Thursday, November 27, 2008
The nation needs such giants
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
Jan VanHorn
VanHorn lives in Roanoke.
My 100-pound mother, by usual standards, was no one special. Her pedigree was unimpressive, but she managed to live with such dignity and good sense that she left an indelible imprint for generations.
During the election cycle of 2008, I thought about her now uncommon common sense -- and the different election process we could have had if people had listened to her. The nation would have been better, cleaner and, like her, had true dignity when all was said and done. Pedigree would have weighed less than morality. Truth would have outweighed guided perceptions.
A key piece of Mom's political guidance was bestowed when I was just a little girl. I asked her why police couldn't just come and stop folks from saying something we didn't believe they should be saying (or thinking). In my childish mind, what we believed was "right," so others should be stopped from saying what was "wrong."
Mom explained we would never want that to happen because we live in America. She said we would actually fight for their right to say what they believed. I was dumbfounded! You should know the issue that aroused my longing for police intervention had nothing to do with life or death or crimes committed. It was simply something about which people disagreed.
I have pondered her counsel throughout my lifetime and its truth impacts my own choices to this day. I grieve as I watch powerful media entities casually, but intentionally, malign or distort records of people from the other side of the fence. Watching them dress censorship as "fairness" is a painful intellectual stretch. They nuance a new art form when honesty or disagreement with their paradigm is characterized as "attack" while the real (subliminal) attack is being carried out by the person making that accusation.
Further, when a gullible public buys that art, our country is the worse for it. Something truly American is ruined.
Mom understood that. She knew we couldn't stand as a nation without truth and opinion from both sides of the fence staying unfettered. So basic. So profound. So profoundly American. She was tiny, but her counsel was gigantic.
To those who finesse the game of twisting the words and characters of people who do not share your hunger for power at the cost of decency and justice for all, I commend my mom's wisdom to you. Some who have power are, in reality, very small people. History will show them to be so, no matter their present apparent stature.
Others appear to be small, even inconsequential, on the world stage, in your estimation -- but time will show them to be the giants who graced the Earth. My mom was a giant.
