By Edwin Cooney
Itty bitty 28-day February's most precious gift is wantonly and deliberately being ignored with plenty of forethought and even malice!
February's gifts include the births of four presidents: Ronald Reagan, William Henry Harrison, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. We are even supposedly at our most romantic every February 14th when we celebrate St. Valentine's Day in America, as we have since 1850. That historic year, Esther Howland, the daughter of a Worcester, Massachusetts merchant, advertised her first valentine in her father's retail catalog. The celebration of Valentine's Day was open to everyone including the free, the imprisoned or those enslaved.
However, as I see it, America's greatest gift is Abraham Lincoln's observation that "a house divided against itself cannot stand." In his time, as our sixteenth president, Mr. Lincoln did everything he could to preserve our Union or, if you prefer, our national unity! Look as you may and you'll find no Abraham Lincoln utterance that disparaged Confederate General Robert E. Lee or even Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Unfortunately, search as you may, you'll find little of that nobility among our leaders or potential leaders in 21st Century politics.
Since the late 1980s when the fairness doctrine was deliberately dropped by President Reagan's Federal Communications Commission, the right to criticize our leadership has turned from a precious right to a profitable industry. Nor can ideological conservatives be exclusively blamed for this state of affairs. Liberal or progressive political leaders have also strived to maximize the effectiveness of their righteous anger.
If nothing else, the passing of Rush Limbaugh last Wednesday, February 17th dramatizes the state of our political affairs. Although I never wished him ill, I can't say that I will miss him. Still, there are millions of perfectly decent Americans to whom his passing is almost a personal loss as he advocated their freedom to despise with utter contempt their political opposites. The sad truth is that there is drama in political dissent that is unfortunately lacking in political unity. I remember that back in 1978, as President Jimmy Carter sought to bring the Israelis and Egyptians together, political critics on both sides seemingly strenuously sought to maximize the factors that would inevitably destroy the Camp David accords. Insofar as I know, the Middle East Accords of March 26th, 1979 remain effective and intact!
Professional critics of all types would be well served to consider the following:
The politically-oriented criminalization of our national leaders in office merely poisons the reputation, effectiveness, and ultimate authority of the office that the critics seek to achieve and glorify! Second, political consensus is what ultimately produces lasting accommodation and ultimate success. Throughout the 1780s, just after our victory in the Revolutionary War, the economic crisis forced our original patriots to establish a constitution that provided a framework for mutual accommodation in economics as well as in politics.
As a Liberal Democrat, my opposition to President Trump up until January 6th, 2021 was primarily political and, yes, personal, but I didn't regard him as a criminal. Nor do I regard conservatism as being criminal, just narrow and mean-spirited when it comes to the comfort and rights of minorities.
The question today is: whose freedom are American ideologues arguing about? If e pluribus unum (out of many, one) can't legitimately prevail, how can little February's most precious gift, national unity, endure? Everyone's plight must matter to a truly free people or else little else matters!
Even more to the point is the question: how “united” is the United States of America in 2021? Does that answer really depend on who is president?
If so, we've got a lot of thinking to do!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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