Artwork by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
Sometimes we find our greatest strengths in the strangest places. One of our most fierce advocates for fighting climate change is an eighteen-year-old Swedish high school student. An outspoken advocate for woman’s rights is a twenty-three-year-old Pakistani who nearly died in an assassination attempt. That didn’t frighten her; if anything, it made her more determined. In the waning days of World War II, a twenty-one-year-old University of Munich student was executed by the Nazi Government for treason—distributing anti-war leaflets. Some of the survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting began their campaigns for responsible gun laws as teens and continue their work today.
We don’t ordinarily expect our greatest and most outspoken advocates to be children, but it happens more often than we think. Young people seem to be the only ones still shocked by the carnage of mass shootings, the increasing specter of global climate disaster, or the treatment of girls and women in oppressive regimes. The grown-ups shrug, seeming to accept the status quo. They understand how things are done, how one hand washes the other, and to know how things get done. They know not to rock the boat, not to be the squeaky wheel, and how to stay in their lanes. They know where the money is and who is really running things. Kids don’t know these things, and—more importantly, they don’t care.
Their naivete is sort of a shield; in their righteousness, these young people are able see injustice without filters and without excuses. And they—with feelings of unqualified immunity—freely speak their minds. They are willing to take the high road. Those, like Malala Yousafzai and Sophie Scholl, who risked their lives for their causes, deserve that much more credit.
Our adult leaders, who apparently have so much more to lose than our budding activists, are more reluctant to put their reputations or careers—much less their lives—on the line. American Senators wield enormous power; many of them have amassed huge fortunes over their decades working in government. Most of them depend on lobbyists, political action committees, and their party apparatus to keep their jobs and stay in power. They can’t afford to alienate their masters, to bite the hands that feed them.
This—unfortunately—somewhat explains the silence of most members of the Republican Party as the more extreme fringes of the Freedom Caucus (mostly extremist Trump supporters) continue to support the lie that the election was stolen from Donald Trump and that the invasion of the Capitol Building on January 6th was excusable. One representative even absurdly compared the insurrectionists to a group of tourists. Appallingly, the silence stretches on and on. Even more moderate Republican voices like Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins have not voiced opposition to the extremist Trumpian vitriol.
A number of retired Republicans, including former Governors Tom Ridge and Christine Todd Wittman, ex-House members Reid Ribble and Charlie Dent, as well as dozens of former ambassadors and Cabinet members, have threatened to break off from the Republicans in order to form their own third party. Yet none of them are active office holders; they have nothing to lose by speaking their minds.
The sole voice of reason and integrity coming from the political right belongs to neoconservative Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, daughter of the acerbic and ruthless former vice-president Dick Cheney. Ms. Cheney has, time and again, in direct opposition to the party line, disavowed the notion that the presidential election was somehow stolen from Donald Trump. In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Ms. Cheney wrote, ““We Republicans need to stand for genuinely conservative principles, and steer away from the dangerous and anti-democratic Trump cult of personality.”
Last week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy led the party in stripping Cheney of her party leadership, cementing the bond between the Republican Party and Trump, while at the same legitimizing Trump’s claim that the election was stolen.
Representative Cheney stands virtually alone. Only Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois has been a stalwart supporter. He criticized McCarthy for his use of a closed-door voice vote that forestalled any debate on Cheney’s demotion, and ousted her in minutes, stating that it demonstrated “fake unity.”
Ms. Cheney remains unrepentant. On the House floor, she stated, “this is not about policy. This is not about partisanship. This is about our duty as Americans. Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar. I will not participate in that. I will not sit back and watch in silence, while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former president’s crusade to undermine our democracy.”
Even though the Trumpists are sure to front an ultra-conservative challenger in the Republican primary next year, Ms. Cheney is determined to keep her office. After meeting with donors and party supporters, and being assured of their support, she is going to stand up for what she believes in. This malignancy on our democracy has sprung from her own party; maybe she feels it’s partly her responsibility to get rid of it.
I’m not a fan of Ms. Cheney’s politics. I’ve never believed in the neocon theology of trickle-down economics and militarist expansionism. I believed Dick Cheney was at least partly responsible for the unwarranted—and illegal—invasion of Iraq and manipulated interests in the region to make himself and his pals at Halliburton a fortune. But I do believe in our democracy. I do believe in the rule of law. I do believe in integrity. And Liz Cheney has demonstrated all of these.
Although somewhat insulated by her family’s political connections, Ms. Cheney is taking a very real risk; she may very lose her seat and end her career, but she understands that standing up for the rule of law is more important that her own self-interest. Unlike most of her peers and colleagues, she is standing on the principles of truth and democracy rather than the self-serving tactics collusion and self-preservation.
Ms. Cheney has been in public service for years, but that experience does not seem to have dimmed her idealism or mitigated her sense of responsibility. Like our younger activists, she is throwing caution to the winds. What she is doing is admirable and needs to be recognized as such. She is risking it all by taking the high road. She is a hero. She is a patriot.