We live in a era of competing viewpoints and rhetorical advocacy.
Often logic, reason and especially facts are missing in the fire of verbal combat or when issuing public relations statements supporting a position.
The more consequential the decision or a person’s position, the more elaborate the verbal bouquets. These communications are not meant to persuade. Rather they entertain, advocate, sometimes threaten while shimmying past critical core issues.
Examples this week include the speeches by the President and Secretary of War to hundreds of senior military commanding officers, policy utterances by single NCUA board member Hauptman, or the rhetorical display announcing NCUA’s approval of the DCU merger with First Tech.
When Words Matter Most
So it was enlightening to read someone explaining at length what is at stake in our often charged and sometimes flippant public dialogues. Here is the example:
In Boston yesterday Judge William G. Young answered an anonymous correspondent who trolled the judge on June 19 by writing a postcard that said: “TRUMP HAS PARDONS AND TANKS…. WHAT DO YOU HAVE?” Young reproduced the writing at the top of his decision finding that Trump’s attempted deportations of legal residents for their pro-Palestinian speech violated the First Amendment.
Then the judge answered: “Dear Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States—you and me—have our magnificent Constitution.”
“The United States is a great nation, not because any of us say so. It is great because we still practice our frontier tradition of selflessness for the good of us all. Strangers go out of their way to help strangers when they see a need. In times of fire, flood, and national disaster, everyone pitches in to help people we’ve never met and first responders selflessly risk their lives for others. Hundreds of firefighters rushed into the Twin Towers on 9/11 without hesitation desperate to find and save survivors. That’s who we are.
“And on distant battlefields our military ‘fought and died for the men [they] marched among.’ Each day, I recognize (to paraphrase Lincoln again) that the brave men and women, living and dead, who have struggled in our Nation’s service have hallowed our Constitutional freedom far above my (or anyone’s) poor power to add or detract. The only Constitutional rights upon which we can depend are those we extend to the weakest and most reviled among us.”
“I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected.
“Is he correct?”