[PV Note: The following is a letter to the editor of the Houston Chronicle written by a 17 year-old high school junior. She emailed this as a letter to the Chronicle, which in turn ran it as a guest editorial. No one in her family or school were aware of the article until the paper called and told them they were running it.]

By LAURA CHILDERS

I am not a Republican, and I am not a Democrat. I am a naive 17-year-old girl who has yet to cast her first vote. Maybe looking to the actions of my elders shall help to coach me in the manner that a ballot should be cast. This should be particularly useful in the presidential elections in November, upon which I, along with millions of my fellow young comrades, will have reached the powerful age of 18. So far, I've learned a lot.

It appears that the distinction of party and not of morality is what is supposed to define a politician in American legislatures today; am I correct? Take the recent Democrat walkout from the Texas House of
Representatives. What I gather from this incident is that it does not
necessarily matter to the defending exiles that Texas citizens voted the Republican majority into office for the explicit reason of passing Republican legislation. In fact, I've heard statements from Democrats and their supporters that going against the American public's will is a very patriotic thing to do.

This leads me to believe that the old, apparently outdated, reasons for government institutions no longer stand. The hopes and dreams of Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln for a voice in the government for every American, regardless of position or belief, have
been shattered.

The creation of the democratic experiment of the United States of America was designed to see if it was possible for men to rule themselves. For the first time in modern history, there existed a haven where there were no dictators, no kaisers, no kings and no queens. There were the people -- the voters, the common man. The people were to rule themselves by imposing a type of controlled majority rule in the place of a tiny group of monarchial individuals.

Representatives were to be elected by popular vote with the mission to represent and act upon the beliefs and wishes of their electors. Political parties naturally formed between groups of representatives who symbolized common wishes of their voters. In order to further promote these wishes, political parties unified with one another. The legislation proposed by the parties was made in the interest of the voter and was overturned or affirmed depending upon the will of the majority. Thus, bills were passed by population representatives in an effort to advocate for the bulk of all those represented.

When people impede this delicate process, they encumber the right of every American voter to fair representation. By not allowing a majority rule but forcing a type of minority monarchy, the great voice of the American public has been silenced to a sickly whisper. In the place of a free democracy with freedom for all and dishonesty toward none, a type of legal party regime has been set up, and the rights of American individuals have vanished.

If one party is allowed to manipulate government institutions on any level, state or national, as the group of Democrat representatives in leisure at an Oklahoma resort have, our rights as Americans have been breached. We have been denied the government power granted to us upon the signing of our Constitution.

If this is the way that the tumultuous ship of today's government, the institutions of 2003, is intended to be steered, then this is not the America that I had thought it was, been taught it was, and hoped it was.

If the America I'd dreamed of and prayed for does not, in fact, exist, and Thomas Jefferson's "boisterous sea of liberty" has long since dried to a shadowy pit of political regimes and power-hungry rapists of our Mother Freedom, then I will fight for the hopes of Washington and I will battle for the lessons of Lincoln. If America is to be true to herself, if man still be just, then let our Lady Liberty's voice be heard to mend this crack entrenching on our precious, sacred, irreplaceable bell of liberty -- our vote.

Childers is a junior at Memorial High School.