FROM THE EDITOR
PUNGO — The Independent News does not endorse candidates for office, but it urges citizens to engage in the great work of building better paths for our nation, commonwealth and communities on Tuesday, Nov. 8.
Regardless of your choices, let your vote count.
We value our nation for what it has been, for good and ill, and we seek what it should be.
Our paths are improved through wise leadership, rigorous debate, judicious compromise and public officers who engage citizens openly but have the strength to make unpopular decisions.
This is the great design of our United States, citizens and communities gathered together by circumstance to realize the promise of mutual benefit and freedom for all people without bending toward the marginalization of some people for petty advancement.
We value our commonwealth for its place in our nation’s traditions and its ability to exemplify American life.
We celebrate its diversity, its peoples and places, from rural fields to vibrant cities, from the plentiful coast and our vital waterways to the mountains and valleys of the west, and, of course, for our people and their histories.
In loving life, we reject politics of fear.
To deny the beauty and potential of any person is to abuse humanity itself. And, on the days when we do not let our better angels walk beside us, we look for them ahead of us. We build Virginia’s path only toward that point.
We value our counties and cities because this is where so much of the important work of public life takes place.
So, too, do we value those who choose to do the work we will not. We call upon our neighbors who lead us now to do well by us by rising above whim to ensure the eternal prosperity found only in mutual liberty.
And we call to our future leaders.
When we wonder whether there is any value in a vote, we see them on the horizon. Our vote can be an unbreakable inheritance.
It is how we strengthen the littlest lanes we are building, places no less valuable than the vast avenue of America itself. This is the beating heart of protecting tomorrow’s citizenship.
We build the best paths for them.
© 2016 Pungo Publishing Co., LLC