During the course of a public discussion this week, I was posed a question about what we should expect from the Presidential Debate this coming Monday. My response adhered to my belief that this is Secretary Clinton’s race to lose. The difference, I explained, will come down to how she handles the gravitational negativism – the riptide of Trump’s rhetoric.
Does she respond with humor, grace, quiet dignity and strength? Or does she get swept up into the tide of incessant negativism, division and defeatism – that America is no longer great?
With the bombings in New York this past weekend, we can expect Mr. Trump to question the Obama administration’s commitment to national security. The bomber had apparently traveled to Pakistan and returned to the United States as a radicalized Muslim militant. This and other “failures” to thwart domestic terrorism will give Mr. Trump ample opportunity to damn the Obama/Clinton administration’s commitment to securing the homeland from all sorts of immigrants whom he scapegoats for our country’s challenges.
How to handle and parry the attack will make all the difference in how the Clinton campaign either propels itself towards an electoral landslide or trudges towards a tightly contested contest that will continue to divide our country. The stakes are that high.
I woke up around 2am this morning and the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) song, “Find the Cost of Freedom,” was playing in my head:
Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground
Mother earth will swallow you, lay your body down
Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground
Mother earth will swallow you, lay your body down
(Find the cost of freedom buried in the ground)
The song was recorded on the B-side of the CSNY song OHIO, commemorating the shooting deaths of Kent State Students protesting the Vietnam war by the Ohio National Guard in May of 1970.
Inarguably, our country has struggled mightily since the attacks of 9/11 on how to respond to the threat of radical Islamic terrorism. It has infected our discussion about immigration, race and shaped our lives about what it means to live in a free society.
Trump’s response of closing the border, building a wall and unilaterally trusting him to make us safe is antithetical to my entire understanding of American history and what has made our country great. Our strength comes from the ability to absorb and grow with other cultures; to assimilate them under the banner of freedom articulated in our own Declaration of Independence and sanctified by the blood of those who have lost their lives in the defense of our freedom.
My Irish ancestors were brutally discriminated against in the great migration following the Great Famine in the 1840’s. Yet, those Irishmen found a common bond with our American brothers under the flag which defended the Union during the Civil War. Many an Irishman of that era could relate to the bondage of slavery in America, which they felt in their own homeland under tyrannical British rule. They fought by the tens of thousands and died under that flag, so others may eventually live free.
Indeed, understood correctly, “the cost of freedom is buried in the ground,” whether that be the Irish immigrants of the mid-19th century or the victims of 9/11 who lost their lives to a thriving culture of hatred spread by state sponsored Wahhabism brought to us by certain powers in the Middle East. When President Bush decided to invade Iraq, we stepped on the mountain of hatred and strife that was certainly headed our way – it simply sped up the process.
And so here we are today with a choice:
Do we embrace the cost of freedom in an open society, or do we begin to shrink and close ourselves off from the role our country has played as a light to the rest of the world?
For my part, I look to the words of our Founding Fathers: “They that can give up essential liberty, to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety,” said Benjamin Franklin. James Madison, another one of the founders present at the creation, said, “No Nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
So we must, as a nation, find our way through this conflict by adopting the lessons of our brave forefathers and not to succumb to the tidal pool of fear that dominates Mr. Trump’s rhetoric.
We are the greatest country Earth has ever seen because we have always ultimately held true to the ideas expressed in our own Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
As Mr. Trump broadcasts his siren sound of fear on Monday night, let us remember two things;
- Police rounded up the latest bomber within 24 hours because of the security cameras installed throughout New York after 9/11. The system worked. Not perfectly, but it worked.
- “Find the cost of Freedom buried in the ground. Mother earth will swallow you, lay your body down.”
Donald Trump has never met a cause greater than himself – he has never laid his body down for anyone. He has questioned the patriotism of Arizona’s senior Senator and attacked the patriotism of a Muslim family whose son had bravely sacrificed his life fighting for the United States.
Mr. Trump exhales division and inhales righteousness. He is not fit to be President. For that matter, I am not sure Mrs. Clinton is either, but I am praying that she can respond in a manner that brings the country closer together around the ideals our nation was founded upon rather than espouse the rhetoric of divisiveness she drank from last week.
As of today, my first vote in November will be for John McCain, a true patriot who like his idol Teddy Roosevelt has certainly been a man in the arena and understands the costs of freedom.
God help us.