There’s one element to the attack against Congressman Lee Zeldin that perhaps hasn’t garnered attention. It wasn’t particularly shocking.
Sure, it was detestable and condemned throughout the political spectrum from Governor Kathy Hochul down Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone with nearly every official in between issuing a statement against the matter. But again, not shocking to the point where the world stopped and asked: “How could this happen?”
Because at the end of the day, with violent crime, school shootings and other terrible actions filling our TV screens it is no longer shocking.
There are common, sacred political fibers that must be respected in a representative government, especially when it comes to the elections of our leaders. The first amendment was not a suggestion, it
is the living cornerstone of liberty in a polarized world.
But, respect for our sacred beliefs and our institutions has waned to where it is now. Threats of violence and attacks motivated by politics are once again on the rise. Consistently, we hear stories of gunmen plotting or malicious actors prodding, hoping to incite violence.
It is through our well-established and legally enshrined right to free speech that our politicians derive
the ability to campaign without fear of retribution. The traditions of this land are consistent with the free speech necessary for a vibrant civil life but are we conserving this value?
Our political inheritance is often taken for granted by politicians and actors looking only to push onto their next political objective, seldom thinking about what will follow from their actions. They play checkers in a game of chess.
Our founding fathers were genius because they did not assume that Americans were less prone to despotism than their peers across the world. They did not assume that merely because a people love freedom meant they would have it. They devised a system designed to stifle ambition by placing it against
one another – to harness the faults of men as though building a teepee fire with each log laid upon the heap push against the others making it stand and illuminate the night. Freedom is a chore furnished
through active participation.
But when a generation forgets to place that next log, the teepee is bound to fall and freedom’s light flickers with it.
We need to teach the next generation that what happened to Lee Zeldin and indeed political violence writ large is not the new normal. Sure, it flares up from time to time, roughly every 50 years in the case of the United States. However, these flares are the aberration in our history. They are symptoms of a system in duress.
As we have weathered storms before, this too will pass. Either because of time’s unrelenting march or because we took it upon ourselves to heal the divisions in our neighborhoods and in our country, this too will pass.
One thing is for certain. If we appear through the storm clouds victorious, it will be because prudence prevailed.
