Jun 17, 2018 2 min read

The country is currently so divisive that taking a position on an important issue seems to merely place us on a side for some to cheer and others to insult. This has caused many to understandably avoid difficult topics altogether.

But, as Dr. Martin Luther King said, in the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends. We need to recognize and push back against the surge of white nationalism entering our political and governmental arena on a weekly if not daily basis. It is un-American, immoral and scary.

Just this week, Virginia nominated a man for U.S. Senate who held a news conference with the organizer of the Charlottesville white supremacist rally; a U.S. representative retweeted a message regarding “waking up” about immigration by a known Adolf Hitler admirer; and an Arizona state lawmaker decried the rise in minorities and immigrants as destabilizing and an existential threat to the country.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United Nations condemns this government’s separating parents from their children at the border, including those seeking asylum from violence.

In his 1989 farewell address, President Reagan spoke of this country as a “shining city on a hill … teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace.” He saw it as “open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here,” and “a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the places who are hurtling through the darkness.”

What have we become?

Brian Gorman

Washington