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Monday, July 12, 2004
The Medium Lobster is pleased to see that serious action is finally being considered to give a four-person committee the power to postpone the presidential election. For, in the event of a terrorist attack on or around Election Day, it would be dangerous - nay, undemocratic - to allow American citizens to vote while under the dark and panicking influence of the enemies of freedom.
And yet the Medium Lobster is not certain that postponement in just such an event goes far enough. After all, America cannot allow its election to be disrupted by any terrorist act, and wouldn't a major terrorist strike in Iraq or Saudi Arabia also raise that disrupting level of panic in the American voter's consciousness? For if Americans vote based on the nefarious and evil actions of Abu Musab Zarqawi, haven't we allowed the terrorists to win? But this points to an even greater dilemma: while one may prepare for a terrorist attack at home or abroad and the affect it may have upon the electoral process, one cannot prepare for the possibility of a terrorist attack at home or abroad and the affect it may have on the electoral process. Once one takes this into account, events such as the State Department's report detailing a sharp increase in terrorism for 2003 are themselves cause for putting off the election. As long as the voting public believes that somewhere, somehow, terrorists may strike at a vulnerability within the nation, their votes will be darkly influenced by concern for that vulnerability, and once again, America will be voting under the influence of bin Laden and his murderous fellow travelers. Indeed, as long as the United States grapples with the forces of terrorism, the shadow of Terror Itself will hang over the democratic process, infecting and poisoning it at the most fundamental levels. Can America allow itself to carry on any presidential election, knowing that its outcome may be influenced by the existence of terror, until Terror is, at long last, finally defeated? The answer, my friends, is a most resounding "no." Remember, after all, that in these days it is the darkest enemies of democracy we face, and in the war to defeat them, we cannot let democracy stand in the way.
posted by the Medium Lobster at 9:29 AM
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