The closing line of our national anthem claims that the United states is the “home of the brave”. Observations of the impeachment trial this week confirm my conviction that we are instead “the home of the cowards“. While I am disgusted and disheartened by the cowardice the majority of senate Republicans demonstrated by their stubborn resistance to convicting Trump who clearly incited his followers to violence, rioting, or insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, I am also aware that these cowardly senators are a reflection of us as our representatives.
When given the opportunity in 2020 to oust Trump enablers like Senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, American voters re-elected them. American voters also elected Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Their election speaks volumes about we, the American people. It says that we lack the moral courage to stand up for truth and what is morally right. It says that we lack the courage to condemn evidence of corruption, to honestly face our historical injustices, and to do the work of pursuing the value of justice for all. It says we don’t have the courage to hold wrongdoers accountable if there is a personal cost to pay. We have been too afraid to lose friends, family, followers or tax breaks by speaking the truth. Silence in the face of wrongdoing is also cowardice. We only have ourselves to blame for the fragile state of our nation. The lack of courage we witnessed on Saturday is our collective failure. So, we are no longer the home of the brave, but the home of the cowardice.
The moral depravity that we have condoned for too long (perhaps in ourselves and now in our representatives) is evident by the outcome of this second impeachment trial. Even the lawyers for Trump boldly lied in their defense argument without consequence. The senators who took an oath to be impartial jurors, openly strategized with the Trump defense lawyers and received appallingly little criticism. And the argument that Trump shouldn’t be tried after he left office was by made possible by McConnell’s refusal to call the senate into session to try him before he left office.
As a parent, an educator, and a citizen, I take personal responsibility for not fighting harder to send the message to my children, my students, and my fellow Americans to value the courage to seek out and stand up for the truth when presented with lies and corruption. I have failed along with the rest of America to demand better of our representatives, maybe because we have demanded too little of ourselves and each other for too long. While many of us have rightly spent our energy securing women’s rights, gay rights, criminal justice, and making Black Lives Matter, we have simultaneously witnessed the deterioration of moral courage.
I looked in the mirror and decided that I have to do better. With a grandson on the way, I thought about the kind of country he will inherit if we continue to behave like cowards and to elect representatives who lack moral courage. It is important to bolster our own commitment to being courageous enough to speak out against the cowardice we are witnessing today and to vote the cowards out of office, but it is just as important to build up the capacity of future generations to be morally courageous.
I thought about what my part in this could be and decided that during my retirement, I will dedicate myself to writing children’s books that focus on the virtue of possessing courage to confront lies, adversity, danger, and corruption. That is what I can and will do. I hope that parents, grandparents, teachers, preachers, and all patriots will take up the challenge before us to reclaim our place as “the home of the brave”.