I respect Republicans. My father was a Republican. He once said, rather humorously, he would vote for a Republican even if it was a poodle.
He said it when Ronald Reagan was up for re-election. As a free-thinker and a secular humanist, he wasn't enthusiastic about the increasing influence of fundamentalists on the Grand Old Party.
The old Republican guard thought of themselves as the party of Lincoln, for whom my father had the greatest admiration. He also admired Teddy Roosevelt and, like others of his generation who fought in WW II, Eisenhower.
He startled me by saying to me one time that all men are not created equal. It's the law, he said, our Constitution, that makes us equal.
I was born in the fifties. I was a child in the sixties.
The civil rights movement casts the longest shadow in my life. Kennedy picked up Lincoln's torch and passed it to the Democrats in the early sixties. Whatever his sins, despite social chaos and the Southern contingent, when the moment arrived to stand up for the Constitution, Kennedy did. He answered Martin Luther King's challenge.
I was in fourth grade when Kennedy was killed. Too young then to understand it all, it is Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch who stands for Kennedy in my memory.
My mother, who practised radical kindness, who was strict about bedtime and set limits on television, pulled us out of bed and parked us in front of the TV one night, to watch "To Kill a Mockingbird" on CBS's Saturday night movie. The lesson of Harper Lee's luminous classic is, whatever the personal dangers, even when the opposition comes from your friends and neighbors- when it comes to justice, it's simple- you do as Spike Lee might say, "the right thing".
I had a moment of hope during the exchange between Edwards and Cheney, that the congeniality of those comments about Cheney's daughter might put a rest to the issue of gay marriage which has been used to "energize" the Republican base. It's despicable, in my opinion, to court the worst instincts of the most prejudiced and ignorant to win an election.
History fell squarely on the side of African Americans in the sixties. It is falling on the side of gays, today. What is marriage, if not to ask the blessing of God on the union of people who love one another?
But that's not the only burning civil rights issue facing us. The issue of voting rights is back just like in the sixties. Some unscrupulous Republicans supporters are doing everything they can to prevent black voters from going to polls.
Unbelievable? Yes. But it's happening. Because black voters tend to vote Democratic.
Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 (which is released in DVD this week) is a "must see", if only for the vivid segment showing how the African American vote was disenfranchised in the last election.
Once again this year, partisan Florida election officials came up with a list of so-called "felons", thousands of whom turn out to be legitimate African American voters. Black civil rights workers doing voter registration have been harassed in Florida, leaflets with misinformation have appeared in minority communities in Louisiana, American Indians in South Dakota were been turned away from the polls after being asked to show ID's when none are required.
Bob Herbert, of the New York Times, has written most extensively about it. This week the Times has a searing editorial on the subject.
The Poll Tax, Updated
I've been volunteering forAmerica Coming Together, which is doing voter registration in African American, immigrant, Latino and working class communities, and among young people.
Only 52% of eligible adults voted in the last election.
Michael Moore is in trouble with Michigan prosecutors for bribing slackers with briefs. He's handing out clean underwear, in the hopes that he can get the skateboard generation to change more often (every third day- turn them inside out, he advises) and change bigger things.
Every vote counts.