GREENSBORO – Years ago, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, two friends and I began organizing high school exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Republics in hopes of reducing some of the tensions between our countries. At one point we had a group of students here from Latvia and they happened to be here on Martin Luther King’s birthday. I gave a speech to them that afternoon at the Washington County Courthouse. One young girl asked if she could have a copy of my speech.
That afternoon I talked to the students about the rule of law and about how sometimes even laws that are adopted democratically aren’t just. I talked about our Constitution and the importance of our Bill of Rights in protecting us from unjust laws. I talked about how an institution as horrible as slavery could exist even with our Bill of Rights. I talked about how, underneath a healthy democracy there had to be a fundamental morality dependent on the conscience of its people. And I talked about Thoreau’s essay on non-violent Civil Disobedience and the work of people like Martin Luther King to move our country to adopt the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Some years later the Soviet Union collapsed. Out of that collapse a dozen or so new countries were born, desperate to be free and to build democratic governments. One of those countries was Latvia, and like all of the other fragile new democracies born out of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Latvia was faced with the challenge of building a new legal system. At one point, after the collapse, people in the Latvian government contacted me and asked if I could help write new land-use planning laws. I called some of the best attorneys in Vermont and they all agreed to help. When we were in the capital, Riga, I wondered what had become of the students that years ago we had brought to Vermont.
I contacted one of their teachers who stayed in touch with these students and she organized a luncheon in downtown Riga. Some of the students had become lawyers. Some were working for the new Parliament. During the luncheon one of those young people pulled a tattered set of papers out of her handbag. It had been written all over in pencil. Words and sentences had been underlined and it had become frayed with use and time. It was the same girl I had given a copy of my speech to on Martin Luther King’s birthday years earlier.
I can’t describe the feeling of humility that came over me that day, understanding how committed these young people were to building freedom and democracy. I worked in Ukraine as well as in Latvia and I am sure that when the Maidan Revolution came to that country some of our exchange students were there fighting in Maidan Square when that winter was on fire for freedom.
Latvia was fortunate enough to be admitted to NATO. Ukraine was not. I have stood on the sands of Omaha Beach. I have wandered through the American Cemetery in Normandy and I have felt the spirit of sacrifice and honor that permeates those places.
In a world where so much has been sacrificed for freedom and democracy, where so many in countries like Latvia and Ukraine thirst for freedom and struggle to build new democracies it is obscene that a man who is a serious contender for the presidency of the United States would suggest that Russia should attack these people. It is obscene that this man is devoid of an appreciation for the importance of NATO or the sacrifice that lays at its foundation.
That one man can be so ignorant is perhaps forgivable. What is unforgivable is that our country that has fought for so long and hard to build and defend freedom and democracy can have a Congress full of dozens of quislings like Mike Johnson and Kevin McCarthy who continue to pay fealty to this man.
There is a young woman today living in Riga, Latvia, who understands more about freedom than all of these so-called leaders combined. The spirit one feels standing on the sands of Omaha beach is alive and well in Latvia and Ukraine. But it is dying in the United States Congress and I tremble for the future of our country when I think the man they bow to could be president.
(David Kelley serves as treasurer of Northeast Kingdom Public Journalism, publisher of The Hardwick Gazette.)
