Editor’s Message

As I watch the many debates that take place among citizens of the United States, I am struck by the at how the same events are interpreted so differently, and many of those interpretations so far from the truth.

It bears to ask the question, what principles are people really willing to defend and to what extend?

A quick version of the oath that public servants are require to take: “I, (state full name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

What the oath does not address is how people discern who or what the enemy is. Many assume the enemy is anyone who doesn’t agree with their political beliefs and philosophies.

How many arguments and debates begin over democracy and our system of government all due to intolerance of multiple views.

This at its core is a threat to democracy and is anti-democratic. It perpetuates the demise of the country and tyrannical, authoritarian, anarchist tendencies within everyone.

What people fail to grasp is that the common ground, where they must commit to the values of democracy is tolerance of other views and ideas with which we disagree.

The minute intolerance is chosen, the democratic values are left behind, which is the real enemy of our Constitution. We must argue, debate and deliberate in good faith. And we must be willing to listen and learn.

We are all in a process of re-imagining how democratic values in the Constitution will survive and be embodied in the next 100 years. And we all have to work together to analyze and overcome the hard questions that the process raises.

Unity is standing arm-inarm to defend the ideals and values of democracy and face down the true common enemy: intolerance.

We are at a crossroads where anti-democratic beliefs are becoming naturalized in the territory of democracy.

When insurrection becomes a choice to destroy a country, we are all in danger of falling under a narrow authoritarian state. When corruption and lies become the standard and even supported by a large group in the population, our Constitution and freedom is under assault.

Intolerance is the real enemy. No country survives in a “it’s my way, or the highway” world.