What ever happened to the home of the brave? The air of this election year is so filled with appeals to fear that you’d think all Americans were timid children, frightened of the future.
Donald Trump dominates the debate with his dire warnings about China, Iran, Mexico, Muslims, and Megyn Kelly. Much of the media, along with many closed minds in both political parties, volleys back with scary warnings about Trump.
Some Republicans, terrified he will be their nominee, even threaten to split the GOP and hand the White House to Hillary Clinton by way of a #NeverTrump walkout or convention coup. (It has a hashtag, you see. It’s obviously the next big thing.)
My choice for president isn’t Trump either; it’s Ted Cruz. But my attitude toward The Donald’s growing ranks of supporters isn’t to walk out. I’ll stay and hash it out with them inside the party we’ve shared since the great days of Reagan and, before him, Lincoln.
To the hotheads in both camps who fulminate about bolting if Trump does win the GOP nomination — or if he doesn’t — I say, “Come on, Chicken Little, what are you afraid of?” United we can win and thrive. Divided we’ll surely fall. Stay the course, amigos.
A lot of us are so confident of the U.S. as the freest, richest, strongest nation on Earth, and of the Constitution as an operating system for liberty, and of the Republican Party as America’s mighty coalition of the right that we’ll stand unified and unafraid with any nominee in 2016. Any.
Trump for president? Fine. Cruz for president? Better still. Kasich for president? OK, too. Some dark-horse compromise nominee from a deadlocked convention? So be it; saddle up and ride. No fleeing the battlefield for us. We’ve got our own hashtag (the next next big thing): #NeverFear.
For 240 years, ever since declaring our independence from the most fearsome empire on the globe with “a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence,” the American way has been the fearless way, the way of undaunted courage.
Submit to benign paternalism and be governed by your betters, said the Europeans in those days. They’re still saying it today, along with the elitist left in this country.
#NeverFear the will and wisdom of a free people governing themselves, reply the right-minded Americans.
Narrow your horizons and fall in step for the sharing of scarcity, said the Malthusians and the Marxists as modernity came on. Bernie Sanders and Clinton, scripted by Harvard and Greenpeace, sing the same sad dirge even now.
#NeverFear the abundance of markets and the rising tide that lifts all boats, answer the enterprising Americans.
Grovel to the dispossessed, own up to why they hate us, atone for your national sins and repent in socialist sackcloth, says the Obama-Clinton foreign policy of the past eight years, reprised just the other day in Havana as Brussels burned.
#NeverFear the generosity of U.S. world leadership and the self-correcting honesty of our open society, roars the silent majority in every corner of the land — now silent no more in a year of full-throated patriotism that the Trump phenomenon has only begun to tap.
Remember patriotism? As a Republican legislator after 9/11, I pushed for the schools to challenge tomorrow’s citizens with that very question. It predictably outraged the Democrats and disappointingly divided my own party. Such is the timid relativism and cowardly self-doubt of our times.
If you’ve had enough, join us in vowing #NeverFear. It’s the best battle cry a newly inclusive and optimistic coalition of the center-right, led by the GOP’s chosen nominee this July, can give for a victory of freedom this November and the dawn of a brighter day next January.
John Andrews (andrewsjk@aol.com) is a former president of the Colorado Senate, founder of the Western Conservative Summit, and author of “Backbone Colorado USA.”
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