Everyone says that you should vote. There are signs everywhere, MTV’s Rock the Vote campaign etcetera etcetera.
The reasons that people say you must vote is often because you cannot bitch and moan about the Bush administration and then not vote for someone. This is true. However, there are more important reasons to vote.
Of course, there are the issues at hand. Women are worried that voting a Republican into office could seriously danger the Roe v. Wade decision. Others are very concerned with who will bring their sons and daughters home from Iraq.
If you are like most of us that are not in the “upper class,” then you should certainly be worried about the state of our economy, and want to vote for someone with a plan on how to help the people that are unable to buy food right now. Environmentalists are worried about conserving water and voting for someone who will work with and help strengthen the EPA. I believe all of these issues are very important, however, there is an issue that, at the root of it, is more important than all of these.
This issue is the protection of our Bill of Rights. Our freedoms are being stripped from us left and right in the name of “national security.”
“The basis of our government, being the opinion of the people, the very first object would be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them,” said Thomas Jefferson.
We can even see the fight on these issues from both sides on our campus – those who want the freedom to carry a gun, and those who want that freedom taken away from people. In Nashville at this very moment legislators are working to take away our freedom of information, open records and meetings, given to us by the Sunshine Law.
Our Sunshine Law allows any citizen the right to attend official government meetings that is consisting of two or more government officials. There are legislators in Nashville that want to change this law and weaken it, to make an official meeting only count if it consists of more people. That means that two commissioners, school board members or other official can meet and make decisions without the rest of the public knowing.
This is one of the most important freedoms we have, not just for journalists but also for everyone. If journalists cannot find out what our government is doing, no one can.
Because of the constant threats to our safety, as Americans, we are becoming less and less aware of how important keeping our liberties are. We have become oblivious when legislators try to chip away at our freedoms.
The First Amendment center says, “Americans are generally less supportive of press freedoms than they are of other First Amendment freedoms . when forced to choose between competing problems, more Americans tend to think there is too much media freedom, than think there is too much government censorship.”
Without a free press, we cannot have democracy. “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech,” said the always-brilliant Benjamin Franklin.

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