This was a week of hate in America.
The crimes that shocked our nation this week—attempted political assassination, mass murder—are beyond horrifying.
Between the pipe bombs, the murders at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh that constituted the worse attack on the Jewish community in American history, and the murder of two random black people in Jeffersontown, Kentucky by a racist gunman, we have seen a collision of violent events that hasn’t happened here since the 1960s.
We are grateful to the law enforcement and protective agencies at the national, state and local levels whose vigilance and vigorous responses helped avert calamitous explosions, and we salute the police officers in Pittsburgh who put their lives on the line to stop the shooter there
There is no suspicion that these events were the product of a conspiracy, but we cannot pretend that these events were not connected.
They were tied to one another by hate.
The alleged shooter in Kentucky was a racist. Before opening fire at a supermarket, he tried to enter a black church. His first comment, when arrested, was “Don’t shoot me—whites don’t shoot other whites.’’
In Pittsburgh, the alleged shooter hated Jews. He told arresting officer that he wanted all Jews to die, and made may other virulently anti-Semitic comments on social media.
And then there were the pipe bombs.
As we can see just from the names of the targets, the people who were threatened are for the most part prominent Democrats and critics of President Trump.
It’s essential that we recognize that in each case, the targets were not just people of a race, or a religion, or a political group. In the most profound way, the target of this threatened mayhem was America–our country, our system of values, our way of life.
That way of life is under siege.
Unlike other nations, America is not rooted in a tribe or a patch of land. Some countries are held together by a lengthy lineage, or ancient borders. Our diverse peoples are held together by a vision.
From the very beginning, there was a sense that there was something different about America.
Ours was the New World.
In 1630, before the Puritans left England to settle in Massachusetts, the Rev. John Winthrop delivered a sermon in which he discussed the moral responsibility of building a government in a new land. “We must always consider”, he said, “that we shall be as a city upon a hill—the eyes of all people are upon us”.
More than a century later, that sense of purpose led the Founders to write a Declaration of Independence, which they acknowledged right from the outset. “A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.’’ And then they explained that they were determined to create a government that protected the natural rights of its citizens to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
And 75 years after that, Abraham Lincoln justified the great cost of civil war by invoking America’s special responsibility to “ensure that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.’’
Such ideals have inspired millions of people around the world—inspired them to come here, inspired them to raise the banner of freedom in the own countries.
This sense of mission is something that has consistently driven us.
In 1917, we entered the Great War to make the World Safe for Democracy.
During World War II and the Cold War, we fought and defeated totalitarian governments. Franklin Roosevelt defines our cause as the Four Freedoms— Freedom of speech, Freedom of worship, Freedom from want, and Freedom from fear.
In doing so, President Roosevelt defined the postwar American agenda both foreign and domestic, as we fought communism, but also took a hard, painful look at the ways we fell short of our ideals at home.
Since that time, our president has been called the Leader of the Free World, and nobody disputes that status.
But the New Nationalists in our midst undermine this entire history.
They would make America the same as any other country, just a bundle of interests that compete with other powers for fulfillment. And in the pursuit of those goals, any number of behaviors can become justified: upsetting longstanding alliances, abrogating international agreements, separating refugee parents from their children, banning immigrants of a particular faith, and practicing the politics of division.
And in the minds of some, this nationalism even justifies killing one another.
When this happens, it is more than a hate crime. It is a crime against democracy.
The most fundamental of our beliefs is that ours must be an open society. That means we are not afraid of any ideas, or the people who hold them. We may find some ideas dangerous, or hateful, or ridiculous, simply wrong, but we are not afraid to hear them – or to let people express them. It is a belief that holds that every single person has value, regardless of race or gender or national origin or status in society. And it is so important that we have enshrined this idea in the First Amendment to our Constitution, when we safeguard the rights of citizens from the power of government—and by extension, from the power of political or ethnic or religious majorities
The murderers in Jeffersontown and Pittsburgh, the would-be bomber, deny all of that.
These assailants are afraid of ideas, are afraid of people who articulate them, are afraid of the voices that speak them, are afraid of free debate. They believe that we cannot think for ourselves, and that anyone who differs has no right to live. They would replace the open society characterized by diversity and individual value and discussion and respect with a society ruled by threats and violence.
We have seen this before. We have always had people who have been afraid of the challenges of the moment, whether those challenges came in the form new people, new technology or new ways of thought. We have seen Know Nothings, nativists and America Firsters. We have seen bombings, and beatings, and murders, shameful actions that have become embarrassing stains on the tapestry of our history.
But in these moments of darkness, we have also seen an America that has managed to navigate the storms of social and economic and political changes by focusing on the brilliant vision of our fundamental ideals.
Even through the tumult of our present-day politics, that America is clearly in view. We saw it on Thursday morning, on the day after the threats were first revealed, when millions of Americans of every faith and color and political persuasion got up and went about their business, demonstrating that they would not be terrorized. They would not live fearful lives in the land of the free. And we saw it in Pittsburgh and other places over the weekend when people turned out by the thousands to stand against hate.
In a few days, we will have the chance to show where we stand, and in an even more meaningful way.
On Tuesday, November 6th, mid-term elections will be held across America.
It is likely that you will never vote in a more consequential election.
Please join your fellow citizens in the fundamental expression of our democratic ideals.
Reject fear. Repudiate violence.
Show the people who believe in hate and violence that in our open society, we will not live in fear of one another.