from the website of the President of the Russian Federation; licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. June 2019
Robert Reich asks a powerful question about our nation:
Who’s the pinko in the striped tie, and why is Putin smirking? If you recall much about American history, you will remember an era when Senator Joe McCarthy was rabid about evicting communists from our government and our society. McCarthy’s mentor and bulldog, Roy Cohn, later became a disbarred lawyer, and Donald Trump’s mentor; yet the game has changed, and Trump is in bed with them now. There’s even a scary movie, worth watching, based on a Trump quote: Where’s my Roy Cohn?
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Reich’s essay is also worth pondering. Whenever nations idolize a leader, they are often inclined to fail shortly thereafter, especially if said leader has divided the citizenry. America, BEWARE.
“REVERED LEADERS” Whitehouse photo, via Wikimedia Commons.
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CONSERVATIVE Law Professor Charles Fried, [and one more] said :
“Truthfulness is a basic condition for trust between people. In the Genesis account, God caused the builders of the Tower of Babel to speak in different tongues so they could not understand one another and could not collaborate in even the simplest tasks. If people cannot believe one another, communication breaks down, trust becomes impossible, and society corrodes.
“How did Barr decline to the level of a purveyor of mistruths? We guess it was by his determination to serve faithfully a man who is so careless of the truth that he does not even try to be consistent from one statement to the next, from one day to the next. Barr has proclaimed as a foundational principle the sovereignty of executive power. The executive he has chosen to serve is uniquely untruthful, reckless, and vain. Perhaps Barr’s loyal service to that principle entails loyal service to Trump—the only executive we have—and not only to his ends, but to his means. Holding a similar post as Barr in Tudor England, Sir Thomas More recognized the fallacy of this position, defied his king, and was executed. He was later canonized for his faith.
“Proximity to such a person as Trump is toxic. Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, John Kelly, and H. R. McMaster all tried to practice moral social distancing from this morally diseased president, but broke with him because their integrity came before their loyalty to the person. Barr has committed to Trump warts and all, but the warts are in fact suppurating sores, and he is now fatally infected.
SOURCE: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/how-far-bill-barr-has-fallen/613582/?utm_source=msn