Just as mass anxiety over COVID was setting in globally, Grammy-winning American composer Vince Mendoza in 2020 gathered together in a studio an amazing array of artists and recorded his concerto for orchestra, "Freedom over Everything." The work melds jazz, blues, classical, even rap, and seeks to reflect not only the angst that followed the 2016 presidential election but confidence sufficient numbers of American patriots would somehow resist this president's worst impulses. The work conveys "an intrinsic duality of hope and despair" and the importance of "continued perseverance."
It's a terrific if often bracing work, beginning with
blaring chords that reflect the noise behind President Trump's "American
carnage" that has by now forever changed how the world views America,
including principles of equality in the Declaration of Independence, sanded
down by willfully ignorant Americans too many generations removed from founding
ideals to understand or appreciate their promise and obligation. But the
relevant point here is that Mendoza's work has something to say of our times to
generations now and to come, even as he and fellow artists demonstrate their mass appeal and prompt audiences to tap their toes.
That's the thing about artists and entertainers, something I
learned close-up during my long-ago years as a daily newspaper arts editor. I interviewed
everyone from Okie-born, all-American composer Roy Harris, whose muscular,
big-boned symphonies captured the can-do spirit of America during the Great
Depression and World War II, to rising young actor Sylvester Stallone, whose
rousing 1976 film "Rocky" captured the underdog spirit of Americans.
Who can forget the image of boxer Rocky Balboa jogging up the steps of the
Philadelphia Museum of Art and dancing in confidence?
Harris’ music might seem to conjure up the “Heritage Americans” of earlier
times whom JD Vance and other Make America Great Again zealots so revere. Yet
Harris was a longtime, sometimes irascible advocate of African-American rights and
briefly drew the post-war scrutiny of the FBI because of his fifth symphony of
1943 saluting the U.S.-Soviet alliance dedicated to vanquishing Hitler and his
Nazi scourge. I found Stallone thoughtful, even cerebral, about the wisdom of
allowing his famously compelling character to proceed through a series of
progressively less-than-stellar sequels. During an America First Policy
Institute gala hosted at Mar-a-Lago after the 2024 election, he favorably compared
the president-elect to Rocky Balboa and George Washington.
Do such political facts change how one views the art of
either man? How can they not?
Possibly apocryphal, the story of Beethoven's dedicating his
monumental third symphony to Napoleon is telling: Beethoven was impressed with
the high ideals of secularism, equality and liberty championed by the French
Revolution (inspired in turn by the American Revolution, inspired in turn by
ideals of Aristotle, Cicero, Rosseau, Locke and Paine) and Napoleon's role in
initially championing those principles. When Napoleon betrayed them and
declared himself emperor in 1804, Beethoven – a revolutionary spirit and no fan
of divinely ordained monarchies – reportedly crossed out in disgust Napoleon’s
name as dedicatee of the "Eroica" symphony.
Is it relevant that Hitler and his Nazi minions glossed over
the classic story about Beethoven and Napoleon and encouraged performances of
Beethoven's works as proof of Teutonic superiority, including the
"Eroica" symphony? What if there’s no inconvenient backstory to such
works? For those who know their world history, it’s impossible to
listen to Wilhelm Furtwängler’s sprawling Second Symphony, a post-war
masterpiece, without recognizing its summing up the tragic abandonment by the
German people of their humanist artistic and intellectual traditions – not just
in composers such as Bach and Beethoven but titanic thinkers such as Goethe,
Kant, Nietzsche and Humboldt.
Which brings us to American composer Philip Glass’ Jan. 27
announcement withdrawing his 15th symphony, imbued with the language
of Lincoln, from the National Symphony Orchestra’s planned premiere at the
Kennedy Center after Trump added his name (via a handpicked board of trustees
he heads by presidential self-appointment) to the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the
Performing Arts. The building is now the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy
Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. While contemporary artists galore have
demonstrated their outrage by cancelling scheduled appearances, Trump has used
the place to offer a rambling, self-glorifying address to Republican
lawmakers to invigorate them in upcoming elections; hosted Kennedy Center
honors there (with honorees such as Stallone, George Strait, Gloria Gaynor and the rock band KISS, all picked
by Trump); and premiered a documentary film about his wife.
Trump’s motives? Likely the approaching 250th
anniversary of the Declaration of Independence proved too much of a temptation to
resist. In replacing Kennedy Center leadership with his own deputies and
himself, he recognizes the role performing arts have in influencing how
Americans see themselves and their place in history and culture – as do others,
including the producers of “Hamilton,” the popular musical about the nation’s
founding that cancelled its scheduled Kennedy Center gig shortly after Trump dropped
the curtain on the center’s previous management. Besides satisfying his ego by subsequently
plastering his name on the place, Trump – in commandeering the center – arguably
fulfills his March 27, 2025, executive order lambasting our national parks and
museums for “replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by
ideology rather than truth.” That’s legal lingo for curtailing if not eliminating
distracting “woke” elements of history that, to the thinking of the Make
America Great Again set, overemphasize diversity, equity and inclusion in
the more conventional American narrative.
There’s supreme irony, however, in turning the Kennedy Center upside-down and inside-out over “woke” leanings in cultural programming and then complaining (as Trump and surrogates have) at all of the cancellations by outraged “woke” artists amid the administration’s indignant insistence that, well, the arts should be “politics-free,” so in actuality these artists shouldn’t have cancelled. Typical of this administration, it wants its cake and wants to eat it, too.
“Symphony No. 15 is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln,” Glass said in a brief statement in yanking the premiere of his work, “and the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the symphony. Therefore, I feel an obligation to withdraw this symphony premiere from the Kennedy Center under its current leadership.” Indeed, given the strongly rancorous feelings on race in 21st America and Trump’s repeated willingness to aggravate those feelings in both campaign mode and presidential policymaking, Lincoln remains a divisive figure in the MAGA mindset, particularly among those who resent Barack Obama, Black Lives Matter and, more recently, Bad Bunny.
Such dissension has been long in coming. In 2009, during my tenure as an opinion writer for the Waco Tribune-Herald, I interviewed former Texas Supreme Court Justice Jack Hightower about his substantial collection of Lincoln books maintained at Baylor University's W.R. Poage Library. Then 82, Hightower had retired after a long career in which he also served in the Texas Legislature and U.S. House of Representatives. He acknowledged Lincoln might have been an odd passion for someone such as himself growing up below the Mason-Dixon line where, mere decades earlier, tempers still flared over the Civil War and its outcome. "I have been bitten by the history bug since I can remember," he told me. "I remember my father taking me to meet a Confederate war veteran in Memphis, Texas. I asked him if he had ever seen Lincoln and he said, 'No – and if I had, I would've shot him!'"
Judge Hightower made it clear Lincoln was our greatest
president. "Of course, Washington was also great," he said. "He
helped found the nation and established many of our traditions, but Lincoln showed
us the way of the future by getting rid of slavery. He didn't start the war to
get rid of slavery but he used the war to get rid of it." Lincoln impressed
the judge for many other reasons, too, including his rise to greatness from
hardscrabble Western roots, plus his honesty and integrity. The judge feared
too many politicians had forsaken the example Lincoln set. He also feared
that up-and-coming generations didn't know Lincoln the way they
should. "When I was a little kid, I said I wanted to be president of the
United States," the judge told me. "I guess every kid did then. Isn't
it sad? Kids don't say that anymore. Maybe it's because we haven't had such
good examples lately."
Glass’ symphony – now planned for a Jan. 31, 2027, Carnegie
Hall premiere – draws on Lincoln’s famous Lyceum Address of 1838, which warned
that mob violence and destructive forces within America might lead to the
downfall of the republic forged by our forefathers; his humble, even self-deprecating
autobiographical sketch of 1859, a rarity among politicians (and businessmen);
and his 1861 farewell address upon departing Springfield, Illinois, to begin his
perilous inaugural journey to Washington, D.C., highlighting to friends and
neighbors challenges facing the nation amidst ongoing Southern secession, the threat
of civil war and perhaps his death in the coming conflagration. The symphony’s
commission is a worthy one, even if the approaching anniversary of the
Declaration of Independence focuses more attention on Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine and George Washington. Few of our presidents rivalled Lincoln in
terms of resolve and humanity and wisdom.
I have no idea (nor was I able to learn) what specific passages
Glass employs from the Lyceum Address in his yet-to-premiere symphony but this
early and influential address in Springfield by 28-year-old Lincoln offers wise
words for our times regarding the oft-irrational, rabble-rousing,
burn-it-all-down political ideology and religious fanaticism we now behold.
Behold then Lincoln’s words which refer to “something of ill-omen amongst us”
in a growing disregard of the law by some, yet demonstrate deep reverence for the
example set by George Washington, in a sense our nation’s primary law-giver
considering his quietly towering over the Constitutional Convention of 1787:
Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in
future be our enemy. Reason – cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason – must furnish
all the materials for our future support and defense. Let those materials be
molded into general intelligence, sound morality and, in
particular, a reverence for the Constitution and laws: and that we
improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his
name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to
pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last
trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON. Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom
rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only
greater institution, "the gates of hell shall not prevail against
it."
The biographical sketch sought by Republican newspaperman
Jesse W. Fell offers Lincolnesque humility wholly lacking in the most dominant
figure of our own times who trusts neither society nor history to judge who is
worthy of monuments and honors and so presumes to decide it himself:
My dear Sir: Herewith is a little sketch, as you
requested. There is not much of it, for the reason, I suppose, that there is
not much of me. If anything is made out of it, I wish it to be modest and not
to go beyond the materials. If it were thought necessary to incorporate
anything from any of my speeches, I suppose there would be no objection.
Lincoln’s “Farewell Address” is but a few sentences but nonetheless
proved moving to admiring neighbors as the 51-year-old Westerner boarded a
presidential train at the Great Western Depot in Springfield, Illinois. He
would return in a casket four years later, the victim of ravages of civil
war and assassination by an obsessive Southern sympathizer outraged over Lincoln's idea of extending to black men not only freedom but the right to vote:
My friends, no one, not in my situation, can appreciate
my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these
people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have
passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is
buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a
task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the
assistance of the Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With
that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain
with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet
be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend
me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.
Lincoln biographers remind us the humble rail-splitter and
country attorney quietly hoped to count for something useful and worthy of posterity,
even as he recognized, in the manner of the greatest patriot of yesteryear, he
must endeavor to act with honor, wisdom, discipline, modesty and vision. He
didn’t fritter away his few years of presidential power erecting monuments to
himself or robbing the dead of their glory. He demonstrated greatness not only
through eloquent word but significant deed, preserving the union that
Washington, Jackson, Webster and Clay endeavored amidst all else to preserve; emancipating
those enslaved and subjected to cruelty and heartbreak because of their skin color; outmaneuvering in both policy and
military foresight secessionist rebels and traitors he still counted as fellow
citizens; impressing colleagues in the North who initially viewed him with
condescension, even disdain, but soon became better enlightened; and, finally, contributing much to the nation’s
healing after a horrific civil war – more so than embittered Southerners who waged
a century’s worth of racism and retribution constituting Jim Crow, a period now by law a
forbidden subject in our schools and even universities in deference to the
white nationalism permeating the Trump administration’s vision of our past and future. Finally, President
Lincoln set the stage for the greatest constitutional amendments since our nation’s founding, one of which in part the Supreme Court of the United States under
Chief Justice John Roberts has disgracefully blotted out and leaving yet
another section of the once-mighty Fourteenth Amendment for President Trump to overrule
by executive order, a pen-stroke brimming with that hatred and racism many of
us once hoped was forever extinguished.
So far as monuments to greatness go, kingdoms and
dictatorship are the domains where such things are raised to honor if not deify
living tyrants who imagine or insist upon their greatness or lackeys who in fear
or adoration seek to flatter those tyrants. In a democratic republic, such
matters are quite correctly left to posterity and the people. The Lincoln Memorial
was raised 57 years after President Lincoln’s assassination in 1865; efforts to
more devotedly build it only commenced in the 20th century. I
remember, during a visit, watching a father patiently explain to his very young
son the meaning of the inscriptions of Lincoln’s words on the memorial walls. The
Jefferson Memorial was formally dedicated in 1943 amidst World War II, more
than a century after Jefferson’s death on July 4, 1826, and the towering bronze
statue that occupies it didn’t follow for another four years. The Washington
Monument was long in following Washington’s death in 1799, delayed in part by
the Civil War. Its dedication on Feb. 21, 1885 – a day before Washington’s
birthday – saw President Chester Alan Arthur cite Washington’s unique fitness for
the challenges facing the nation in war and peace:
The faith that never faltered; the wisdom that was
broader and deeper than any learning taught in schools; the courage that shrank
from no peril and was dismayed by no defeat; the loyalty that kept all selfish
purpose subordinate to the demands of patriotism and honor; the sagacity that
displayed itself in camp and cabinet alike; and, above all, that harmonious
union of moral and intellectual qualities which has never found its parallel
among men—these are the attributes of character which the intelligent thought
of this century ascribes to the grandest figure of the last.
It’s perhaps fitting that presidents who consistently rank
near the bottom of scholarly surveys ranking greatness – men such
as Arthur – often wind up tapped to commemorate monuments to far greater men,
perhaps making the accomplishments, strides and integrity of the honorees more
commanding and reflecting the frequent poor judgment of voters in a
democratic republic. Consider this May 30, 1922, speech by President Warren G.
Harding on occasion of the Lincoln Memorial’s dedication:
He rose to colossal stature in a day of imperiled union.
He first appealed, and then commanded, and left the union secure and the nation
supreme. His was a leadership for a great crisis, made loftier because of the
inherent righteousness of his cause and the sublimity of his own faith.
Washington inspired belief in the republic in its heroic beginning, Lincoln
proved its quality in the heroic preservation. The Old World had wondered about
the New World experiment, and was quite ready to proclaim its futility when the
civil war was threatening; but Lincoln left the union unchallenged for all
succeeding time. Not only was our nation given a new birth of freedom, but
democracy was given a new sanction by that hand of divinity itself which has
written the rights of humankind and pointed the way to their enjoyment.
Abraham Lincoln was no superman. Like the great
Washington, whose monumental shaft towers nearby as a fit companion to the
memorial we dedicate today, the two testifying the grateful love of all
Americans to founder and savior – like Washington, Lincoln was a very natural
human being, with the frailties mixed with the virtues of humanity. There are
neither supermen nor demi-gods in the government of kingdoms, empires or
republics. It will be better for our conception of government and its
institutions if we will understand this fact. It is vastly greater than finding
the superman if we justify the confidence that our institutions are capable of
bringing into authority, in time of stress, men big enough and strong enough to
meet all demands.
In dedicating the Jefferson Memorial in the thick of World
War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt remains a notable exception to the spectacle of
middling presidents dedicating national monuments to greater predecessors, even
as FDR negotiated around the awkward matter of Jefferson’s lifelong enslavement
of others while fashioning a rallying public statement against the global
forces of tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson believed, as we believe, in Man. He
believed, as we believe, that men are capable of their own government, and that
no king, no tyrant, no dictator can govern for them as well as they can govern
for themselves.
He believed, as we believe, in certain inalienable
rights. He, as we, saw those principles and freedoms challenged. He fought for
them, as we fight for them.
He proved that the seeming eclipse of liberty can well
become the dawn of more liberty. Those who fight the tyranny of our own time
will come to learn that old lesson. Among all the peoples of the earth, the
cruelties and the oppressions of its would-be masters have taught this
generation what its liberties can mean. This lesson, so bitterly learned, will
never be forgotten while this generation is still alive.
The words which we have chosen for this Memorial speak Jefferson's noblest and most urgent meaning; and we are proud indeed to understand it and share it: "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
Monuments are works of art as much as objects of commemoration. Opinionated American sculptor Gutzon Borglum – famous for his Stone Mountain sculpture glorifying Confederate military heritage as well as his imposing sculpture of Abraham Lincoln, whom he admired and for whom he named his son – rejected a proposal by South Dakota’s state historian that Mount Rushmore immortalize Lewis and Clark, Sacagawea and Crazy Horse. Borglum opted for a massive sculpture of more overtly national scope – Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. President Coolidge bowed to this vision in remarks accompanying the federal government’s financial commitment to the project in 1927. “If coming generations are to maintain a like spirit, it will be because they continue to study the lives and times of the great men who have been the leaders in our history and continue to support the principles which those men represented,” he observed. “It is for that purpose that we erect memorials. We cannot hold our admiration for the historic figures which we shall see here without growing stronger in our determination to perpetuate the institutions which their lives revealed and established.” Yet Mount Rushmore today only encourages our latest president to ruminate on adding his likeness to theirs – and without any of their sacrifice, courage and integrity.
One problem for petty, would-be tyrants with no interest in the law or constitutional principles or the vastness and variety of their constituents: Since the Enlightenment of the 19th century encouraged democracy, self-governance, equality and inclusiveness, the very best artists among us, certainly in America, have dedicated themselves to championing such causes. And so we see in works including novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” of 1852 on the cruelties of slavery; Lincoln admirer Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” on the fleeting nature of great and transformative men such as Lincoln; composer (and German emigrant) Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s overlooked post-Hollywood symphony dedicated to FDR’s memory in recognition of his rescue of those fleeing or fighting fascism; author F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby” on the lack of fulfillment in glitzy, aimless American wealth; painter Albert Bierstadt’s wide-open landscapes, capturing Jeffersonian notions of natural American greatness; film director Frank Capra’s idealistic views of politics in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” complete with the naivete of honorable souls who go to Washington, D.C., with earnest ambitions to do good and act with honor; Southern author Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” on daily life and injustice in the era of Jim Crow; Woody Guthrie’s enduring Dust Bowl ballads such as "This Land Is Your Land," taking to heart the rights of everyday Americans struggling against oligarchy; director John Frankenheimer’s cautionary tales about malevolent forces set on undoing American democracy in “The Manchurian Candidate” and “Seven Days in May,” films that continue to resonate long after their release in the 1960s; American-born composer Morton Gould’s “Lincoln Legend,” arguably his most searing work in the hands of Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony; Norman Rockwell’s ingeniously portrayed Americana such his images in “The Four Freedoms,” particularly that championing the First Amendment right to free speech, so often threatened by the powerful in America; novelist Sinclair Lewis’ indictment of middle-class conformity in “Babbitt,” which the author informed his publisher was about “all of us Americans at 46, prosperous but worried, wanting – passionately – to seize something more than motor cars and a house before it’s too late” – in some ways an explanation for the misguided “Make America Great Again” movement that ensnared so many Americans; Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” of course, but also witty, revealing travelogues such as “Roughing It,” about the opening of the American West; Washington Irving’s overlooked “Rip Van Winkle,” as much about America’s jarring transformation from a colonial empire serving a faraway monarchy to a republic flexing its newfound rights as an American who slumbers for two long and consequential decades; the immense power of the people to do justice, especially in unexpected ways such as a simple jury trial in Reginald Rose’s 1954 teleplay (and subsequent film) “Twelve Angry Men”; and Stephen Vincent Benét’s American twist on Faustian bargains in “The Devil and Daniel Webster” of 1936. Of Webster's own ambitions, the devil taunts him at the tale's end: "Lesser men will be made president and you will be passed over."
Is it any wonder that, amidst an unexpectedly brutal invasion of Minneapolis and St. Paul by federal immigration forces – ultimately, some 3,000 of them – that rock and roll singer and songwriter Bruce Springsteen on Jan. 17, 2026, dedicated a concert performance of his song “The Promised Land” to Renée Good, a protester and mother of three shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs agent? Is it any wonder the Minnesota Orchestra scrapped Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” from its Jan. 30 program and instead played the moving Adagietto from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in memory of not only Good but, by this time, fellow protester Alex Pretti, a veterans hospital nurse killed after being wrestled to the ground by armed federal agents and shot repeatedly in the back while on his knees? Former President Obama, in a mid-February 2026 interview with Brian Tyler Cohen, reflected on how the performing arts in particular can sometimes cultivate and reinforce a sense of community and social bonding in times of crisis:
We saw that in Minneapolis. Somebody showed me – a friend
of mine, [American journalist] Michele Norris, is from Minnesota, and she was
up there, and she was going around talking to neighbors and people she had
known for a long time, as they were mobilizing protests and activities around
ICE. She showed me a clip of this street band that was performing every
night, after all these activities had been taking place, and protests,
etcetera, and they were just out there and they were playing music. I’m trying
to figure out how they were playing horns and drums, etcetera, in like zero-degree
weather, because I would not have been able to put my lips on a trumpet. People
were celebrating what they had accomplished, and it was an embodiment of the
values that make us care about other people.
Italian-born conductor Gianandrea Noseda surely understands the combustible mix of art and politics, even as he and the National Symphony Orchestra contend with coming years without their home at the Kennedy Center now that President Trump has opted to shutter it, ostensibly for renovations in the wake of embarrassing cancellations. I would not be without Noseda’s compelling recordings of Alfredo Casella’s symphonies and other orchestral gems, even though Casella was a stooge for fascist dictator Mussolini. His works nonetheless demand attention and offer tremendous satisfaction. Yet I worry about Noseda’s own National Symphony Orchestra composer-in-residence – talented African-American composer Carlos Simon, an artist in the tradition of William Grant Still and William Dawson who often employs in engaging ways black themes and black subject matter in his wonderfully direct works. Will Simon survive the Trump administration’s determination, demonstrated over the past year, to obliterate from public consideration figures and feats collectively chronicling our nation’s abolitionist, suffragette and civil rights eras, wiped clean from everything from coinage to national park displays? If such periods vanish from our historical retellings, along with their rousing lessons of progress in fulfilling the vision of the Declaration of Independence, what is left to America’s saga on the nation’s 250th birthday but a flat, one-dimensional story of unimpeded conquest by throngs of white people, untroubled by the discrimination that continually tested not only their allegiance to the Declaration but their supposed endowment as exceptional creatures of the Great Enlightenment that so invigorated Washington, Adams, Madison, Jefferson and Paine?
Assuming popular entertainers are artists – and fans,
critics and professional guilds insist upon it – what political and societal messages
might we then draw from the dueling Feb. 9, 2026, Super Bowl halftime performances
of Bad Bunny, a lanky 31-year-old Puerto Rican singer and producer combining Latin
soul, pop and R&B and the National Football League’s official act, and Kid
Rock, an oft-volatile 55-year-old country rap-rocker who headlined a rival Turning
Point USA show “in remembrance of Charlie Kirk,” the slain right-wing political
activist famous for challenging students on college campuses about their
beliefs and mounting Turning Point USA conferences for young people that often enough
revealed a cataclysm of conflicting thought masquerading as American conservativism.
“Like most Americans, I’ve enjoyed watching the Super Bowl,” proclaimed Rev. Franklin
Graham, son of Billy and steadfast supporter of Trump, in an X post four days
before Super Bowl LX. “But the halftime shows began pushing moral boundaries
and have become more and more sexualized. This year, they’re having Bad Bunny
perform. The NFL leadership is pushing this sexualized agenda. Thank you, TPUSA
and Mrs. Erika Kirk for providing an alternative – ‘The All-American Halftime
Show’ with the agenda of celebrating family, faith and freedom!”
Bad Bunny – the showtime monicker for Benito Antonio
Martínez Ocasio, the son of a truck driver and a schoolteacher from the Puerto
Rico coastal town of Vega Baja – offered halftime spectators a bewildering but joyous
show that, rather than showcasing the reverend’s claimed sexual deviancy, bowed
to the full racial, ethnic, gay and feminist spectrum of Super Bowl viewership –
in short, the American diversity, equity and inclusion so vilified by
Trump and MAGA as “DEI.” Complete with supporting performances by post-modern
diva Lady Gaga, Latin star Ricky Martin, concert-hall conductor Giancarlo
Guerrero and a real wedding on the field, it championed the legitimacy and intrinsic
value of all people throughout the Western Hemisphere, including Martínez
Ocasio’s oft-marginalized home of Puerto Rico – for all purposes a U.S. colony. Interpretations were left to each viewer, of course, and many
reveled primarily in the show’s intoxicating Latin rhythms and rollicking choreography,
yet one could view this 13-minute dance extravaganza as a rejection of the Trump
administration’s so-called “Donroe Doctrine” – a Trump-styled corollary to
the 1823 Monroe Doctrine proclaiming U.S. dominance over the Western Hemisphere
– and at the very time Trump oversaw the brutal detention and lawless deportation
of immigrants who had taken refuge in the United States – many of them legally –
from more perilous stretches of our hemisphere.
The elaborate sugar-cane set erected on the football field likely
puzzled some spectators but clearly represented Puerto Rico’s past as an economic
bonanza for 19th-century sugar investors while conferring on Puerto
Ricans second-class citizenship – a consequence of their island’s subjugation by
the United States in 1898 (during the McKinley administration that has so
intrigued Trump in his second term) and its sustained existence as a U.S. “commonwealth”
when some Puerto Ricans yearned for outright independence and others pressed
for statehood. The spectacle of Latinos scaling utility poles during the halftime show conveyed
Puerto Rico’s infamous electrical grid problems, further aggravated after deadly
Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in 2017 and the first Trump administration
withheld billions of dollars in congressionally appropriated federal
assistance. Many of us remember Trump, during a visit to Puerto Rico just after
the hurricane, playfully tossing paper-towel rolls to desperate Puerto Ricans –
a display that represented to many observers demeaning and stingy Yankee patronage. “I
was having fun, they were having fun,” Trump said. “They said, 'Throw ’em to
me! Throw ’em to me, Mr. President!’” One noted irony, too, in Bad Bunny’s
placing the Grammy Award he’d won days earlier into the tiny hands of a child, possibly
symbolizing Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old boy famously captured by U.S. immigration
agents while walking home from his school in a Minneapolis suburb and subsequently
detained in Texas with his father till an outraged federal judge ordered their
release while invoking passages from the Declaration of Independence. “Observing
human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for
unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and
are bereft of human decency,” Judge Fred Biery observed of the Trump immigration
blitzkrieg in his Jan. 31 order. “And the rule of law be damned.” Bad Bunny's awarding the Grammy to a child may well have constituted a statement on Trump's notorious coveting the honors of others.
Whatever else, the Super Bowl halftime show bolstered the idea
of inclusiveness and mutual respect as valued humanitarian traits of Western Civilization,
one that would surely command the endorsement of Jesus if not Rev. Graham. And
it was largely wholesome. As it ended, Bad Bunny paused in his Spanish lyrics
to proclaim, “God bless America,” then list all the countries of the Americas: “Chile.
Argentina. Uruguay. Paraguay.
Bolivia. Peru. Ecuador. Brazil. Colombia. Venezuela. Panama. Costa Rica.
Nicaragua. Honduras. El Salvador. Guatemala. Mexico. Cuba. Dominican Republic. Jamaica.
The United States. Canada.” Then he added: “Mi patria, Puerto Rico. Seguimos
aquí.” Translation: My homeland, Puerto Rico. We are still here.” A Super Bowl jumbotron
added on cue: “THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE.”
I mostly enjoyed the Turning Point USA halftime show,
particularly Gabby Barrett’s beguiling mix of pop and country. Yet this cultural
counterpoint to the official Bad Bunny halftime act had the feel of an insular,
antiseptic, studio-produced video relying on atmospheric lighting for effect. I
wasn’t surprised to learn it was pre-taped and not performed live in the manner
of Bad Bunny’s showpiece. Yet for those seeking “all-American” music, it offered
refuge from such volatile issues as inclusiveness, such as when Lee Brice sang in
“Country Nowadays” of gender politics and fears for his children: “It ain’t
easy being country in this country nowadays.” So far as all the proclaimed wholesomeness
went, Turning Point USA clearly hoped fans would look past headliner Kid Rock’s
background, including a 1999 sex tape; a 2004 Super Bowl appearance that saw
him cut a hole in a U.S. flag and wear it as a poncho; and lyrics to one of his
songs exclaiming: "Young ladies, young ladies, I like ’em underage see, some
say that's statutory, but I say it's mandatory" – supposedly Kid Rock’s
statement on rap music. He was certainly not showcased as an almighty repentant
sinner who had rebuked his past – supposedly the one and only qualification for
born-again status among evangelical Christians such as Rev. Graham.
Coming at a time when Trump, a Turning Point USA idol, sought
to divert MAGA’s focus from the scandalous Epstein files and his inclusion in them
– a consequence of his playboy past for which he offered no apologies and sought
no forgiveness, divine or otherwise – the enlisting of Kid Rock understandably raised
cries of cultural incoherence. Combined with Turning Point USA’s political endorsement
a day later of Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for U.S. senator –
a man investigated and indicted for securities fraud, a man whose wife in 2025 divorced
him for adultery on “biblical grounds,” a man who faced claims of bribery and
abuse of office leveled by his own high-ranking, staunchly conservative staffers, only to escape any consequences through strictly partisan intervention during
an impeachment trial in 2023, a man whose federal lawsuit on behalf of President Trump
in the disputed 2020 election sought to invalidate the votes of U.S. citizens in
four other states to secure Trump’s victory – one must seriously question Turning
Point USA’s counsel to young Christian conservatives. And everyone could form
his or her own conclusion about Kid Rock’s droning, as if on cue, “There’s a
book that’s sitting in your house somewhere that could use some dusting off.
There’s a man who died for all our sins hanging from the cross. You can give
your life to Jesus and he’ll give you a second chance.”
Perhaps this is why the alternative halftime show produced
by Turning Point USA ended with a quick video of Charlie Kirk quotations, obviously
spliced together from different occasions, yet stamping the show, as if from
the grave, in ways that likely still met with Rev. Graham’s approval. “I want
to honor God in all that I do,” Kirk proclaims. “I want to be a great husband,
a great father. I want to serve this country. I want to try to continue to lead
this movement and to speak truth and to never lie, to stop thinking about
yourself all the time and instead think about what you should do to help other
people and defend your country above yourself. I am so inspired. This army of
freedom fighters – we’re going to be around the next hundred, 200 years,
because we know in the end our ideas will win.” So, in the end, this show too
resorted to strong political and societal messaging, certainly more exclusionary
than Bad Bunny’s with the latter's culminating utterance during halftime, “God bless America,”
and his holding up a football inscribed: “TOGETHER WE ARE AMERICA.”
Amidst claims by far-right observers that the Super Bowl halftime show featured a “foreigner” (when in fact headliner Martínez Ocasio is a U.S. citizen), President Trump declared from on high that the show was “absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER.” He faulted it because “[n]obody understands a word this guy is saying” – most of the lyrics were, indeed, in Spanish – “and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching.” This condemnation – and by a man who cheated on his third wife (the current first lady) with a pornographic film star and whose 2016 presidential campaign was nearly undone by his “grab-’em-by-the-pussy” braggadocio in the infamous Hollywood Access tape – proved that, notwithstanding the sets and symbolism, Trump lacks the cognitive abilities of which he regularly brags to discern Bad Bunny’s unifying message or else he knows little of his own country’s history and nothing of the destructive racism manifested in his ongoing immigration raids targeting people of color in his own country. It also proves again he has no shame. “I saw the halftime show – we were switching back and forth with the TPUSA halftime show,” MAGA Congressman and former TV news anchor Mark Alford ranted on Real America’s Voice, a right-wing news venue that broadcast the TPUSA show. “The lyrics from what we've seen from Bad Bunny are very disturbing. And if it holds true – I don't speak fluent Spanish, OK, I know how to ask where the bathroom is – but if it's true what was said on national television, we have a lot of questions for the entities that broadcast this and we'll be talking with Brendan Carr from the FCC. This could be much worse than the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction." MAGA Congressman Andy Ogles declared: “The Bad Bunny performance is conclusive proof that Puerto Rico should never be a state.” Even Kid Rock afterward piled on Bad Bunny for his mostly Spanish lyrics – a clear case of poor sportsmanship and ironic for a guy whose famous song “Bawitdaba,” performed on the Turning Point USA show, includes the lyrics: “Bawitdaba, da-bang, da-bang, diggy-diggy-diggy/Said the boogie, said up drop the boogie/Bawitdaba, da-bang, da-bang, diggy-diggy-diggy/Said the boogie, said up jump the boogie/Bawitdaba, da-bang, da-bang, diggy-diggy-diggy/Said the boogie, said up drop the boogie/Bawitdaba, da-bang, da-bang, diggy-diggy-diggy/Said the boogie, said up jump the boogie.”
Meanwhile, seasoned political observer Ron Brownstein marveled at
Trump and MAGA’s stunning failure to realize the damage they were doing to their
political brand amid approaching 2026 midterm elections after drawing the robust support of Hispanic men in 2024: “How it began:
confident post-’24 predictions of a Trump realignment among young Latino men.
How it's going: multiple Republicans demanding a federal investigation of
probably the most popular young Latino man in the U.S., maybe the world?” For
his part, former President Obama opined of the National Football League
halftime show: “This is what a community is. People who did not speak Spanish
and have never been to Puerto Rico, they saw that elderly woman serving a drink
and the kids dancing with their grandmas. It was intergenerational. It was a
reminder of what Dr. King called the beloved community can look like.”
Philip Glass’ withdrawal of his symphony, planned for
performance just weeks ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary of
the Declaration of Independence (from which Lincoln drew so much inspiration)
comes on the heels of other high-profile Trump-Kennedy Center cancellations
ranging from jazz artist Chuck Redd to famed classical soprano Renee Fleming to
the stunning announcement by the Washington National Opera that it would seek a
new home beyond the reach of Trump’s chaotic and financially incompetent administration.
And no American should doubt the sincerity of these gestures, divisive though
they may well be. They may be “woke,” as Trump and his appointed center
president Richard Grenell charge, but are their principles any less relevant, less
earnest, than, say, country singer Lee Greenwood’s principles or Kid Rock’s principles
or Ted Nugent’s or Lee Bruce’s? Kid Rock said the Super Bowl halftime show, in
his opinion, constituted “another middle finger to conservatives, to MAGA, you
know, to the crowd, to my base.” What then of the middle finger MAGA-endorsed
artists display as their fans delight in liberals’ tears?
Likely hoping to forestall more embarrassment (i.e., the
prospect of threadbare Trump-Kennedy Center performing arts seasons enlivened
by, say, music by Nugent and Kid Rock and maybe the occasional gun show), Trump
determined the Trump-Kennedy Center, “if temporarily closed for Construction,
Revitalization and Complete Rebuilding, can be, without question, the finest
Performing Arts Facility of its kind, anywhere in the World.” Trump more likely
seeks to overhaul the center so he can better justify prematurely adding his
name to the place. Or perhaps he’s demonstrating contempt for established Kennedy
Center patrons who don’t applaud his efforts to name the place after himself or
drive off performing artists. Who grounded in reality would put it past him?
So much for the “America First” priorities of bringing down
grocery prices and taming inflation that I heard from Trump voters back in 2024.
Eggs, indeed!
Let’s face it: Trump’s road to American greatness pivots less
on “America First” and more on “America Me,” building anew or converting
existing landmarks to somehow glorify himself – bulldozing the East Wing of the
White House without consulting proper authorities to build a gargantuan
ballroom for parties, a structure almost dwarfing the White House; eyeing land nearby
to build a 250-foot-tall “Arc de Trump” eclipsing the nearby Lincoln Memorial and
Paris’ own 164-foot Arc de Triomphe (named for those who fought and died in
Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars); and claiming top billing over John F. Kennedy’s
on a performing arts center dedicated as a “living memorial” to the slain
president – and, atop all this, claiming honors in no way earned or deserved.
Trump’s hunger to shower himself with tributes dominates all else, explaining
his shameful acceptance of a Nobel Peace Prize from the Venezuelan political
activist who actually won it – and who, in cravenly awarding it to Trump at a
time when he was warring against his own people in the streets with brutal federal
immigration forces, arguably disgraced herself in the bargain.
One must also acknowledge President Trump’s accepting a
specially created “FIFA Peace Prize” from servile FIFA President Gianni
Infantino during the glittery and embarrassing 2026 World Cup draw at, yes, the
Trump-Kennedy Center, ostensibly for his exaggerated claims of settling several
wars. What’s more, Politico and the New York Times reported this month that
Trump administration officials pressured (unsuccessfully) Democratic leader
Chuck Schumer to name New York’s Penn Station and Washington Dulles
International Airport after President Trump in exchange for releasing billions
of congressionally approved dollars the president had frozen for a rail tunnel
under the Hudson River. Trump meanwhile has demanded the commissioning of a
second official presidential portrait for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait
Gallery as part of its permanent exhibit, “America’s Presidents,”
notwithstanding one commissioned of artist Ronald Sherr by a pro-Trump PAC and
completed before Sherr's death in 2022. And a presidential photo of Trump –
itself a replacement of an earlier photo representing him – now greets tourists
at the gallery, though the accompanying text has been replaced, including a
passage that noted, accurately: “Impeached twice, on charges of abuse of power
and incitement of insurrection after supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on
January 6, 2021, he was acquitted by the Senate in both trials.” And so the
great man also rewrites history.
Meanwhile, like corrupt emperors from decaying days of Rome,
Trump dishonors the visions of our nation’s founders by delighting the delusional
subjects who revere him with such religious fervor by offering them displays of
cruelty on which they can gorge and sanctify themselves – the abducting, and without
judicial warrant or legal recourse, of people of color, some U.S. citizens,
some legal immigrants, to detain and possibly deport; the frenzied shooting
deaths of citizens who dare emulate virtues of our forefathers by protesting such
crimes; criminalization of patriotic politicians who dare exercise their First
Amendment right to criticize him and his policies, yet another reversal of
rights conservatives once fervently championed. He dangles de facto
bribes over the American masses, vowing to send them $2,000 checks while he and
his administration sink our nation deeper and deeper into federal debt, all
while he and his family find new ways to enrich themselves as they use their
power to benefit those who bow before him. A Jan. 20, 2026, analysis by the New
York Times found Trump “has used the office of the presidency to make at least
$1.4 billion,” which the editorial board said was most assuredly an underestimate.
This includes the Trump family’s earning $23 million in licensing his name
overseas, $28 million from an indulgent documentary on the first lady and a
$400 million jet gifted to him by the government of Qatar that he will use
privately after his presidency. To conclude, the Times editorial board noted
gravely: “Aristotle, writing more than 2,000 years ago, saw clearly and warned
that a government whose leaders worked to enrich themselves might still call
itself a republic, and might still go through the motions, but when the aim of
government shifts from public good to private gain, its constitution becomes an
empty shell. The government is no longer for the people.”
It’s to the Kennedy family’s credit they look past the
humiliation heaped upon their family, not only by Trump and MAGA disciples but
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and instead express faith
and resolve about the future – a very Lincolnesque thing to do – even as
President Trump seems to have declared war on half the nation – specifically, the
half that didn’t vote for him. God forbid he try to win them over through noble
deed worthy of posterity’s blessing rather than self-gratification or self-gain.
Worse, he pursues his war on the people by defying federal courts and disregarding
constitutional safeguards while deploying masked, armed paramilitary federal
forces to harass and threaten and even kill without accountability. And at
least a third of our nation, hopelessly corrupted in mind and soul, cheers him
on – a testament, again, to the loss of public virtue the founders not only
feared but realized might well consign our country to irreversible decline. And
so we now witness this decline to the astonishment of the world – with much of this
fast-spreading rot unfolding at the Trump-Kennedy Center.
“President John F. Kennedy believed that one day this
country would live up to its promise of justice and equal rights for all,”
former Congressman Joe Kennedy III, grandson of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, said in
a stoic, even sunny Feb. 1 social-media post. “For those beliefs and for his
sacrifice, Congress voted to make the Kennedy Center a living memorial to him,
as a place built by the people for the people to celebrate what connects us.
While this trespass on the people’s will is painful, President Kennedy would
remind us that it is not buildings that define the greatness of a nation. It is
the actions of its people and its leaders. So, do not be distracted from what
this administration is actually trying to erase: our connection, our community
and our commitment to the rights of all.”
Perhaps some public good might come of Trump's self-aggrandizement
if he fails to destroy the nation before his time ends. His pursuit of monuments
acknowledging his imagined greatness – say, an Arc de Trump if actually dubbed
that – may one distant day testify to the folly of short-sighted Americans of
our times who failed to learn from the first Trump presidency, including its
alienation of global allies in an increasingly dangerous world, its bungling of
a deadly pandemic that unnecessarily cost more lives of trusting constituents and,
finally, his own conspiracy to overthrow an election he lost. Such a monument
would testify of a people foolishly reelecting Trump rather than trusting in a
black woman as president, no matter how flawed she might have been as a political
candidate. Mediocrity, if indeed that, might outweigh retribution and self-glorification
and corruption. The concern is that such an Arc de Trump may also stand as a
monument to the republic's downfall because some Americans expected their
leaders to entertain them, bread-and-circuses style, complete with the Ultimate
Fighting Championship’s mixed-martial arts fight planned at
the White House on occasion of the 250th, and other Americans sought a
leader to make fellow citizens suffer for differing politics, represented in Trump’s
ongoing efforts to withhold public health and transportation money from Democratic-led
states. If the mammoth arc is constructed, it should deservedly include the inscribed
names of Republican congressmen and congresswomen and the Supreme Court of the
United States who allowed this travesty to unfold.
During a series of interviews with aging composer Roy Harris
in the 1960s encompassing not only Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas in 1963 but
Harris’ 1964 orchestral tribute to the late president – “Epilogue to Profiles
in Courage: JFK,” arguably the composer’s last great work – Harris cited the absolute
importance of character, the sort he recognized in Serge Koussevitsky’s
leadership of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the time the Russian-born
conductor commissioned of Harris “a big symphony from the West” – ultimately,
Harris’ rough-hewn but majestic, all-American “Symphony 1933,” the first
American symphony to be commercially recorded:
We need that kind of leadership, people who have
convictions and who will stand for them right to the very end, who will stand
right down to the line for what they believe in. That's terribly important,
isn't it? So, I have great gratitude in my heart for each one of these people
that I've spoken of to you. They are in my mind all the time. There are other
people who are very important in the world that I never did see. There are a few
that I would just like to mention. They all have the same characteristic, the
sense of the importance of being sincere, honest, direct and forthright.
Voltaire was one. Christ certainly was one. Whitman was one. Lincoln was one.
They are all the same way. They all had the same tremendous belief in the
importance of doing the best they knew how.
Born in a log cabin in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, Harris paid
tribute to President Lincoln in his 1944 “Gettysburg” symphony, an alternately
shimmering and vigorous half-hour work dedicated to American servicemen in
World War II. Harris’ insights only encourage how many approach this work, even
though the composer long worried he fell short in the deed. The same goes for his
1953 chamber work “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight,” setting to music Springfield
native Vachel Lindsay’s poem on Lincoln, his spirit restlessly roaming the
streets beyond his grave, agonizing and grieving and mulling over new perils and
new trials so immense they give him no peace: “A bronzed, lank man! His suit of
ancient black, a famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl make him the quaint
great figure that men love, the prairie-lawyer, master of us all. He cannot
sleep upon his hillside now. He is among us, as in times before! And we who
toss and lie awake for long, breathe deep and start, to see him pass the door.”
Lindsay’s poem and Harris’ sorrowful music suggest Lincoln’s conscience and
example prod those among the living to similarly battle injustice and
inequality.
Of course, all this pivots on Americans being able to not
only recognize character when they see it in political candidates but also perceive
hopelessly flawed characters and the errant artists who pay tribute to them. As
unabashed Lincoln admirer Theodore Roosevelt observed in his 1913 autobiography:
"A vote is like a rifle: Its usefulness depends upon the character of the
user." And how then is one to regard, for instance, the man who envisioned
Rocky Balboa when he compares this iconic all-American underdog to an
unquestioned demagogue, narcissist and grifter in chief who inherited his
wealth? Consider Sylvester Stallone’s observations at the America First gala at
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in November 2024 after a plurality of American voters chose
to return Trump to power, notwithstanding his triggering a violent uprising at
the U.S. Capitol in 2021 to stave off election defeat, notwithstanding his grand
jury indictment in 2023 for employing "dishonesty, fraud and deceit"
to subvert the 2020 election with "pervasive and destabilizing lies about
election fraud,” notwithstanding his vow of retribution if reelected in
2024 – a vow reaffirmed when the White House posted a Trump quote on Presidents
Day 2026, indicative of his continuing state of
mind: “I was the hunted and now I’m the hunter.” Stallone’s tribute:
When I did “Rocky,” if you’ll remember, the first image
was a picture of Jesus and it said, “Resurrection AC Club.” I found a church
that had been converted to a boxing ring. So the image pans down from Jesus
onto Rocky being hit and, at that moment, he was the chosen person. And that’s
how I began the journey. Something was going to happen, this man was going to
go through a metamorphosis and change lives, just like President Trump. [Cheers
amid the Mar-a-Lago audience.] We’re in the presence of a really mythic character.
I love mythology and this individual does not exist on this planet. Nobody in
the world could’ve pulled off what he pulled off, so I’m in awe. [More cheers.]
And I’ll just say this, and I mean it: When George Washington defended his
country, he had no idea that he was going to change the world, because without
him you can imagine what the world would look like. Guess what? We got the
second George Washington!
Ironically, too few Americans peruse George Washington’s
Farewell Address as once did, with the inevitable result many of us, far removed
from the very foundational principles Washington helped forge, will allow knee-jerk,
unquestioning partisanship cloaked in empty patriotism to lead us down the path
Washington so dreaded toward the end of his career of public service:
Let me now take a more comprehensive view and warn you in
the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party,
generally. This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having
its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different
shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled or repressed; but,
in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly
their worst enemy. The alternate domination of one faction over another,
sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in
different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is
itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and
permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline
the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an
individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able
or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes
of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.
As we contemplate Lincoln’s passing birthday – in effect merged
with Washington’s, trivializing the towering contributions of each and equating
them forever with mattress sales – and as we approach the Declaration’s 250th
birthday in a nation where many Americans reject its lofty aims except when
such aims benefit them alone, let those with any sense of this once-great nation
return to Lincoln’s insights expressed to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield.
His insights focus on not only America’s hard-won political institutions but regrettable
tendencies toward outright mobocracy, including the death in St. Louis of a mulatto
man by the name of McIntosh, “seized in the street, dragged to the suburbs of
the city, chained to a tree and actually burned to death, and all within a
single hour from the time he had been a freeman, attending to his own business
and at peace with the world.” Lincoln added:
Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher
to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the
least particular the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation
by others. As the patriots of ’76 did to the support of the Declaration of
Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and laws let every American
pledge his life, his property and his sacred honor; let every man remember that
to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father and to tear the
character of his own and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws be
breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap.
Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries and in colleges; let it be written
in primers, spelling books and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit,
proclaimed in legislative halls and enforced in courts of justice. And, in
short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let
the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all
sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its
altars.
And let us exercise care, here and now and in the future, in
what altars and institutions we erect to American greatness – and how we
maintain those altars and institutions we already have.
Bill Whitaker spent 45 years as a reporter, editor and columnist in Texas journalism, including a dozen years as Waco Tribune-Herald opinion editor.
