Ah, Democracy

"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."
--Constitution of the United States of America




I'm going out to vote this afternoon, after work. I've got a candidate for the school board I'm voting for.


There will also be ballot questions, like: Do we need a skate board park in Hampton and are we willing to float a bond for it?


Some homeowner wants to plant azaleas on the other side of the sidewalk, on town land. Should she be allowed? Stuff like this makes it on the ballot in Hampton, New Hampshire.


This morning, on National Public Radio they were interviewing voters in Alabama. A man earnestly declared President Obama is an unconstitutional president because the Constitution says you have to be a natural born American and he is not, because his father was born in Kenya and to be a natural born American, your parents have to be born in America. Says so, right there in the Constitution.
Now this is not a matter of belief. Nor is this a matter of interpretation. This is something you can look up, right there in the Constitution.


But this Alabama voter, very earnestly, was speaking into a microphone and telling us something.


What he was telling us is that if you wish really, really hard, the world will be the way he wants it to be.


When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are, your dreams come true.


Another Alabama voter said she will vote for Rick Santorum because he wants to put God into everything, and she likes that.


Listening to these voices with their Southern accents and Southern rhythms and Southern inflections, I felt so very lucky to live in New Hampshire.


Not that I you never hear this sort of thing up here in the Granite state.


But when I told my coworkers what I had heard this morning they all broke out laughing and asked me to repeat it. When I repeated it, I tried it in my best Southern accent and they loved it even more. They roared with laughter.


It was very un PC. It was like laughing at a Polish joke, about how stupid those Southerners are.


It was a bonding moment.




E Pluribus Unum.