Today is my birthday, and I should be posting something light and positive. Certainly the past year of my life has brought me a lot of personal joy and satisfaction. I am grateful to be alive and reasonably healthy. I am grateful for every member of my family, and for my friends.
But I’ve always been a fairly serious person, with an eye turned upon the larger context within which we all live. So the reflections that follow are dark, because I believe our context is darkening quickly.
One of the more troubling ads from last year's presidential campaign featured an American immigrant praising the wonders of our nation and its freedoms. He had obviously been here a long time. Toward the end, as he was summing up his feelings, he called the Second Amendment to our Constitution the basis of these freedoms.
I was stunned. Guns, in the hands of citizens (even a citizens’ militia), are the foundation of freedom in our democracy?
A gun is a weapon. It is an instrument of bodily injury and death. I assume even the most ardent gun enthusiast fears a loaded gun aimed at his or her heart.
The basis of our liberty is guns, and the fear and death they bring with them?
I was raised with the conviction that the basis of our liberty is the rule of law...that the framers of our Declaration of Independence and the authors of our Constitution struggled mightily to replace the power of kings and princes with the greater power of words. Not just any words, but words carefully constructed and mutually agreed upon to represent their best attempt to provide a basis for a fair, just, secure, and peaceable society. It was to be a society in which all could participate equally as common citizens, in which no one was above anyone else by virtue of birth or station in life, and in which every man, woman, and child and her or his dreams and hopes were respected. The founders’ words did not guarantee anyone's success, but they did attempt to guarantee everyone’s right to have a shot at success.
Of course, our founders tended to define "everyone" shamefully narrowly. “White, male, landowners” was one way it was put. It was not the best or most generous way to define “everyone.” Enlightened legislators and passionate agitators and a bloody Civil War determined it was also not the final way to define “everyone.” We have traveled a long, long path. Mostly by law, though sometimes with the prompting of guns. But in the end law prevailed. We remain a constitutional republic, under the rule of law, not of individuals. We are still on the path.
Many are wary about where this path has taken us in the last 40 or 50 years. Perhaps you are. “Wariness” is caution about a thing or a situation, perhaps a lesser form of fear. I understand that many Americans who see things differently than I do are wary, fearful even. Socialist Bernie Sanders strikes fear in many hearts, as does "crooked" Hillary. The threats, real or overblown, of gun confiscation, of no choice of doctors, of jobs that don't pay well when they are available at all, of children’s education being limited to public schools, of a truly multi-cultural and multi-racial and multi-religious America…these and many other fears coalesced to put Donald Trump in the White House. I can understand that many people are wary about these and other things.
This is my invitation: tell me more about what you are afraid of, and I will try to understand you better. If you will allow me, I will even share my point of view with you. I disrespect no person because of their opinion and outlook.
But this is what I fear barely three weeks into Donald Trump's presidency and the Republican party's dominance across the nation. Will you give me a moment to hear me?
I fear the collapse of the rule of law, and descent into a sort of vigilantism that ruled in "the old West." I fear the demise of respect for true learning and education, with broadside the attacks on science and scientific method and public education. I fear the shredding of a truly free press, starting at the top with a President more concerned with what is said about him than with what he actually says. I abhor the denigration of women as well as of minorities of all sorts, who are where they are today because of hard-fought battles to secure their rightful place in American society. I am wary of the demeaning of the judiciary and of judges by our President when they dare to interpret the law as they see it. I disdain walls built to keep people apart because of their skin color, economic status, religion, or national origin. I weep over the blatant rape of our natural world in the quest for more wealth for a few.
I am terrified that in our fear we have forgotten that in the end, we all have to live together, as “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
But more than any of those, and perhaps underlying them all, I fear the carelessness, the callousness, the seemingly-calculated clumsiness of our current crop of political leaders and institutions, which intentionally or not make mockery of government "of, by, and for the people." Yes, I fear some Democrats almost as much as I fear most Republicans. But on the whole I feel as if our nation is victim of a terror attack from within, from this President and his appointees and this Congress, and the terror I feel is real. It is a terror far beyond wariness, even beyond mere fear.
If I owned a gun, perhaps, I would feel better. But probably not. I feel people who share my fears are faced with a powerful opposition that has been led to believe that the basis of our freedoms is guns in the hands of as many as possible. And that opposition holds those guns. That is not freedom, certainly not for me. It's anarchy. And anarchy is not pretty, no matter how rosily it is idealized by some.
Today I turn 74 years old. I claim that's old enough to have some perspective on American history. This is it: I have never been more afraid for the land of my birth, for the land I love, for the United States of America, than I am today. Give me reason to feel otherwise, if you can. Give me reason to be confident of our future as a free people.
I’m serious about this.
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