THE CONSCIENCE OF A CONSERVATIVE

When in due course of human events a woman is faced with career choice that sets her values against her goals...

We are guided by the principle that all it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to remain silent and do nothing.

What should a talented lawyer/judge do when a person of such low values and intellect who occupies the highest office in the land offers them a career defining job like the US Attorney For the Southern District Of Florida?

Gaary Wills, writing in this month's Vanity Fair as one of a group of authors who are presidential historians, finishes his article on Trump thusly:

"People who have crawled to him are feeling the sickness of shame...More people must resign from office on principle. More people must explain why they refused his offers of government jobs. He degrades women. He degrades races and religions. He degrades us."

What would a person of high moral character, integrity, and intelligence like Judge Ariana Fajardo-Orshan  do as US Attorney? Would she enforce immigration policies that deport Dreamers- many of them young, Hispanic men and women who are good Americans in all but legal name only?  Would she follow the recommendations of Attorney General Sessions and seek maximum incarceration penalties for marijuana cases? Would she subvert the property rights of Americans by enforcing the new and draconian forfeiture laws that Sessions seeks to enforce? Can a conservative, knowing that the Philosopher Ayn Rand persuasively wrote that property rights are the foundation of all rights, seek to deprive citizens of their property based on the suspicious innuendo of the police state?

At the end of WWII, Dwight Eisenhower supported the prosecution of all Nazis to the end that two million Germans were prosecuted and one million were convicted of crimes associated with joining the Nazi party.  Eisenhower knew that National Socialism could not have succeeded without the cooperation of the middle class professionals. The college professors who took over from their jailed Jewish colleagues. The lawyers who prosecuted laws against Jews and the Judges who found the Jews guilty. The shop owners who refused to serve them, the business men who bought the Jewish businesses for pennies on the dollar when Jews were prohibited from owning businesses.
All of them profited from the turn of events of Germany in the 1930's. All of them turned a blind eye to the rantings of the Chancellor of Germany and accepted the professional and business opportunities their mad times dropped in their laps.

Will our next US Attorney lend her imprimatur to the xenophobic  policies of our President who seeks to ban people based on their race and religion? Will she seek fines designed to pay for a wall on the Mexican border?

Will any person of good conscience accept any job- Judge, prosecutor, government bureaucrat from a man who called the white-supremacist protesters in Charlotte "Good people"?

Turning down the offer of a dream job may hurt. But some day, when your daughter or granddaughter asks you "Mom, what did you do when Trump was trying to deport Dreamers, and called global warming a hoax, and demeaned women and gave hope to racists?"

Will you be able to hold your head up high and talk to your children and grandchildren about the higher call? What Senator John McCain reminded us is "Duty, Honor, Country?" The same Senator who as a POW refused to be released from the torture and beatings until all his men were released first. The same Senator our president who didn't serve his country  said wasn't a war hero because he was captured.

Or will you be unable to look at yourself in the mirror because you compromised your morals?

We all like to think that if we were on that bus with Rosa Parks we would have spoken up and said "Not today. Today Ms. Parks sits in the front next to me."

That we would have stood firm on the Freedom Bridge in the face of the dogs and the water cannons. That we would have sat at the lunch counter and demanded they serve our black brothers and sisters with us. That we would have gone to jail with Dr. King and countless others rather than back down to the racist police. That we would have stood outside the arena in Chicago in 1968 during the Democratic National Convention and suffered the beatings of police nightsticks while chanting "The whole world is watching."

Now is the time to make that stand.
No government can exist without the support of the governed.
Evil cannot exist without the silence and compliance of good people.

If you are offered the job of US Attorney Judge Ariana Fajardo-Orshan, don't take it. Don't compromise your ideals and morals.
Take a stand.
Be a hero.

Fight the power.