America is on the ballot; vote for America
My favorite speech is Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s so poetic, maybe because it’s so short and substantive, maybe because it talks about the cycle of life, maybe because it’s Hegelian-lite and my father used to be a Hegelian scholar. I don’t know why.
Four scores and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now, we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.
We are not in a literal civil war, rather a cold civil war. We are indeed testing whether a nation dedicated to values, rather than blood and soil, can endure. Joseph Schumpeter said it couldn’t. Liberalism, he argued, gives rights to those who used them to end liberalism. It’s an intriguing thesis, and it has never looked truer than today.
I am a political conservative. I like low taxes and spending. I haven’t found a foreign conflict I didn’t advocate for the United States to get involved in. I’m pro-life and endorse family values. But I am first and foremost for conserving our institutions, our Constitution, and our way of life.
America is a project, an experiment, a hypothesis. It is asking whether people can be responsible stakeholders of their governments.
When I was growing up in Iran, I always looked at America as the shining city on a hill. I wasn’t alone. My fellows also looked at America as the land of dreams. There was the entire world, and then there was the United States, where everything is perfect. That was a perfect vision of a good yet flawed Country, but it was the beacon of hope.
This race is about that. We are voting, in our minds, about COVID, healthcare, immigration, and other policy issues. But, in reality, America is on the ballot. We are voting on whether we are going to be a Country apart from the rest of the world, the beacon of hope, the voice of the oppressed, a home for the poor, the tired, the hurdled masses, or if we want to be just another country on the map. Are we going to be a kind nation or a selfish one, so selfish that we will destroy ourselves? Schumpeter’s hypothesis on the ballot: Is liberal democracy self-destructive?
We have two candidates on the ballot. Donald Trump represents the worst of America. He represents rugged individualism, selfishness, reduction of country to self. Joe Biden doesn’t represent the best of America. He represents all of America: Good but flawed.
But that’s the thing. In the eyes of most of the world, good but flawed it perfect.
This race is not about policy; it is about our regime, it is about us, it is about what we want America to be.
I love America with the zeal of the convert. I lived a life in Iran I don’t wish upon anybody. I spent most of my life in an oppressed country, learning that it’s eat or be eaten. That’s Donald Trump’s campaign promise, that if red America doesn’t eat blue America, it will be eaten. It is not Joe Biden’s. His message is that there is only one America. America’s cold civil war will not end as long as Trump is throwing fuel at the fire. I don’t know what kind of President Biden will be, but I know what kind of President Trump is, and Biden isn’t going to be this bad in my wildest dreams.
During the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln said, “We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.” Poetically, Lincoln himself gave his life to that cause, and the nation lived for another century and a half. Lincoln was America’s greatest son. The contrast between Lincoln and Trump cannot be more vivid. Lincoln gave his life to America, and Trump is sacrificing America for his wallet.
In 2016, I wanted Hillary Clinton to win because I knew what kind of President Donald Trump would have made. And I was right. But I joked, a joke I meant, that I was happy that I was not a citizen, so I would not have to choose between Clinton and Trump, two politicians I despised. I am still not a citizen, regrettably this year. I don’t think — I hope not — that I will ever be prouder of my support for a candidate than for Joe Biden. This year, I am not supporting Joe Biden; I am supporting the Union. Joe Biden is just its agent.
