The day after…

I’ve decided how I am going to celebrate the end of the campaign season.  While I have commented that this year’s fliers do not burn, with the right tinder anything will catch light.  The night after election day, those flyers will light an effigy of Guy Fawkes.   I have conflicting views of the British government.  I have no conflicting views about a man who would replace a parliament, no matter how imperfect, with a theocracy.

I will light the fire with a torch made up of campaign fliers for both Mark Begich and Dan Sullivan.  No matter who wins the Senate race (and I doubt we will know by Guy Fawkes night), the winner will go to Washington to take part in an elected body deriving its power not from God, or even from the allegedly divine right of a king, but from our Constitution, an imperfect document that can be changed to reflect the will of the people, all of whom it governs equally.

I will burn theocracy in effigy as I reflect on what the Fourteenth Amendment to that Constitution has meant to my friends this year, several of whom are now married.

As I watch theocracy burn, I will say a prayer of thanks to God that I was born into a country where I have never been compelled into professing a religion and therefore have never had cause to wonder whether my religion was, in fact, my own.

Theocracy will burn with paper extolling the virtues of both local and national candidates.   The fire will light up the night with joyous relief.  Relief that this $50 Million campaign is over, but also at a process where people of uncommon background can come together and send representatives to parliaments that are, no matter how imperfect, far better than the alternative.