Give me Liberty

I got a phone call recently. It went like this:

Very Nice Republican Lady: “Hi, I’m calling on behalf of Pete Sessions, your representative in Congress. Do you have a minute?”

Not Very Nice Me: “Sure!”

VNRL: “What do you think is the most important issue facing Texas today?”

NVNM: “The more than a million Texans who can’t vote in the upcoming election because, even they’ve lived here for decades, there is no viable path to citizenship for them, so they don’t have any say in the government of the city, state, and country that is their home, where they live and work and go to church and pay taxes. I think I remember something about taxation without representation from high school history.”

VNRL: ” . . . and can we count on your vote?”

NVNM: “Well, no, but thanks for calling and I hope your next call goes better.”

In 1993, I  had the privilege to work with a guy from South Africa on the day that he cast his absentee ballot, for the first time, in an election in his home country.

The right to vote is not something I will ever take for granted.