OPINION:
With all the news of the past week, the topics for commentary are endless.
You’ve already seen the list.
Democrats refused to stand to applaud a widow whose husband was killed by Muslim terrorists.
Democrats refused to stand for a young girl yearning for a better education at a better school.
Democrats refused to stand for historic lows in black and Hispanic unemployment.
Democrats refused to stand for a booming economy, for religious freedom, for the objective identity of women and for the ontological dignity of our youngest children.
Democrats refused to stand for American sovereignty. They refused to stand for American success.
Last week the “party of the people” sat and sat and sat as our president praised our country and defended its people. They pouted. They smirked. They groused. Like Tolkien’s Gollum, they growled and grimaced as they desperately grasped at their lost ring and their lost power.
Who could deny their disturbing childishness? Who could possibly miss the obvious? These demagogues, who clearly want balkanization rather than unity, were so focused on government largesse that they could not celebrate individual success. This is a political party that is petty, juvenile, vindictive, vulgar and petulant. Who could miss the sardonic smile of all these “ladies in white” along their subservient suitors becoming the very thing they claim to despise.
“Trump is rude and crude,” they shouted. “He is mean spirited. He’s divisive. He is pitting one group against another. He is tearing our country apart!”
And there they sat on their hands, oblivious to their own image in the mirror. Clueless of the lesson of the pot calling the kettle black. Frozen in arrogance and anger, they doubled down in projecting on all others the very sins of which they are most guilty.
Forgetting the very definition of irony, they have become poor imitations of the very man whose behavior they claim to despise. Apoplectic in condemning Mr. Trump for his acerbic tweets, his name-calling and his childish tit-for-tats, they engage in their own flourish of juvenile insults and rude one-upmanship. It’s as if they are utterly clueless to the sound of the moral branch upon which their sitting, creaking a cracking as they frantically saw away. In their disdain for Mr. Trump, they prove to be no better than him. In fact, they prove to be worse by virtue of their self-righteous and self-refuting hypocrisy. They condemn the orange man while painting themselves orange. As they shout that they hate hateful people, they appeared to be deaf to the echoes of their own hate.
Oh, I can just hear their retort. “But you’re justifying bad behavior by simply accusing us of bad behavior. You’re not offering a solution. You’re only placing blame.”
Fair enough. Point well taken. You want a solution? Here it is.
Stop yelling about the speck in Mr. Trump’s eye when you have a log in your own. Stop looking out the window and, instead, take a long look in the mirror. You might want to consider confessing your own sins before you condemn our president for his. Do you see those rocks you’re holding? You might want to think about dropping them. The funny thing about stones of self-righteousness is that they have an interesting way of becoming boomerangs as soon as they leave your hand.
And as long as I’m at it, let me offer a bit more advice. Worshiping government rather than God never ends well. Just ask those who lived (and died) at the hands of Robespierre. Call me crazy, but it seems like the lessons of history teach us that we might not want to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Guillotines are not pretty things.
Finally, as to your concerns about Donald Trump’s temperament and tweets, don’t you realize that in the United States we vote for principles and not personalities. Our politics should be about ideas and not ideologues.
In America, we cast our ballot for a U.S. Constitution and not a king. As my mentor, Os Guinness, once told me, “If you want freedom, always vote for the covenant. Never vote for the hierarchy. Covenants always lend themselves to liberty. Hierarchies always result in bondage and control. Always vote for the covenant!”
Abraham Lincoln understood this well. He knew that without our Constitution, there would be no country left worth defending. He knew that in a war, principles matter more than flawed personalities. He knew a boorish, crude and rude general who is relentless in battle is worth an entire army of “nice” men.
It is reported that Lincoln once said of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, “I cannot spare the man. He fights.”
Last week’s State of the Union shined a spotlight on this basic truth. Our nation is at war. The lines of demarcation are stark and clear. There are those who want to Keep America Great and those who are hellbent to Make America Weak Again.
This is a time for soldiers, not politicians.
Thank God for Donald Trump. “We cannot spare the man. He fights.”
• Everett Piper, former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is a columnist for The Washington Times and author of “Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery 2017).
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