Editorial: Resist the urge to start the next Civil War

Hello, everyone.  I hope all the Historic City News family of subscribers had a wonderful Christmas holiday.  We rang out the old year and rang in the hope and opportunity that comes with the new.  Honestly, I think the old year will probably go down as one of the worst.  I am concerned now that unless things change, and change soon, we are doomed to repeat some of our ugliest history.

Anyone who knows me knows that no one holds more love in their heart than me for what happens to St Augustine and St Johns County.  Unlike every city commissioner, and majority of people who are making the decisions for us in both city hall’s and the county administration building, I was born in St Augustine.  I have a lifelong investment here that goes deeper than what I have read in history books and watched on television specials — since the 1950’s, I have lived it. 

Many women and men who live here have set good examples for future leaders.  I have the privilege of knowing quite a few of them and make it a point to listen to what those who want to lead our government have to say.  I have never had a problem sharing with you those things that I have seen or learned so we don’t make the same mistake twice.  I stand with patriots who share my belief that the people are in charge, not the politicians.  I believe in the rule of law as set forth in our Constitution, written specifically to limit the power of our government by insuring the liberties of our citizens.

In the context of the violence we witnessed in the United States Capitol this week, I urge everyone to resist the urge to start the next Civil War.  We learned within the first hours that a St Johns County resident was one of those involved and arrested.  We watched real people in real time as they took long-term measures to solve short term problems.  I absolutely do not want to see more of the same although I can understand the frustration of some of those who occupied the Capitol.

US Republican Senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, gave his reactions today in a video discussing the events and offering his suggestions for how the nation moves forward.

The events that we saw this week should sicken every single one of us. The mob violence like the kind you see in third world countries happened, not just in America, but in your Capitol building. I don’t care what hat they wear or what banner they’re carrying, riots should be rejected by everyone every single time.

Now, are the Left hypocrites? Absolutely. I remember, what they now are calling insurrection, they were justifying just this summer. They were called it the ‘language of the unheard’ when rioters were burning cities. Is the mainstream media — especially places like CNN and MSNBC — outrageously biased? Of course. 100 percent. I remember one of the CNN hosts last summer on the air saying something like ‘tell me where it says protests need to be polite and peaceful.’

And by the way, this kind of blatant bias and double standard is one of the reasons that so many Americans have sought political shelter in divisive political movements and in conspiracy theories that offer the promise of fighting back against it.

But here is what I want you to hear right now: we can’t allow our anger about all that stuff to turn ourselves into them.

Remember what President Nixon said at the White House as he was leaving, after his downfall, one of his lessons. He said, ‘Others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.’ We can’t destroy ourselves.

Now, how do we explain what we said? How could this happen here in America?

It kind of begins with millions of Americans who voted for President Trump. They saw the non-stop bias and double standard in the legacy media, they saw how social media companies covered up stories negative to Joe Biden, they saw how state officials mutilated election integrity laws to help the Democrats. And the result is that you had millions of people who are convinced that the election wasn’t fair and the outcome wasn’t legitimate.  Millions of people. And they wanted something done about it.

And of those millions of people, tens of thousands of them came to Washington, D.C. this week demanding that action be taken, that we do something. Ninety-nine percent of the people who came here had nothing to do with that mob. Nothing. But one percent of tens of thousands of people is a lot of people. It’s enough to inflict damage on buildings, and it’s enough to do even more damage to our country.

Now that we’re looking at what’s going on and learning more about it, there are growing signs that many of those in that mob were believers in a ridiculous conspiracy theory, and others were lied to — lied to by politicians who were telling them that the vice president had the power to change the election results. And the result is that now, four people have died, police officers were seriously injured, and our country was embarrassed before the entire world.

For those of us on the center right of American politics, now is the time that calls for honest reflection.

It wasn’t long ago that we controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House. And, four years later, we’ve lost all three. We need to reflect on why this has happened because this country needs a viable, attractive alternative to the agenda of the radical left.

• We shouldn’t, and we can’t,  go back to the party of 2012 — a party that was frankly out of touch with the unheard voices of millions of working Americans.
• We must continue to fight for working Americans, not for corporations.
• We welcome legal immigrants, but we have to enforce our laws.
• We have to take the threat of China seriously.
• We have to investigate what went wrong in the last election and fix our elections laws, so people can have faith and confidence in them.
• We must continue to call out the media bias instead of being bullied by it. And we must oppose political correctness, social media censorship, identity politics, and this cult of wokeness.

And we can do all these things without indulging the darkest instincts or inciting the most destructive impulses — and without the rhetoric or behavior that keep the millions of Americans who agree with us from joining us in this fight.