Tens of millions of Americans in the next election will not vote, which I think is pathetic. You hear people complain about our image around the world. Nothing makes us look worse than not voting. Democracy is always under threat. The threat that it’s under right now is complacency.
In Poland, they remember struggling to win their freedom. I know that Ronald Reagan single-handedly brought down communism with folksy wisdom, but in the 1980’s in Poland there was something called the Solidarity movement. It started off in the shipyards of Gdansk as a trade union for the Polish shipbuilders. In 1989, there was a nationwide referendum in Poland whether they were going to stay with the Soviet communist party or go for democracy, and the Polish government was instructed by the Kremlin to break the heads of anyone supporting an opposition party like Solidarity. People were scared. They didn’t know what to do.
The night before the vote, Solidarity plastered Warsaw and Gdansk, the whole town, with a poster. The poster was such a powerful image that it inspired the nation:
It says "Solidarity" in Polish, in red in the background. That is Gary Cooper in High Noon. That’s what they used. Instead of a gun, he’s holding a ballot paper. The best way these Polish workers knew how to symbolize the struggle against communism was a single American armed with a ballot. You remember that the next time someone tells you voting is a waste of time.
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