Hello again.
I have not entered a post on these pages since January 13th 2021, shortly after the events of January 6th and a week before the inauguration of President Biden. In the run-up to the election, I posted fifteen articles. The first was entitled “Come Home America”. I pleaded for the need to return together to certain key, core, common values, to find our way back to norms and practices which we share, or should share, to define ourselves as Americans, as citizens of these great United States.
I asserted at that time that we share as key values fairness, the rule of law, and equal justice. We demand the reliability and dependability of our traditions. We demand from our leaders some measure, at least, of truth, honesty, and integrity. At our core, Americans value respect for the dignity of individuals. We tend to admire decency, dignity, and decorum.
I suggested that one of our most cherished values was the impartial and equitable administration of justice. I argued that the progressive appearance of politicization of our justice system by the then-president compromised public trust in what was traditionally among our most respected institutions.
When President Biden was elected, to a chorus of refusals to accept it, by the then administration, I attempted to use a logical systematic process to ask that Americans think clearly and dispassionately through the issue. I titled that article “Our Democracy is at Stake”. That was months before January 6, 2021, a day I could not have imagined ever occurring.
In early November 2020, when Trump fired his Secretary of Defense, I wondered if there was reason to be afraid. I called upon real “patriots” to act like it, to stand for the honor and tradition of our nation. Finally, after the chaos and mayhem of January 6th, but before the transition of the presidency, I responded to the branding of the election fraud caper as “the big lie”, and wondered whether it was ever fair to compare anything to Nazis.
I have written nothing on this blog since. I thought, naively, as it has turned out, that things would go back to normal, and imagined that when 2024 rolled around we would be considered a normal Republican – conservative, pro-business, pro-military, anti-big government but fundamentally American, against President Biden, a generally pro-labor democrat, social safety conscious, pro- negotiation over confrontation and in favor of using the levers of government, as most liberals believe is right, to help those among us most in need.
In other words, I imagined we would return to contests between two persons committed to upholding real American values, in a contest to determine the best way to realize those values and serve this nation.
That is not what has come to pass. In my mind, it could not be clearer that only one side in this contest articulates or embodies anything resembling our core American values.
And so, after three years, and knowing full well that nothing I say will have an influence, I nonetheless feel compelled to say something.
This round, I find myself somewhat informed by a larger body of literature concerning what it means to be an American. A well-respected friend, University of Connecticut President – Emeritus Susan Herbst wrote an excellent book and the inception of our modern broad notion of public opinion and its effects. A Troubled Birth traces the growth in the 30s of the concept of an American consensus opinion. In that outstanding work, she cites several excellent works that look at the development of an American consensus of values, including Wendy Wall’s Inventing the American Way, and Margaret Mead’s And keep Your Powder Dry, among others. I hope, again, to find something common in our heritage to allow me to argue and perhaps convince some that whether you are a progressive or a moderate Democrat, an Independent, or a centrist or conservative Republican, it is still necessary if you wish to aspire to be a true American, that you vote against Trump and Trumpism.
The opinions I express in the coming year will remain my own, but I will attempt to derive some of what I will consider as core American identity from these excellent works, as well as others I can find.
It remains my purpose to argue that returning Donald Trump to the White House would be far in violation of our core key values as Americans. I trust I will be among tens of thousands of voices making that argument, perhaps most notably the still Honorable Liz Cheney, and hopefully, many tens of millions agreeing with it.
I hope that there will be some readership, and some consideration in the coming months as, once again after these several years, I try to invoke more informed analyses to support my contention that, as I stated in that blog title from years ago, it is time for America to Come Home.