reporter, or any citizen of any demographic.

Please vote Tuesday, and please find a way to convince others to join you in making an unbreakable promise to those who have defended us, to those who now depend upon us, and to those future generations who will follow us. One vote at a time, in numbers too great to ignore, we can do this.

John Pride
November 4th, 2012
Chesterfield County, Virginia