Don's Tuesday Column

         THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   7/09/2019

     America is beautiful to Trump

We love President Donald J. Trump not just because he saw and implemented the vision of a prosperous America, the strength of her righteousness, backed up by the only reliable, historical guarantor of that economic dynamism and a moral, generous people: a military second to none with the ready means to rain destruction down on those who would do America harm.

To those who chide Trump and even our nation with slanted and cherry-picked data showing a false reality of an economy with ever-greater concentration of wealth, leaving the poor and middle class behind—I say take your hate-goggles off and see the beauty of people working, putting bread on the table for their families and loved ones. See more people working than ever in our history; see more jobs than job-seekers.

Many resent America’s military might, and its history of victory on every field of battle in causes that have always been framed by the word “liberation,” enabling free peoples around the world to pursue their own visions (even flawed visions). I say cast aside your erroneous and mistaken concepts of anti-American-goodness. Try to see what is in the hearts and values of those you oppose.

Realize that the freedom to think and speak one’s mind does not confer on anyone either the correctness of those thoughts absent verifiable evidence, nor the right to force agreement from others. Just because contrary sides marshal arguments against our nation and its current president, doesn’t mean that we must accede to malign concepts or be unwilling to stand for the truth. We must label such arguments for what many of them are: one-sided, Trump-deranged propaganda undeserving of respect.

“If men were angels,” our Founding Father and fourth president James Madison wrote in Federalist 51, “no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men…[no] controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.”

He wrote that in an essay on the “Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments,” intended to inform the writing of the Constitution. I would add that if the governed people are evil in their hearts, no governing force of pure goodness, angelic or otherwise, could constrain the dark, malicious intentions of those people to do evil to each other.

It is in each individual’s pursuit of “life, liberty and happiness” that the structures of government must tread lightly so as to allow the freedom to exercise the inherent rights “endowed by their Creator” (not by other people), while constraining unjust and improper actions by some against others.

What does this have to do with President Trump and his Independence Day “Salute to America” and our military? I think it was very short-sighted, even malevolently so, for news outlets to not broadcast his speech. We accessed an online recording, listened with rapt attention, and thought that Trump’s speech could have been given by any president, to presumably wide approval by members of both parties and Independents alike. Nothing he said, if it were transcribed and read without the knowledge of who gave it, would have tipped off the reader as to the party or the identity of the speaker.

 Indeed, the praise he expressed for the magnificent, even miraculous, establishment of our nation— and how that Founding has reverberated down to the people and their accomplishments in the 21^st century—should be part of any high school or college course on civics, history or social studies. It was one of the most concentrated expositions on the phenomenal rise of “America the Beautiful,” and the strength of character and might of our military branches, that has ever been spoken.

I doubt that those who framed his speech, as well as the entire event with military tanks and flyovers, with barely-concealed snark and projection, even read the speech he was to give. They complained how Trump frequently “goes off script,” and primed their viewers to seize on any gaffe or foible rather than consider the larger message. Truth be told, their ideological leftism won’t allow that larger message. That misguided belief system dismisses watching President Trump give a speech, even sections of it.

When reacting, and pre-reacting, to Trump’s “Salute to America,” critics displayed historical ignorance with extreme prejudice. “Flyover Culture” posted pictures of other presidential military parades: vast lines and columns of tanks for FDR’s inauguration, tanks parading for Eisenhower’s inauguration, tanks filing past assembled dignitaries for JFK’s inauguration, and troops and tanks on parade for Bush 43’s Desert Storm Victory.

Consider the sheer lunacy (under academic cover) of Harvard Law professor Laurence H. Tribe tweeting a photo of tanks arriving for Trump’s “Salute to America” and declaring “The resemblance to days before Tiananmen Square is chilling.” Really? Tanks used to break up pro-democracy protests along with troops that murdered untold hundreds, even thousands, of protesters—yeah, that’s totally comparable. Loons.

Even the idea of a presidential speech on July 4^th is hardly controversial, let alone unprecedented: Harry S. Truman addressed America in front of the Washington monument; Presidents Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush all gave Fourth of July addresses from Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Ronald Reagan delivered a July 4^th address from the deck of an aircraft carrier, the USS John F. Kennedy while anchored in front of the Statue of Liberty.

Look up “Presidents on July 4: Some chill, some get in your face,” by Calvin Woodward, for itemized activities, marches, parades, speeches, parties and celebrations by and on behalf of over two dozen of America’s presidents. We should all celebrate our nation’s remarkable birth, rise and dominance.