Donald Trump -- You Do Not Speak for Me

 

image from businessinsider.com

Carved on the base of The Statue of Liberty are these words:

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Even these, "the least of these" are invited to this country. There are no exceptions listed here. No exclusions.

Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran minister who spent the final eight years of Germany's Third Reich in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps, explained how the Holocaust could happen:

             First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
             Because I was not a Socialist.

             Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
             Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

             Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
             Because I was not a Jew.

             Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

I am an American. As an American I must not silence the Donald Trumps of this country. No matter how strongly I disagree with what he says, our Constitution protects his right to say it. And I support that protection. Let him speak.

BUT I must say that I disagree! I must encourage the quiet and courteous among us to say out loud that they also disagree. I must spur the otherwise-engaged to pay attention and speak out. We cannot sit by and let the hurt or angry or fearful determine the political discourse of this Nation. Nor, indeed, the political course of this Nation.

WE, not people like him, are why this Nation is Great. We must speak out.