For a good time, Google the date July 4, 1826.
On that day, fifty years to the hour after the
Great Declaration was signed by freedom's
greatest friends, Jefferson lay dying, Adams
lay dying, thinking of America, speaking of
each other.
I'm not the most religious guy, but shall we
call that coincidence, or Providence? In
some ways I have always considered that
day, and those events, the most important
in this history of our land. Were Jefferson
and Adams speaking to us that day, reminding
us of the legacy that would endure for the
ages? Was God speaking to us that day,
taking two of treedom's timeless heroes
from us, at that exact moment, on that
exact day, reminding us, as their dying
words were about each other, on that July 4,
fifty years after the Declaration, of the most
extraordinary legacy that is now in trust,
in our hands today?
What would they think of our President, who
used the holy grounds of 9-11 to declare
and wage aggressive war pitting one group
of Americans against another, pitting the
executive branch of the American government
against good faith respect for our Bill of Rights, pitting the rule of
law and American honor
against what even our conservative Supreme
Court now holds as illegal detention practices
and a litany of abuses and wrongs that offend
what Jefferson called the decent opinion of
mankind?
What would they think of Democratic leaders?
What would they think of the media? What
would they think events that show carnage in the corners of the world,
with the voices of
aspiration, hope and dreams silenced or
retreating in the face of unspeakable tragedy
and horrors?
At this writing, the blood is flowing again in
the Middle East, so I begin with this thought,
to make the larger point: President Bush should immediately appoint
President Carter
or President Clinton as a special ambassador
on an extraordinary mission, in the name of the
good people of the United States, to seek a
cease fire and give authentic voice to the
five-year-old Israelis and Arabs who deserve
better than a lifetime of maiming and death
and endless anger and hate.
To the cynics: spare me the talk of how it will
not work. We have seen the result of your
way. It may not work, but I've been in this
capital city of America for a long time and
dealt with giants and midgets of all persuasions
and cannot remember any other time, when neither political party dared
to offer a grand
vision that at least tries to appeal to the souls
and spirits of young Israelis, Arabs and
Americans.
Can we agree that military policy without
diplomacy is a one way road to failure,
that diplomacy without military strength
is a one way road to weakness, and that
disastrous military policy with zero diplomacy
is a one way road to hell?
Today there is a war of the worlds, on virtually
every field of endeavor, and contrary to the
partisans, ideologues and profiteers I would
define it this way: it is a war between the
dream builders, the dream crushers, the
dream exploiters, and standing on the side,
as always, the vanity players who's call to
action is "what's in it for me".
The original dream builders were Moses taking
the Ten Commandments and Jesus speaking
the Sermon on the Mount. For we Americans,
the original dream builders were the Jeffersons
and Adams, the abolitionists who stood bravely
against slavery, the Freedom Riders in the
1960's, the Zengers and Upton Sinclairs who
wrote truth about power, the Ted Turners who
challenged conventional wisdom, the Franklin
Roosevelts who told us we have nothing to
fear but fear itself, the Robert Kennedys who
spoke with passion to blacks and white about
justice and the rule of law, the Martin Luther
Kings who stood in front of Lincoln and moved
us with his Dream.
Its not partisan: in my opinion Ronald Reagan
was a dream builder. As someone who worked
at the epicenter of Loyal Opposition during his
Presidency, there is much to object to in his
vision of conservative government, but much
to applaud in his vision of ending the threat
of mass extermination from nuclear war. I
have written about this myself in the National
Review ("Roosevelt, Reagan, Rushmore")
and both Paul Lettow and Richard Reeves
have written brilliant and important books on
this subject.
Agree with me, or not, I remind all of this:
for his greatest achievements of enormous
historical legacy, his breaking the barriers
of old thinking side by side with Mikhail
Gorbachev, a profoundly underestimated
historical figure, Reagan was demonized,
demeaned, and defamed by many of the
most prominent voices of the right at the
moment of his greatest legacy. They used
words like Pearl Harbor 2, appeasement
and surrender to describe Reagan's reaching
out to Gorbachev and have earned the right
to modesty, a word beyond the comprehension
of those who make the greatest blunders but
insist they are always right.
The dream crushers are those who say we
should be afraid, fearful, and timid; those
who believe our neighbors are our enemies;
those who inflame their supporters to acts of
rage and hate; those who fear the truth and
seek to imprison those who report it; those
who promulgate the slander that some among
us are not truly Americans, which is the most un-American slander of
all; some conservatives
who speak of God but have no commitment to
lift the poor among us; some liberals who love
humanity but are not at their best when they
deal with people.
The dream exploiters and vanity players say
the right things, and should know better, and
are just as culpable, or more.
In October 2002 the collective leadership of the Democratic Party were
dream exploiters, marching in lockstep, almost unanimously
with ideologues and extremists, to war in Iraq.
Through 2004 one of the greatest collections of dream exploiters in the
history of politics included the upper strata of the national security
establishment of the Democratic Party,
who pompously called themselves the "poobahs", and were the lineal
descendants
of Robert Strange McNamara.
Sitting at their mahogany tables and planning
their return to power in a presidency that would
never happen, they sold John Kerry on handing away the Presidency by
trimming, hedging and wimping his words on the great war of our age.
The dream exploiters can be found on the
right, hustling for war where young men
and women die, then reaping huge profits
from the sacrifice of others. They can be
found on the left, from those who see the
blogs as another cheap way to raise campaign
money for their consultants, or those who
try to rip off, exploit or cheat some of the
most brilliant voices on the internet with
phony teases of support followed by cheap
exploitations of their work.
Can we agree on this? Those who have
committed crimes of war should be prosecuted
and punished under law? Those who have
been sent to war without armor and helmets
and bandages were called heroes but treated
with contempt and neglect by the same people,
in both parties, who give magnificent speeches
on the 4th of July, but did nothing for four years
to prevent this outrage that persists, too often,
today?
Can we agree that the homeless heroes who fought our wars and suffer the
hardships today should be treated with the honor and passion of a decent
society, not the neglect and harvest of shame from those who let this
happen without waging the fight for them that deserves to be waged?
We know the blogosphere has reached center
stage in the war of the worlds, when it is
attacked by many on the right, and exploited
by some on the left. Good, great, let us join
the fight, wage the battle of ideas, let us fight
and compete in the battle for hearts and minds,
let us fight and compete in the contest to
build and share the greatest dreams, create
and expand the largest audience, demand
and achieve the support from those who
talk well but exploit shamelessly, and who
will act straight, or be left behind.
This is not about Democrat, Republican, left,
right. Let a thousand flowers bloom, let a
hundred million voices sing, and let the battle
be waged in the voting booth, on television
and radio, on movie screens and internet
screens, with publishing houses and editorial
boards and advertising eyeballs.
The common denominator is this: we are
people who believe in the building of dreams,
as Jefferson built dreams, as Adams built
dreams, as these two giants, who stood
together in creating our Nation, who stood
apart on many of the great issues of their
day, who died the same day, on different
sides of our continent, whispering their
last words about each other. speak to us
today.
In these difficult days, no one ever promised
it would be easy, but as others have said,
the battle continues, the struggle remains,
the cause endures, and the dream shall
never die.