Consider...the Republican candidate mustering the most votes to date is Donald Trump. Donald Trump encourages violence and thuggery, advocates engagement in waterboarding (torture), appeals blatantly to racism, debases religion, and runs his campaign on the fumes of bitterness and hatred. He says he wants to make America great again. America perhaps has never been great in the sense of what it has fully realized, but great rather in the quality of its aspirations and the sincerity of its effort. It began with the Constitution that gave us the Bill of Rights aspiring to and in some sense assuring individual liberty – which in turn is founded upon respect, goodwill, and the Golden rule. This is what has made America a light on the hill, not success at any price, not bearing any burden in the name of greed, not with malice chiseling the rest of the world out of just earnings. To the extent that Donald Trump represents the Republican “Southern strategy” with the bark off, it reveals that effort to be the most cynical of all strategies – not seeking our best as Southerners, but pandering to our failures and worst instincts. As a an American, as a Southerner, I say seven times no to this moral bankruptcy and spillage of raw sewage into the public square.
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