{"id":10793,"date":"2019-08-26T15:03:27","date_gmt":"2019-08-26T19:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=10793"},"modified":"2019-08-26T15:04:55","modified_gmt":"2019-08-26T19:04:55","slug":"quote-for-the-day-195","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=10793","title":{"rendered":"Quote for the day"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As a Foreign Service officer, your job is to support the administration. Without exception. Despite my personal views, I spent more than two years working to carry out the administration\u2019s immigration and foreign policy priorities. I continued to do so until the very minute I handed in my badge and headed to the airport.<\/p>\n

But on Friday, I cleared immigration and officially returned to life as a private citizen. And today I have a new challenge: putting my time and energy into helping elect new leadership that serves the true interests of all Americans, regardless of where they were born.<\/p>\n

Bethany Milton<\/a>, former Foreign Service officer<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wrote more than 2-years ago<\/a> that genuine-article professionals would find themselves in an impossible situation in this grossly incompetent and unprofessional administration.<\/p>\n

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Today, tens of thousands of professionals employed by the federal government are asking themselves: Should I stay, or should I go?<\/p>\n

A column by Ross Douthat in Friday\u2019s New York Times says, basically, \u201cStay. A minority of Americans have somehow contrived to elect an expedient ignoramus who is deeply hostile to your country\u2019s ideals, and now your country needs you more than ever.\u201d A column by David Leonhardt in today\u2019s New York Times echoes Douthat\u2019s argument.<\/p>\n

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We need your professionalism, your expertise, your respect for democratic norms and American values. Stay on. Stay on, please, for your country.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well.<\/p>\n

Certainly, I agree that we have elected an incompetent and ignorant proto-fascist with the instincts of a cheap thug. I sharply disagree that an honorable professional can or should serve under his administration.<\/p>\n

All professional people are expected to abide by some variation of that famous injunction of the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can understand how people get sucked into staying at bad companies and working for incompetent administrations. “My customers\/clients\/wannabe-immigrants need me. I just have to hold on till the next administration,” or “I just have to hold on till the stockholders come to their senses.”<\/p>\n

Nope. All you can accomplish by hanging-on is soiling yourself. Congratulations!<\/i> to Ms. Milton, then, for recognizing that a decent adult cannot serve this government, and resolving to work toward replacing it with something better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a Foreign Service officer, your job is to support the administration. Without exception. Despite my personal views, I spent more than two years working to carry out the administration\u2019s immigration and foreign policy priorities. I continued to do so … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10793"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10793"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10800,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10793\/revisions\/10800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}