7th Cardinal Virtue Alert or Go Vote Young Man!

When the 7th Preceptor explains the virtue of patriotism, he speaks about the value of good citizenship and how every day we can be good patriots.Brothers, November 5th 2019 is a great day to be a good citizen! 

Today across the Great State of New York polls are open from 6AM to 9PM to allow voters to cast their ballots.  Many of these elections are for offices at the municipal and county level which have a huge impact on your daily lives while others are for the judiciary which has long lasting impacts on our lives.

If you are not registered to vote and you otherwise meet the qualifications to vote, please take the time today to register to vote. You can find the directions here:  https://www.elections.ny.gov/VotingRegister.html If you are too young to legally vote, take some time today to ask an older person why they voted and why voting is important to them.  Please do not ask them who they voted for or support, that is impolite. As a reminder: there is no place in DeMolay for partisan politics. 

For all of us, take time today to read the 7th Cardinal Virtue and think about how it speaks to you and how you can live it. If you're an active DeMolay and you don't have a printed version of the ritual, let us know. We'll get you one.

I want to share three other ideas with you briefly:

1. DeMolay prepares you for good citizenship by allowing you to vote:  Political Scientists have shown that the more often you do something the more small d democratic you become. For many young people the only time they vote is in the yearly school elections. In DeMolay we vote on something every month, be it spending money, ordering pizzas, or doing a social event. Each time you vote in your chapter you are building up what is termed as "social capital." So yes, today you are voting between ordering pepperoni on your pizza or pineapple, but in a few short years you will be voting on who occupies the governor's mansion in our majestic Capital of Albany.

2. September 1971 was history setting for DeMolay!

In September 1971, Active DeMolays were able to vote in public elections for the first time in history. For over half of DeMolay's history DeMolays were too young to vote. On July 1, 1971 when North Carolina ratified the 26th Amendment 18 year olds could now vote: "The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age."  As a point of pride,  the Speaker of the House at the time was Senior DeMolay Carl Albert from Oklahoma.  Though the next time you see brothers from Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, or Utah ask them why their state never ratified the amendment. 

3. The DeMolay Ritual has Changed! You have probably heard "The DeMolay Ritual is the same as it has been since 1919." That's not accurate there have been a number of changes through the years. One of them relates to how we talk about patriotism. We used to say of the blessings that we *will* enjoy, it was modified to its current version to speak of the blessing which we *now* enjoy. Think about all of the great blessings we enjoy living in the United States and our Great State of New York. Excelsior!