Tomorrow, millions of people will cast a vote believing that their candidate will change the fabric of our society. To most participants in our republic, Election Day is the ultimate moment of truth. Consider the staggering cost of this election cycle. Congressional and Presidential candidates will have spent over $5,300,000,000 for this day. Cable and broadcast news agencies have logged countless hours of coverage and crazed bloggers from both sides crawled out of the woodwork, ranting and attacking at will. Pollsters have been conducting their own elections daily for months. Sean Hannity has quite literally been counting down the days until "Judgement Day" for 364 days. Obama was either pictured or mentioned on the cover of 12 magazines on the rack at Borders yesterday. Google "Obama" and you will get 216 million hits. Even "McCain" gets 152 million. Either one get more hits than Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan combined.
What I'm trying to say is that this election has been hyped like none before. And this hype really makes me hostile. This election has been aready been overanalyzed and probed before it ever actually happened. All this analysis exists to tell we the people what we are going to do. Another result of all this hype is that everyone feels that the results of this election must be historic. The fabric of our society will be altered and the path of our nation will be changed.
But let me ask you a simple question that I have yet to hear: Will tomorrow's election be a cause or an effect? Does an election reflect or create social change? The real essential question is whether electing Obama will fundamentally change our country, or does electing Obama reflect a fundamental change that has already taken place?
Allow me to digress for a moment. I had a moment of inspiration while reading an article about the Dallas Cowboys in my most recent Sports Illustrated. Zach Thomas mentioned an old saying: "You don't win on Sunday. You win on Wednesday and Thursday." In other words, what you do in practice determines the result on game day. I remember football practice. It started each day with stretching and agility sprints. Then the team splits into position groups to learn and execute the fundamentals of their position. As a lineman, mostly I ran through the line cage and hit the sled. After that, we ran either laps, sprints, or relays. I never was very fond of all that exertion. But I recognized that performing those menial basic tasks in the proper manner would determine game performance. A slow lazy weakling at practice was a slow lazy weakling during the game. People who ran fast and hit hard during practice did so during the game.
Now consider America as a football team. Tomorrow is game day. Do you think that our country is full of slow lazy weaklings or do we run fast and hit hard? How hard have you practiced the fundamentals of democracy, freedom, and independence in your everyday life? How about your teammates? How many people do you know who already live off the government? How many people you encounter on a daily basis are ignorant and apathetic about their freedoms that are already being stifled? Are you one of those who have succombed to the tyranny over the minds of men?
If Obama wins tomorrow, it will not mean that capitalism will die and freedoms will be torn away from us. It will not mean that we will become a country that embraces the killing of unborn children. It will not mean that we will become dependent on the government to provide our needs and wants. It will not mean that we will give up on the war on terror and open our borders. It will not mean that we will become a nation that values style over substance and charisma over character. It will not mean that America will become a lesser nation. No, if Obama wins tomorrow, it will mean that all of this has already happened.
