Character Matters

Former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, said it best in a recent article in the New York Times, “For some voters, character matters. For most, it doesn’t.”  This epitomizes what’s gone wrong with America in the Trump age.  I sincerely hope Rauner is wrong.  A people that doesn’t know character in government counts doesn’t have a future.  It is just too fundamental.  

If we are to use the logic of the Trump defense team during the impeachment, we would believe that if a president openly parroted the words of a hate group congress would have neither have the responsibility or the right to impeach because using slurs and advocating hate crimes is protected speech.  Do we really want to live in a world where the highest office-holder in the land can stand up and say “Kill all the [insert slur] and the declare to the electorate that impeachment can’t continue because of freedom of speech.  

I am all for freedom of expression.  Hate groups like the ones that attacked the capitol have a place in any society; they are a test of democracy.  But, that doesn’t mean their ideas belong in the presidency.  Yes, being blatantly racist is someone’s right;  but it is not acceptable from office holders.  If we were to take this logic to its inevitable conclusion, efforts during the civil rights era to ensure that individuals with blatant racist ideologies do not sit in seats of power would be for nothing.

Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing, but it doesn’t mean that people in power shouldn’t be held to a higher standard.  There are many people in America that have free speech rights, rights that need to be respected, but need to not be president, or in any elected position.  How far are we from a situation where an elected leader simply parrots the words of racist hate groups for political gain?  Are Americans willing to again live in a time when it could not be taken for granted that people in power are not sympathetic to racist ideologies?  America can and should demand more.  This nation has come too far to backtrack because of one man.  If Donald Trump is allowed to rewrite the rules of what kind of conduct and ideology is acceptable in American government, all of us will be taken back to a time when racism didn’t matter, and I believe that this is not the direction that America wants to go.  The gains of my father’s generation could be undone, and America could once again be a nation where blatant bigotry is acceptable in the halls of congress and in the white house.