* * * * *
"Thank you, Joe, my old, dear friend. . . . We served in the Senate together for over 20 years, during
some eventful times . . . "We didn’t always agree on the issues. We often argued –
sometimes passionately. But we believed in each other’s patriotism and the
sincerity of each other’s convictions. We believed in the institution we were
privileged to serve in. We believed in our mutual responsibility to help make
the place work and to cooperate in finding solutions to our country’s problems.
We believed in our country and in our country’s indispensability to
international peace and stability and to the progress of humanity. . . .
". . . What a privilege it is to serve this big, boisterous, brawling,
intemperate, striving, daring, beautiful, bountiful, brave, magnificent
country. With all our flaws, all our mistakes, with all the frailties of human
nature as much on display as our virtues, with all the rancor and anger of our
politics, we are blessed.
"We are living in the land of the free, the land where anything
is possible, the land of the immigrant’s dream, the land with the storied past
forgotten in the rush to the imagined future, the land that repairs and
reinvents itself, the land where a person can escape the consequences of a
self-centered youth and know the satisfaction of sacrificing for an ideal, the
land where you can go from aimless rebellion to a noble cause, and from the
bottom of your class to your party’s nomination for president.
"We are blessed, and we have been a blessing to humanity in turn.
The international order we helped build from the ashes of world war, and that
we defend to this day, has liberated more people from tyranny and poverty than
ever before in history. This wondrous land has shared its treasures and ideals
and shed the blood of its finest patriots to help make another, better world.
And as we did so, we made our own civilization more just, freer, more
accomplished and prosperous than the America that existed when I watched my
father go off to war on December 7, 1941.
"To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters
of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to
refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain “the
last best hope of earth” for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism
cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as
unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that
Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.
"We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil. We are the
custodians of those ideals at home, and their champion abroad. We have done
great good in the world. That leadership has had its costs, but we have become
incomparably powerful and wealthy as we did. We have a moral obligation to
continue in our just cause, and we would bring more than shame on ourselves if
we don’t. We will not thrive in a world where our leadership and ideals are
absent. We wouldn’t deserve to.
"I am the luckiest guy on earth. I have served America’s cause . . . . I see now that I was part
of something important that drew me along in its wake even when I was diverted
by other interests. I was, knowingly or not, along for the ride as America made
the future better than the past.
"And I have enjoyed it, every single day of it, the good ones and
the not so good ones. I’ve been inspired by the service of better patriots than
me. I’ve seen Americans make sacrifices for our country and her causes and for
people who were strangers to them but for our common humanity, sacrifices that
were much harder than the service asked of me. And I’ve seen the good they have
done, the lives they freed from tyranny and injustice, the hope they
encouraged, the dreams they made achievable.
"May God bless them. May God bless America, and give us the
strength and wisdom, the generosity and compassion, to do our duty for this
wondrous land, and for the world that counts on us. With all its suffering and
dangers, the world still looks to the example and leadership of America to
become, another, better place. What greater cause could anyone ever serve. . . . "
* * * * *
I"ve not always agreed with Senator McCain. In fact, I have been highly critical of him at times. But John McCain is a man of honor -- note his sacrifice for his country during five years as a Viet Cong prisoner of war, and his refusal to accept their offer of early release unless his fellow prisoners were also released. He stayed in a brutal prison and endured torture rather than take advantage of his rank and having an uncle who was an admiral in the U.S. Navy.
Now he is continuing his work in the Senate, casting the decisive vote to defeat his own party's Obamacare repeal effort, while undergoing chemotherapy for a very aggressive brain tumor. Which makes it all the more disgusting that the reaction of the President of the United States to McCain's speech was to try to pick a fight.
Does it surprise anyone that the current squatter who occupies the Oval Office reacted to these noble words as a personal attack on him and tried to pick a fight with Sen. McCain, saying in response to a reporter's question: "Yeah, well I heard it. And people have to be careful because at some point I fight back. I'm being very nice. I'm being very. very nice. But at some point I fight back, and it won't be pretty."
Asked for his response, Sen. McCain simply said: "I've had tougher adversaries."
Let's leave it at that. Measure the two men by their behavior under stress. We've seen Sen. McCain at his best, and we've seen President Trump at his way-under-par self (although he can be, and has been, far far worse).
Ralph
Let's leave it at that. Measure the two men by their behavior under stress. We've seen Sen. McCain at his best, and we've seen President Trump at his way-under-par self (although he can be, and has been, far far worse).
Ralph
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