My grandfather, along with 200,000 other Hungarians, was killed in a Soviet concentration camp after World War II. My father risked his life in 1956, taking to the streets to join in the Hungarian Revolution to demand democracy. When the Soviet army came in to crush the resistance, my father was beaten by a communist sympathizer, and was forced to hide in a neighbor's basement.
I came to the United States in 1980. My father remained in Budapest. I returned there in March, 1990, to accompany my father for what he deemed to be the greatest moment of his life. On a clear spring morning, we walked together to a polling place. Along the way, he pointed out some of the sites of our family's bad experiences -- the last place he ever saw his father, where he was beaten, the house where he was offered protection.
Then, we arrived at the polling place. We waited in line for hours. When his turn finally came, my father staggered. He burst into tears -- this was the moment he had hoped for, he had fought for, for so long. He cast his vote, and we went outside. There, he hugged me, the tightest, longest hug he ever gave me. And he cried on my shoulder.
His candidates -- from the Alliance for Free Democrats -- lost. But he never stopped working, and he never stopped voting, no matter if he was disappointed with the outcome, or with how the candidates he supported fulfilled their jobs. He voted in the rain. He voted when he was sick. He voted from a wheelchair.
Last week, I mentioned to him how certain progressives in America say they will not vote in November because they are disappointed in Obama, unenthusiastic about the Democrats. I used the term "enthusiasm gap." It didn't translate well into Hungarian, but he got the gist of it.
He was disgusted. The words he used about those who won't vote -- lazy, self-centered, arrogant, foolish -- exploded in a stream of anger. While he did not say so, one thing was clear: He hates every one of those who refuse to vote because they aren't happy that their politicians failed to deliver everything they want.
Tens of thousands of people around the world have died in gruesome ways, merely because they fought for the right to vote. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered in 1964 because they confronted white racism in the south by trying to register blacks to vote. They were beaten and shot -- Chaney had both arms broken, had been kicked aggressively in the groin, and had his jaw and shoulder crushed.
They died because they were trying to help people vote.
So many people have done so much to allow you the privileges of democracy. To demean their memory by refusing to vote out of dissatisfaction or disappointment is the basest of acts.
I don't care about Glenn Beck. I don't care what Palin does. I don't care about Fox News. They are noise, the irrelevant static of a free society. I care about the people of this country, and doing everything I can to better their lives. I will never be able to convince the Fox Newsies of anything. My only hope is that I can convince you.
During his life, Martin Luther King bemoaned the fact that far too many people, even when they managed to earn the right to vote, often failed to do so. He said:
In the past, apathy was a moral failure. Today, it is a form of moral and political suicide.
King did not achieve everything he wanted. Voting rights and civil rights were slow in coming, and in fact, have yet to fully arrive. But he never stayed at home, complaining that Johnson hadn't done enough, wasn't committed enough. He accepted the battle, and was willing to fight. And he, as well, paid the ultimate price.
Daniel Webster captured the duty that comes with these rights:
Impress upon children the truth that the exercise of the elective franchise is a social duty of as solemn a nature as man can be called to perform; that a man may not innocently trifle with his vote; that every elector is a trustee as well for others as himself and that every measure he supports has an important bearing on the interests of others as well as on his own. "
Vote. Don't pout. Vote. Recognize and cherish the beauty and grace of this most fundamental of rights. Be disappointed all you want. But don't turn this nation over to the people who managed to get off the couch because of their hatred, or lunacy, or slavish devotion to a demagogue.
My screen name is Hungarian. It means "progressive success."
Make it possible. Vote.