By Jerry Fraser
Someone asked
me why the stock market was climbing on the morning of Election Day. (It was up
over 150 points in the afternoon.)
“That’s
easy,” I said. “The election’s over.”
I could have
said, “Two billion dollars later, it’s over.”
That’s an
obscene amount of money in pursuit of public office. Except that if the right
man gets elected, it will seem cheap.
Great
civilizations do not, to use Lincoln’s words, tend to “long endure.” If you happen
to agree with commentators who see numerous cultural, social and economic
threats to the great experiment that is the United States of America, you
cannot take our future for granted.
Our tradition
of American exceptionalism is not an accident. It is a tree nurtured in
liberty, faith and hard work.
Our rough and
tumble political system often seems cynical and misguided, but it embodies the
practice of democracy by an imperfect citizenry. And for more than 200 years it
has served us well and by and large has gotten us where we needed to go.
Water Thomas
Jefferson’s tree of liberty today. Vote.
Jerry Fraser is the publisher of WorkBoat. He can be contacted at jfraser@divcom.com.