Tuesday, November 06, 2012

Voting as an Act of Solidarity

I was interested to see how busy the polling place was; last time it had been pretty quiet, but there was quite a line. Some people in line remarked the same thing. And when I left, the line was even longer than when I had arrived.

One of the nice things about voting is that the mere fact of doing it is to some extent an act of good will towards, and solidarity with, one's fellow citizens, a recognition of equality in and of itself. It's easy, in all of the party politics, to forget that the good that fundamentally matters is the good common to everyone, the good we all have by virtue of being citizens. One can deplore all one wants the follies of one's fellow voters -- but absolutely one thing that should never be done is to look down one's nose at the fact of their voting.