This afternoon I took two of my three children to the protest outside senator Bob Corker’s office. If you’ve been living under a rock, Trump recently blocked refugees and legal residents from five mostly Muslim countries (where he does not hold business interests) from entering the country.
I honestly did not expect Trump to make such a bigoted move so quickly. Nor did I think he would pull it off as badly as he did. Especially worrisome is that he now appears to be snubbing his nose at a court stay of the president’s executive order. That is a serious danger to democracy, folks.
So I turned out to protest. It is one thing I could do. I know enough history to know that first a dictator gets democratically elected and then he dismantles the checks against his power. Of course, this has been underway for years. Greater power has shifted to the executive branch over the past few decades. No leader should be capable of something like this without congressional approval.
I brought my kids because it is important for them to understand what we value as a family. Today was a history lesson. It was a lesson in the past and an expression of our conviction never to repeat it. It is a cliché, but it is true, that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. Well, in our family, nothing is not an option.
