Disunited Nation
There are many things that divide Americans today. Issues like race, religion, gender identity (or even the concept of gender identity), politics. America today seems more about the divide than about the union. But there is one “notion” that we all hold dear: Freedom.
No matter what side of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle we stand on (and some of us over time shifted from one towards the other), we can all rejoice at the freedom of surviving hostages, taken on that desperate day of October 7th. Edan Alexander, a twenty-one year old Israeli/American was released this week, after eighteen months of captivity. But fifty-eight hostages remain unaccounted for. As many as twenty of them are believed to be still alive. The joy in his face, and the emotions of his family; reminds us all that there are ties that bind us together, regardless of our politics: family, life, hope, and just as important, freedom. It’s something that Americans often take for granted.
Greatest Generation
It seems that certain generations in our history are called to defend freedom, and other generations get a “pass”. My parents understood this on a fundamental level. They faced the stark threat of Nazism, Mom as bombs literally fell on her home in England. She lost many friends, even her fiancé, to the battle against Hitler. And she answered the call of her country to serve in the Special Operations Executive, the clandestine service of Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
And my Dad answered the call of his Cincinnati Draft Board. He served in the US Army that went to Europe to save Democracy. It was a simple as that. At a young age, barely older than Edan, they placed their lives on the line for freedom. (And they met, fell in love, married and survived the World War).
Bully
Our Freedom is at risk today here in America. There’s no other way to put it. Our freedom to speak out against the government is being challenged. When the Mayor of New Jersey’s largest city spoke out against a private prison in his jurisdiction, the Federal Government placed him in custody. A US Congressman standing beside him protested the arrest. She is now charged with the Federal crime of obstruction. A judge directed a defendant to take a back entrance to the Court. She too is charged with a Federal crime.
When Federal employees speak out to defend the laws that created their positions and agencies, illegally violated by the Executive Branch, they are fired. When Wal-Mart and Amazon state the plain fact that their prices will go up due to the President’s tariffs, they are attacked and threatened. And when foreign students in our Nation demand accountability for American actions, they are swept up and removed. The “Bully Pulpit” of Teddy Roosevelt, has become just the “bully”.
Three Letter Secrets
And most of all, there are people, legally resident, living in fear in our country. They are afraid of the “secret police”, abducting folks on the street or at their workplaces, placing them in custody without the “common” rights of counsel and judicial review. Many are taken to jurisdictions far from their homes and alien to their backgrounds. And some of those residents find themselves sent to the worst Hell holes in our world.
Our Nation, the United States of America, is spending millions of our dollars to fly to these “specially selected” prisons in El Salvador and other foreign nations, the “Devil’s Islands” of our current era. This isn’t the infamous Gestapo, or the Savak, or the KGB: it’s the United States Federal Police tasked with immigration enforcement: ICE, INS, and HSI.
Our Duty
What is our present generation required to do? We can choose to follow the path of meekness, turning a blind eye to the depravations of our government. We can justify it: “Well, they aren’t really Americans, they don’t really have ‘rights’, they haven’t ‘earned’ the right to be here”. But it’s all just excuses to avoid the obvious. Freedom is hard, it has to be won, and defended, and won again. It is beyond clear that our Freedoms are threatened by our own government. Like my parent’s generation, we all really recognize this on a fundamental level, excuses or not.
So we must stand, as my parents did, and as other generations stood at risk to defend the ideals that make the United States a different kind of Nation. We must speak out, we must march and protest, and yes, perhaps some of us will go to trial or jail along with the Mayor and the Congressman. Because if we don’t, our generation will have failed the ultimate test. We will have failed to defend our Nation and our Freedom.
And that’s something we should ALL be united about.
