To the Editor:

As we come closer to mid-term election day 2026 I feel I would be negligent if I did not encourage every citizen to stand up and take a vote.

Too often we feel the down ballots in our home town are of little value in the big picture. I disagree. We always face important challenges in our government but I must say in all my years of living and voting I have never seen such a need for We the People to take our voting power and use it for good.

Never have I been so frightened by many of my country's leaders and the direction of our government as it moves away from our allies. Never have I felt the connection so keenly between local and state elections and the importance of their influence on America overall.

I’ve decided to go back in time, before we became the angry, divided and possibly failing nation that we are today. Please read them, think about them, look them up and let them inform your choices for who shall get the right to lead us into the future in St. Lawrence County and beyond.

The following quotes are all taken from speeches by Dwight D. Eisenhower.

“Our American heritage is threatened as much by our own indifference as it is by the most unscrupulous office seeker or by the most powerful foreign threat. The future of this Republic is in the hands of the American voter.” – Speech to the New York Herald Tribune Forum, New York, NY, 10/25/1949

“The peace we seek and need means much more than mere absence of war. It means the acceptance of law, and the fostering of justice, in all the world.” Radio and Television Report to the American People on the Developments in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, 10/31/1956

“We cannot safely confine government programs to our own domestic progress and our own military power. We could be the wealthiest and the most mighty nation and still lose the battle of the world if we do not help our world neighbors protect their freedom and advance their social and economic progress. It is not the goal of the American people that the United States should be the richest nation in the graveyard of history.” Special Message to the Congress on the Mutual Security Program, 3/13/59

“I believe that the United States as a government, if it is going to be true to its own founding documents, does have the job of working toward that time when there is no discrimination made on such inconsequential reasons as race, color, or religion.” The President’s News Conference of 5/13/59

“War is mankind’s most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.” Graduation Exercises at the United States Military Academy. 6/3/47

Patricia Lennox
Potsdam