The 19th Amendment

I know that AWA was looking for a patriotic song. But the way that he explained it was that he wanted a song, a tune, that spoke of my pride for my country.

I have always been a Dolly fan, and this song is a wonderful explanation as to why. Here she is, singing about the women that stood up and fought back, that refused to back down, the blocked the streets and were loud and had signs and got in people’s faces and wouldn’t take no for an answer, and secured the right to vote for women in America. I think it’s hard for the young women of today to understand that only a hundred years ago, we didn’t have the right to vote. We didn’t have a lot of rights. We couldn’t have credit cards, and I’m pretty sure that some of us still couldn’t on land at the time. And that lack of recognition of our sovereign rights as human beings was held back by people who were afraid of what women might do with their vote.

They should have been afraid. Women have been strong voters. That’s changed in the last few years however, and that’s a problem. It’s time for our young women to stand up, and our young men too, and make sure that the right to vote doesn’t cease to be recognized. People might say it’s never going to go away, but how many rights have trickled away because someone didn’t stand up for them? How many rights of disappeared because someone didn’t use them or educate themselves about them? Too many.

Welcome to America. In America, rights simply are. Some are recognized, because they are so important that it’s necessary for us as a country, as a free Nation, to outline them and clearly State them. They are protected rights, which is not to say that a piece of paper or an amendment created them. The right existed long before any piece of paper was written on. Rights are simply there, they are inherent to The human condition. I am extremely proud to live in a country where people can fight passionately to express their rights and their opinions, and where our rights that are protected are updated as we update our society.