Suggested Song: Everyday People, The Family Stone (A Soundcloud remix)
Suggested Drink: Yuengling Traditional Lager (from America’s oldest brewery. Pottsville, PA)

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
– Attributed to Thomas Jefferson, during the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

An election hangs in the balance. Two opposing views on who we are as Americans and the future we imagine for our nation. The selection we make will impact our lives in critical ways both globally and individually: our nation’s singular role on the world stage, and our own personal freedoms and prosperity. The stakes are high, the choices stark. And, to my community of old friends in Pennsylvania, you are once again bearing the burden and privilege of the Keystone State.

I was born of Perry County dirt, and its residue remains stubbornly etched under my nails. Despite the many years away, its core values guide my moral compass (with occasional success) still: modesty, honesty, charity, country. An outsider would have considered my high school class a white-bread collection of rural, Protestant, conservative hicks. We were. But diversity in lifestyles and beliefs deepened with age and our individual journeys. Post graduation, some of us assumed the family farm, others took up shifts at Bethlehem Steel or the Hershey Creamery, and a few of us continued on to college, mostly within an afternoon’s drive from home. I ventured out to California and then France (quelle horreur!). We each grew in different directions, beautifully.

The scourge of social media offers at least one welcome benefit: friends can stay in regular contact, despite the miles, hours, and years apart. I rarely like or leave comments on my friends’ Facebook posts, but if you’re reading this, know that I enjoy following your lives and the choices you’ve made. The photos from class reunions I’ve missed, kitchen accomplishments (My Friday night chicken pot pie!), grandkids’ talents, and a healthy dose of Jesus (Share this post if you love the Lord!), keep me up to speed on the rhythms of my first community.

These online citations remind me from where I come and how much I’ve changed since my hillbilly youth. Change is a healthy result of roads travelled, mistakes made, lessons learned, and new ambitions ahead. Also, there is great value in staying closer to ground and resolute in one’s life-held beliefs and values.

Up for debate

I believe in the separation of church and state. I respect an athlete’s decision to take a knee while the Anthem plays. I believe that a woman’s right to choose is paramount to a fetus’s right to life. When it comes to the unchecked availability of handguns and semi-automatic assault weapons, the downsides far outweigh any benefits, in my opinion. You may hold different opinions that I respect in these contentious issues, and a well-oiled democracy encourages our disagreements through an orderly process of resolution. We debate and we vote.

“I do not seek to have my will be a law. I seek to govern my will by law.”
– William Penn, 1681

There are 2 candidates vying for your vote on November 5. One is making a case for the merits of idolatry and authoritarianism. “Our country is going to hell” and “only I can fix it” because “I am the chosen one,” so just give me the keys, now. And for those pesky patriots who disagree, “unrest should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary by the military.”

The nut of this candidate’s pitch? Individual rights and differing opinions (mine and yours) will surrender to top-down decrees, enforced through boots on our streets. The checks and balances that keep lawmakers, law-enforcers, and justices of the law restrained and accountable to us will need to be dismantled, of course, for they are what bind a disagreeable democracy together.

The other candidate, whose policies you may despise, has spent a career in all 3 branches of our Constitutional system – as a district attorney, senator, and vice president – preserving our rights to express different opinions, to debate them openly, and to resolve them peacefully through the ballot box.

Of principles, not policy

“Get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.”
– Donald Trump, 2024

Policy differences place no role in my pitch to you now. Our opposing positions on immigration, reproductive rights, gun control, racial justice, Ukraine, Gaza, cryptocurrencies, and other burning issues should be shelved for this singularly grave election. One candidate will defend our rights to debate these opinions in the future, and to purge her from the office in 4 years, should we the people decide it’s time for a change. The other is putting steps in place, now, to cancel future elections, censor the press, imprison detractors, and stifle the debate I want to have with you at next year’s class reunion. Please weigh the options.

Wait, what reunion?

I’ll be back in Perry County next summer for my high school class’s 50^th reunion. I am excited to see old friends and catch up on the mendacities of our little lives. I know, too, that differences in our views of the world may bubble up through the Yuengling beer. But, I want our fiercest exchanges to center on Penn State versus Pitt football or the best purveyor of Lebanon bologna, not the future of American democracy. Who will give me an amen to that?

Bill Magill
Aix-en-Provence