It Doesn’t Get Any Clearer

The good citizens of Hong Kong held massive, if informal, primary elections preliminary to the general elections that are coming up. These are pro-democracy candidates who have been selected, again informally, to stand for election.

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam had this to say about that:

if the pro-democracy camp seeks enough seats to resist government policy, “then it may fall into the category of subverting the state power, which is now one of the four types of offenses under the new national security law.”

Even in the unlikely event that that…camp…were the majority party in the Hong Kong legislature, they can’t be the makers of government policy.

The principle of tyranny doesn’t get any more clearly stated than that.

What Makes Us Strong

…as a nation.  Jack Brewer, CEO of the Brewer Group and advisory board member for Black Voices for Trump (and an NFL great, but that’s a separate story) had some thoughts on this while talking about the short-sightedness of tearing things down rather than adding others to the physical symbolism set.

I think at some point in our country we have to remember what makes us so strong and that is our history and our Constitution. It’s the reason why slaves are actually free, it’s the reason why schools are integrated and it’s the reason why right now you’re seeing us be able to fight for so many rights like school choice, fighting against all these late-term abortions and so many other issues that have oppressed the born and the unborn.

Indeed. It’s all of our history, not just the non-existent perfect parts.

It’s all of our history, the good and the bad. After all, if we don’t retain the bad, we can’t recognize the good we’ve done.

If we don’t retain the bad, we can’t learn from those mistakes and keep on doing good, much less do better.

If we don’t retain the bad, we can’t toughen ourselves against them or against bad in general—every wrong, including the trivial, will send our weak individual selves diving under our beds and our nation bowing to others. And begging.