We’re in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, overlooking Lake Superior, reading Yale professor Timothy Snyder’s new book, On Freedom. As we prepare for our journey home on a clear, windy, blue sky day, On Freedom is a helpful, pre-election companion.
Snyder was influenced by Vaclav Havel, the Czech dissident who became president. Snyder introduces his Yale students to Havel’s 1989 essay, “The Power of the Powerless,” a profound meditation on freedom. Snyder’s words about Havel help me understand today’s Republican Party in the US:
Havel (describes) Czechoslovakia … adaptation to the party line, even though no one believed it expressed anything beyond the convenience of the powerful. Normality in this sense … has no substance, only form. It is the habit of saying (and then thinking) what seems necessary, while agreeing implicitly (and then explicitly) that nothing really matters. Life becomes an echo chamber….
The pretending was what Havel called “unfreedom,” the concession of the authentic self. … Modern tyranny, Havel concluded, required not devotion but predictability.
In my 8th grade typing class, one of the drills was to type, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.” I didn’t expect to live long enough to actually see it, but we’re in that time now. It’s time for Dems to work and vote for Kamala Harris for reasons readers of this blog understand. Republicans need to work and vote for Harris as well, not just for the well-being of our nation and world, but also for the long-term survival of the Republican Party.
Each step toward conformity with Donald Trump makes the Republican Party more predictable and less alive. Few Republican leaders have Liz Cheney’s courage. John McCain did. He understood freedom. He would be on the stage with Cheney and Kamala Harris. I believe the spirit of George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Abraham Lincoln is there, too. Those still alive must speak for themselves.
Photo by Cathey Leach of Lake Superior from the Summit Peak, Porcupine Mountains State Park, Michigan
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