By Christine Todd Whitman
August 9, 2018
With a president who would be king surrounded by acolytes who’ll like nothing better and a people who are angry and frustrated with a government that seems to have forgotten them, we see the ingredients that could result in something no one really wants: losing our republican form of government.
Abraham Lincoln said it best: “American will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we have destroyed ourselves.”
We truly are at a pivotal point in our history. The very foundations of our freedoms are being challenged as few times before and we need to care. Benjamin Franklin warned that the founding fathers had given us a democracy, “if we could keep it” making it very clear that it is up to us. We can’t allow ourselves to condone behavior that we wouldn’t tolerate in our children and look the other way when leaders encourage hate and bigotry on any side. We would do well to remember the words of Martin Niemoller who was interned in a Nazi concentration camp in WWII;
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the Trade Unionist, and I did not speak out-
Because I was not a Trade Unionist
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak for me.
We need to speak out.