A Slow Surrender

On this Memorial Day weekend, I want to reflect on the posture of our current leadership. Their method is to instill fear, and reinforce it whenever they are challenged on a questionable policy. They say we are under threat, and therefore must allow the administration to take extraordinary action, even if it leads to erosion of our liberties.

We have even recently heard a White House spokesperson say, out loud, Congress must send bills to the President that he will sign. Anyone who knows even some history will hear the faint echo of tyranny in that statement.

And so, on a day in which we honor those who served in our armed forces, we need to reflect on the current condition of our ship of state. I wonder if my father, who fought in a war that killed 55 million people, would say about our current leadership, and the actions they have taken against our basic principles. He might ask a few questions: If a nation threatened us with invastion or harm if we did not give up our liberties, what would we say? Surely we would say no and resist with all our might. When the Soviet Union aimed 15,000 nukes at us, did we cower and shake? No, we stood proud. Then why do a few criminals who might do us some small amount of damage make our leaders act with such disregard for our principles? Their hysteria is not a good leadership quality, to say the least.

Some will say this is different because we were attacked. Yes, and after we were attacked by Japan (an expansive nation with a powerful fleet) at Pearl Harbor FDR ordered Japanese Americans interned - an action that we later regarded as shameful. Why not look to our British cousins who maintained a steely resolve during the terrible bombing of London by the Nazis, certain that invasion was near at hand. Surely, we are made of the same stuff.

Terrorists can never hope to destroy us with military force. So, if our leaders act to compromise our basic principles, those that are at the essential core of what our nation is, they have failed us and those who we honor today. And, if he were here, my father might ask why would our leaders give up so easily that which his generation fought so valiantly to preserve? I am certain he would be heartbroken.

Let us honor their memory by upholding our principles, the America that was great even before it was a great military power. This appeal to fear, and the undermining our essential character as a nation, is a shameful form of slow surrender.