The first night of the Democrat National Convention was impressive. Cory Booker, the junior Senator from New Jersey and once popular choice for Vice-President, performed a riveting speech which highlighted the virtues that tie all Americans together. The truths enumerated in his address reached out to the hearts and minds of every American, dancing honestly from our nation’s founding to the virtues which remain the hallmark of our greatness, our liberty, and our prosperity today.
Booker began by paying homage to the genius and vision of America’s founders and framers of the Constitution; and while he noted their imperfections, he admitted that “those facts and other ugly parts of our history don’t detract from our nation’s greatness. In fact, I believe we are an even greater nation, not because we started perfect, but because every generation has successfully labored to make us a more perfect union“.
Senator Booker, taking the high road, avoided the idealistic impulse to reject all Republican virtues. Instead, he paid respect to the profound importance of “rugged individualism”, while noting that we did not survive and prosper throughout history merely as individuals. Our greatest accomplishments were achieved together. There is a certain brilliance in paying respect to the values of those with whom you disagree, before delivering an expected premise to which your opponents are already prejudiced.
His entire speech was built upon this simply strategy: to acknowledge and show respect for the deeply held beliefs of Republicans, while advocating for and demanding respect in return for the principles which serve as the moral justification for much of the Democrat’s political agenda. Booker’s speech completely lacked that angry and idealistic progressive flair, harkening back to a simpler time when Liberalism wasn’t unpatriotic or reckless, nor its intentions unattainable. Booker’s message was decidedly patriotic, inclusive, optimistic, and moral.
This is the high call of patriotism. Patriotism is love of country. But you can’t love your country without loving your countrymen and countrywomen. We don’t always have to agree, but we must empower each other, we must find the common ground, we must build bridges across our differences to pursue the common good. TIME
While we knew where he’s going, we could find no lie in his sentiment.
Senator Booker took his shots at Republican Nominee Donald Trump, not to condemn Donald Trump as evil, but rather to charge Trump with the greater crime of having the wrong vision for America and of Americans. Artfully, Booker concluded his attacks on Trump, not with a judgment against The Donald, but with a contrast. “Americans, at our best, stand up to bullies and fight those who seek to demean and degrade others. In times of crisis we don’t abandon our values – we double down on them“.
While you may find yourself disagreeing with the content of his criticism, it is impossible to disagree with the essence of his conclusion.
My fellow Americans, we cannot fall into complacency or indifference about this election, because still the only thing necessary for evil to be triumphant is for good people to do nothing. My fellow Americans, we cannot be seduced into cynicism about our politics, because cynicism is a refuge for cowards and this nation is and must always be the home of the brave. We are the United States of America. We will not falter or fail. We will not retreat or surrender – we will not surrender our values, we will not surrender our ideals, we will not surrender the moral high ground.
Cory Booker speaks directly to the heart of what it means to be an American, driving home the principles which we all ought to believe. As I listened to his speech, I found myself astonished that a Democrat could speak these words with such sincerity and conviction. For if these beliefs were deeply sown in the collective heart of the Democrat Party, we would not be tyrannized with their utterly unprincipled political agenda. In this we discover the brilliance of Cory Booker’s soliloquy.
While real truth, virtue, and history flowed poetically from the Senator’s sermon, it had absolutely nothing to do with the Democrat Party. He could have given the same speech at a dentistry convention in Las Vegas and it would have made as much sense as this speech performed before the Democrat delegates in Philadelphia.
Nothing in this speech justifies or rationalizes the need for irresponsible spending and reckless debt, intrusive regulations that strangle our economy and dull American innovation. Nothing in this speech explains how the federal government has the right to engage in perpetual social engineering. Nothing in Senator Booker’s speech justifies increasingly higher taxes (in their many creative forms), subsidies to America’s most powerful industries, handcrafted legislation purchased and written by special interests on K Street, or bailouts for the banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and Wall Street criminals who detonated an economic atom bomb at the center of the American economy.
The beautiful vision trumpeted from behind the podium wasn’t even relatable to the majority of delegates in The City of Brotherly Love.
Here in Philadelphia, let us declare again that we will be a free people. Free from fear and intimidation. Let us declare that we are a nation of interdependence, and that in America love always trumps hate. Let us declare, so that generations yet unborn can hear us. We are the United States of America; our best days are ahead of us.
Free people? Free from fear and intimidation? Love trumping hate? Mentioning of the unborn?
Senator Booker, the very foundations of American freedom are continually under assault by the Democrat Party. The 1st, 2nd, 6th, 9th, and 10th amendments exist today despite the best efforts of our Democrat legislators in Washington D.C. Fear and intimidation are the beating heart of the federal bureaucracy your party created. Yes, the Democrat Party treats the citizens of this country as interdependent, serving as the arbiters of natures just inequalities, but this was never about love. This is about power. This is about envy. This is about greed.
Furthermore, thanks to the Democrat Party, generations of the unborn were never born! The most persecuted class of citizen in the United States of America are our unborn children, slaughtered out of motivations no more virtuous than racism (eugenics), irresponsibility, and self-interest.
This was a speech you had no right to give. You are the obstacle to every virtue to which you paid lip service this evening; and so, what I imagine will go down as the greatest speech of the 2016 Democrat Convention, will also be the most dishonest, hypocritical, and unjust.
