A Time for Courage - Determined Resistance in Dark Times

“I have full confidence that if all do their duty the worst of this crisis can be averted. Let our opponents do their worst. We will do our best. We will prevail.” Winston Churchill

Second term of Donald Trump and his criminal Regime has given us just over 100 days of dictatorial tyranny. In those 100 days Trump and the loyalists of the Regime have put a torch to American democracy, trampled the law, the Constitution, committed crimes against the American people and undermined our national security in more ways than I can count in terms of domestic and international affairs.

The Regime is disappearing people, undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, many with “Green Cards” on their way to citizenship as well as American citizens. Some are in ICE prisons while others including an American mother and her four year old cancer stricken child have been deported. Despite Court orders, including one from the Supreme Court the Regime continues to grab people off the streets, out of their homes, worksites and schools and are now invading churches that care for immigrants out of Christian duty.

They have attacked basic First Amendment rights of Americans, are attacking voting rights, and want to have a key part of the 14th Amendment regarding citizenship overturned. They have launched a full fronted attack on the institutions and laws that provide for the financial and medical security for elderly, the disabled, young children, pregnant women, new mothers, retirees who depend on Social Security Medicare, as well as military veterans than depend on the assistance of the Veterans Administration for health care, disability benefits, rehabilitation and education programs, and hundreds of thousands of Federal Government employees. Likewise, they have attacked the institutions, government and private sectors that are on the front lines of fighting disease, began a vast database to identify people with Autism who Secretary of Health and Human Services has insinuated are people who do not contribute to society, and to use the old American and Nazi Eugenics proponents who referred to the disabled as “life unworthy of life”. Neither can we forget Trump’s misbegotten economic policies and tariffs which have shredded the American economy in just over three months time. I barely can mention the Regime’s support of repressive dictatorships, violators of human rights and war criminals while constantly attacking and undermining our friendships and alliances around the world, or how they destroyed American “Soft Power” and have defunded programs far less expensive than military power which saved millions lives from deadly diseases and hunger that by their humanitarianism strengthened our national security by making friends rather than enemies.

These are indeed dark times and many Americans are discouraged and disillusioned by the Regime’s actions that have already harmed millions here and around the world. Sadly, Trump and his criminal Regime have only begun their reign of terror.

To twist a great quote from Winston Churchill, “never have so few in the field of humanity done such harm to so many in so little time.”

In such a time many people would rather put their heads down and hope that they don’t become victims. The 22 year old leader of the White Rose resistance against Hitler’s murderous Regime wrote at the height of Nazi Power:

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”

In 1831 a 26 year old New Englander named William Lloyd Garrison founded a newspaper called The Liberator to expose the evils of slavery and and promote the cause of the immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery when “slave power” was still ascendant with supporters in the White House, the Congressional majority and the Supreme Court. Garrison was an Evangelical Christian who was inspired by the preaching of Charles Finney to become an abolitionist. At the time abolitionism was tiny and unpopular movement nationwide, but Garrison was not deterred. In the first edition of The Liberator he wrote:

“In Park-Street Church, on the Fourth of July, 1829, I unreflectingly assented to the popular but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. I seize this moment to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice, and absurdity. A similar recantation, from my pen, was published in the Genius of Universal Emancipation at Baltimore, in September 1829. My conscience is now satisfied. I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; – but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest – I will not equivocate – I will not excuse – I will not retreat a single inch – and I will be heard. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.”

While Garrison inspired many to the abolitionist cause, he was often irascible and contentious. He eventually broke with Frederick Douglass who had worked with him for eight years because Douglass decided that the Constitution could be used against slavery while Garrison saw it as evil due to the 3/5ths Compromise. But Garrison did not desist in his battle to abolish slavery. By the Civil War he gave up his Christian pacifism to support the Union against the Confederacy with the intent to abolish slavery through the force of arms.

Likewise, Garrison became a wanted man in the North and South due to his fiery rhetoric and uncompromising position. His life was under constant threat and the legislatures of South Carolina and Georgia both put bounties n his head for his arrest and transportation to their states.

Garrison also became an early champion of Women’s rights along with Frederick Douglass.

Men like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass and women like Sophie Scholl are people who in the darkest of times, be it in the United States and our enslavement and violence against Blacks, or in Hitlerian Germany and people that we must look to for inspiration in the deepening darkness of this Trump era. Unfortunately, this era will not end soon enough, but we can limit the damage by resisting and remembering those words of William Lloyd Garrison:

“I will be as harsh as the truth and as justice…. I will not equivocate - I will not excuse - I will not retreat a single inch - AND I WILL BE HEARD!”

Or those of Sophie Scholl:

“Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”

So as we move into the next 100 days of the Trump Regime we understand what is coming. Trump is already doubling down on his destructive, inhuman, corrupt and criminal policies and actions. He will not be deterred by the law. He and the Regime will find new ways to flaunt and break the law every day. As he and the Regime ramp up their crimes we must not hide, we must not tremble before them, we must not surrender an inch of ground. The times are dark and the darkness is growing.

We also must look to our goal, the defeat of tyranny. Winston Churchill provides the message that we need to hear. When he became Prime Minister as Nazi Germany was rolling across Belgium and France he made his first speech: His words need to steel our hearts for battle:

“You ask what is our policy. I will say, it is to wage war with all our might, with all the strength that God can give us, to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.

“You ask what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terror. Victory however long and hard the road may be. For without victory there is no survival.”

He remarked a year later at Harrow School:

“This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

I leave you with those words tonight. It is up to all of us. We are in this together.