Booker T & Me

"Can you make your intelligence affect us in the same ratio that our ignorance affects you? Let us put a not improbable case, one that involves peace or war, the honor or dishonor of our nation--yea, the very existence of the government. The North and West are divided. There are five million votes to be cast in the South, and of this number one half are ignorant. Not only are one half the voters ignorant, but, because of this ignorant vote, corruption, dishonesty in a dozen forms have crept into the exercise of the political franchise.... The time may not be far off when to this kind of jury we shall have to look for the verdict that is to decide the course of our democratic institutions."





This quote was taken from The Great Accommodater-Booker T. Washington.





With the Republican Primary of South Carolina behind us and the Democratic Primary of South Carolina on the doorstep this week, I was struck by this comment made over 100 years ago (30 September 1896) at how it still applies today. Are not most of us ignorant on the issues and of the people running for President (and for that matter already running our country)? Who actually takes the time to study a persons record of what he/she HAS done and not what they claim they are GOING to do? With all the resources available to each individual today, rarely does a person use them to make a well-informed rational decision on who they are voting for or why. A lot of people vote along party lines because that's what their families have been doing for generations. They are parties different in name only in this day and age. It used to be that the Democrats were for welfare programs and a large central government, but now the Republicans are in favor of welfare programs (mostly for other countries) and have created the largest centralized bureaucracy this country has ever seen. They are all one and the same. No difference, yet the individuals may be different and state their "ideal" promises for the next term, but all become corrupt once in power. They all speak the "language" that they think will get them elected--the language of the ignorant and non-caring. Of course this rhetoric is set6 in motion by the big "Political Machines" (money-the rich), and therefore the rich in control stay in control by controlling the ignorant masses.




I too have been guilty of this, but I vowed to use my privilege of voting to better understand the person I am voting for-or the person I am voting against. This is a duty we should all strive to accomplish. I know this a Utopian thought and will never happen & the ignorant will still vote in the will of the rich and powerful, but at least in my mind I will have done the best that I can with the mind that God gave me the Right attributed to me in The Constitution.