This is how democracy dies. This is how an autocratic, totalitarian government is born.
When armed insurrectionists disrupt the peaceful transfer of democratic power by breaking into the seat of government.
When the President employs seditious rhetoric again and again and again and calls these insurrectionists “special.”
When millions of Americans have chosen not to respect the democratic process because they would rather believe outlandish lies that have been disproven time and time again instead of accept that they lost.Read more...
100 years ago, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the War to End All Wars ended in an armistice. But the terms that came out of the Treaty of Versailles months later were not an end at all. They were a beginning. When punitive measures, humiliation, and isolation are the only party favors doled out, you don’t end wars, you simply sow the seeds for new ones.
There was no one who thought Germany shouldn’t be punished for their malfeasance and aggression. There was no one who thought that inclusion – not exclusion- was the way to build a new world order.Read more...
All politics is local, my dad was fond of saying. I’ve always subscribed to that theory in a metaphorical way.
Yes, change is wrought from inside great marbled halls. But my friends it is not born there.
It is not dreamed up on the spot by a well-meaning legislator who has a cartoon light bulb suddenly appear over his head in the midst of routine parliamentary procedure.
No. Change is born in the mind of a 4 year old, unencumbered by what he has been taught to believe, to make fun of, to be afraid of.
Change is born in the heart of my 8 year old boy, who uses his words, not his fists, to stand up to the kids who made fun of him for playing a woman in a play.
Change is born of quiet conversations and difficult questions in our houses. In the line at the grocery store. In libraries. In places of worship.
It bubbles up, slowly, and pricks at our skin. It seeps onto the pages of newspapers (not electronic ones, but real ones that leave your fingers smudged with ink). It spreads into other homes.
All change starts with an uncomfortable feeling in our hearts and ends when our heads have finally caught up.
That’s about as local as it gets.
So, sure, march or protest or cheer or whatever it is you want to do. Do it to make yourself feel better, feel useful. But if you really want to change the world, your best bet isn’t focusing on a 50 year old voting on a roll call.
It’s a kid.
Find a kid. Find one who needs to be found. Change their perception. Read them books and give them the gift of language. Show them how to research their opinion instead of parroting what they hear. Teach them that we learn more when we listen to viewpoints that are different with our own. Make them feel what love is.
Shape the mind of a child and then you will really change the future.
#lovehard
#changetheworld
Of all the places I have seen in my life, I have never been so physically and emotionally rocked to my core as I was on the beaches of Normandy. At Coleville-sur-mer, at Pointe du Hoc, at Omaha Beach.
It is impossible to grasp the magnitude of what these men – these boys really – faced when they came out of the waves 70 years ago, unless you see it in person. The photgraphs do not do justice to the sheer length and breadth of Omaha beach.
On a clear, beautiful day it is enough to make you dizzy. Now imagine that the water was soaked in blood, the air was yellow and gray with smoke from explosions and gunfire. Imagine that the boat reeked of vomit and that the men sitting in front of you were killed before they could even make it into the water. Imagine that the beach was longer than 3 football fields and rimmed with cliffs 150 feet high.
Photograph courtesy of the National World War II Museum
It took over three years to plan Operation Overlord. Think about that for a minute. Three years. But then think about what was involved: a cross-channel assault on an enemy who knew we were coming, who had time to fortify the high cliffs with embattlements; the logistics involved in transporting 200,000 men, 6,000 ships, and 1,200 planes – without detection; the need to create vehicles that could float to shore and then instantly be able to navigate across sand; the fact that everything depended on the perfect alignment of tides, winds, a cloudless sky, and a full moon; the absolute necessity to keep every part of the mission a secret, even from the soldiers themselves.
I imagine that in today’s world, no one would have the patience to wait three years for such a feat, much less the ability to keep it a secret. No doubt today, an Edward Snowden would have published the plans on the internet, wearing the righteously indignant cloak of “freedom of information.”
But not only did the world patiently wait, they volunteered. In droves. They lied about their age, their health, and their experience. They got off those boats, waded into the water, and crawled onto those beaches toward certain peril because they knew, perhaps better than anyone in history, that it wasn’t just the fate of the war that hinged on their utter selflessness.
It was the fate of humanity.
Liberty is a word that is tossed around so much today by all sides of the political spectrum that it has almost lost its gravitas. But these men – Roosevelt, Churchill, the generals, the paratroopers who landed in France the night before, the enlisted 16 year olds who never made it out of the surf, the Rangers who scaled the cliffs and climbed over the bodies of their compatriots as German rifle fire rained down on them – every one of these men understood that they alone were the last bulwark against tyranny.
Their undertaking, still unparalleled in history, was borne out of their unshakeable faith that liberty and democracy – for people they didn’t know – were worth dying for.
And this is what makes America what it is. We do not lay claim to liberty as exclusively ours. We do not hoard it. Instead, we believe as a nation that it is our sacred duty to live and die so that liberty may live in others.
So every time you hear someone bemoan the sad state of America, every time some pundit catalogues our failings, every time cynicism starts to creep in, take a minute to think about the boys of Pointe du Hoc, and every other man or woman who fought for the liberty of all humanity – not just that which is confined to our borders.
That is why, 72 years later, we need to celebrate this day and remember that the beliefs that unite us are far greater than the disagreements that divide us.
#LoveHard
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