I am taking a chance but I feel I must.  I will remind people that to believe in and fight for the Constitution, then one must respect all of the amendments.  This would include, first and foremost, the First Amendment.  Those who know me, know that I am a careful person who tends to avoid confrontation in favor of considering all of the perspectives of a situation.  With that as my backdrop, I am exercising my First Amendment right and I am about to talk about the Time Magazine release of this week.

It did not go unnoticed that Time magazine, in their effort to be politically correct, has changed Man of the Year to Person of the Year.  This fact needs to be considered.  I am pleased that they realized that the culture of today needs to respect that the nominee cannot be only a man.  That said, it amazed me that in the process of being politically correct they could nominate someone so politically incorrect.

Before I go farther, I best give you my view of politically correct.  Many people bristle at the term in that it says they have to be so cautious about what they say.  I will be the first to admit that I am not always so careful about what I say, but I am still politically correct in my beliefs.  All people matter.  Equality is not a privilege reserved for the wealthy.  And respect belongs to all humans.

As the father of two daughters and I hope a champion for fair and equal treatment of all human beings, I could not bring myself to vote for a person who so poorly represented both ideals.  The language, the gestures, the support of misinformation, the policies and the lack of civility, left me no choice but to vote for anyone else.  I have always viewed the presidency as our representation as a culture.  I have a difficult time seeing us represented in this light.

None the less, I understand the choice.  Time’s criteria is a person who has influenced and become a national figure.  They neither endorse that person’s beliefs or judge them.  They search for a person who has become that person of interest.  Donald Trump certainly fits that criteria.

No matter how I feel about Mr. Trump as our president elect or for that matter how any of my readers feel, the die has been cast.  He has in fact been elected to the position.  I can only say what I would have said if my candidate now stood in that position, like it or not, it is what it is.  I ask only this, no matter who you voted for, the winner or the loser, own your vote.  If you voted for him, you must now accept his policies.  If you voted against him, you must still respect the office, for that is what our country, our democracy and our belief system is about.  That said, I am not advising that you give up your ideals and certainly not that you lose your ethics.  Continue to fight for your beliefs and those ideals.  We are after all a democracy and nothing we do is decided by a lone individual but rather by the collective will of the populace.  We elect a Senate and a House of Representatives, we entrust them with the decision to put respected jurists on our Supreme Court and we ask them to remember that they represent all citizens not just those who pay to get them elected.  Exercise your First Amendment right to voice your opinion, to demonstrate peacefully your views and to vote your conscience.

I voted my conscience.  I will respect the will of the electorate and the office he was elected to, but I will continue to follow my ethics.  He earned the influential person of the year consideration, but not my vote for politically correct.