It has always — always — been the outsiders who have forced America to live-up to its ideals.
Once upon a time, because they considered the Pledge of Allegiance a form of idolatry, Jehovah’s Witnesses were set upon by mobs in the public streets, beaten, arrested for disturbing the peace, and then jailed awaiting trial without benefit of medical care — in this country. It was Jewish lawyers who went to the courthouses to defend them, and much modern First Amendment jurisprudence flows from those cases.
It wasn’t smug Southern Baptists who supported the civil rights movement of the 1960s. No. They fired the rare brave pastor who expressed support for blacks, and on a few occasions hung them in effigy.
It isn’t wealthy Republicans — who routinely visit clubs, restaurants, and golf courses where costs are held down by using illegal labor — who are defending the targets of Trump’s inapt Twitter attack — Go home? Here is home, you pathetic idiot. — on the four Congresswomen.
Indeed, FOX News happily piled-on by dishonestly characterizing Ilhan Omar’s defense of herself as ‘profanity-laced’ — though the profanity arose by quoting Trump’s own words.
Ilhan Omar delivers heated, profanity-laced attack on President Trump
Watch it yourself; I thought it was firm, as tasteful as circumstances permit, and a credit to her.
Rep. Ilhan Omar responds to Trump's racist attacks against her and other congresswomen pic.twitter.com/0c8SqWedGV
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) July 15, 2019
I’m not much of a fan of the four Congresswomen Trump attacked. Ocasio-Cortez has charisma and guts but, so far, looks like a flyweight in the brains department; Omar has said things that can reasonably be construed as bigoted against Jews; and I don’t know much about the others. Even so, I applaud them for today’s press conference: They looked a cheap demagogue in the face and said … No more. Right. No more. And it’s a sad ol’ day when four minority women, outsiders, show more backbone and love for their country’s ideals than the whole Republican Party does.
Which is why we need the outsiders and the out-of-step; they are the ones who make America great by holding the country to its ideals.