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to the practice of democracy.
    Unfortunately, we bend over backward in the opposite direction—making it harder, not easier, for people to vote.
    Across the nation, there are many impediments to voting, including voter ID statutes, broken voting machines, and long lines at the polls. Low voter turnout means more empty rhetoric during election season. Everyone tries to appeal to the “base”—those people who are ideologically passionate about one side or the other, and will show up to vote no matter what.
    I’ll bet that the people who would object the most vehemently to any form of mandatory voting would be our elected officials. The sad fact is that most of them don’t want more people to vote. They might have to show results for a change. They prefer the cozy, inbred system where 98 percent of all incumbents are reelected. It’s called a stacked deck.
    When I’m at a dinner party and someone says, “I didn’t vote in the last election, but here’s what I think,” I tune them out quick. What if we all did that? Even if we didn’t make voting mandatory in the United States, maybe we could try to exert some social pressure. For example:
     
What if your child wouldn’t be eligible for that fancy preschool if you didn’t vote?
What if your boss would be less inclined to give you a raise if you didn’t vote?
What if people didn’t shop at your store if you didn’t vote?
What if you couldn’t appear on American Idol if you didn’t vote?
What if people snubbed you at barbecues or dinner parties if you didn’t vote?
     
    Social pressure is a great motivator. We should try it.
     
    DARE TO SPEAK OUT
     
    Besides voting, the other cornerstone of democracy is open discourse and debate. But most politicians are downright squeamish about speaking out and rocking the boat. I hate to think of where we’d be if our Founding Fathers hadn’t slugged it out over what kind of a constitution we were going to have.
    You might argue that the Democrats won the 2006 election because they spoke out against the war. But the Democrats only started speaking out when the polls showed them it was absolutely safe to do so. Where were they in 2005 or in 2004? Where were they before we got into this war? As I recall, there was only one man who took it on the chin and spoke out against the war before it was politically expedient. That man is John Murtha.
    Let me tell you about John Murtha. He’s the Democratic congressman from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and he also happens to be a good friend of mine. In 1966, John volunteered for service in Vietnam. As a captain in the Marine Corps he received the Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts, and the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. He ran for Congress in 1974 and has served there ever since. He’s what you’d call a true patriot. He’s also been a true friend to soldiers, and one of the most credible guys in Congress on matters of war. Every administration, Republican and Democrat, has listened to him on military matters. Until this administration.
    Murtha voted to go to war in Iraq, but as the years passed he got pretty riled up about the disastrous course of the war, and he decided he couldn’t stay silent for another minute. Kids were dying and he decided he had to speak up and demand that we bring the troops home. He was one of the few to do so before it was politically “safe.”
    How did the Bush administration respond? Karl Rove tried to “Swift-boat” Murtha. Swift-boating is the new term used to describe a dirty campaign that tries to paint a war hero as unpatriotic. It originated with another war hero, John Kerry. Running for President against the AWOL National Guardsman in Chief, George Bush, Kerry watched his Swift-boat heroism during the Vietnam War turned into something shameful and cowardly. It was probably the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen in politics—and that’s saying a lot. I was disgusted by it, and I tried to convince Kerry to fight back. “These guys are playing