
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 4, 1992                   TAG: 9203040291
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

NOT VOTING DAMAGES SPIRIT OF LIBERTY

AS I WATCHED the primary-election returns come in from New Hampshire, one number took precedence over all others. Only 40 percent of registered voters actually participated.

What were the other 60 percent doing? Whatever it was, they certainly were not executing one of their basic rights as Americans - the right to vote.

As a matter of fact, certain groups in this country did not always have this right. Women did not have the right to vote until they fought vigorously. The same is true of minorities. After all of this struggle for equality, the right to vote is sadly abused by the majority of all Americans.

Do Americans not care anymore about civic duty or basic freedoms? President William Henry Harrison said: "The spirit of liberty is the sovereign balm for every injury which our institution may receive. On the contrary, no care that can be used in the construction of our government, no division of its powers, no distribution of checks in its several departments, will prove effectual to keep us a free people if this spirit is suffered to decay; and decay it will without constant nurture."

I believe that by not voting, the eventual result will be this decay. BRIAN J. PHILLIPS CHRISTIANSBURG

by CNB