Heed the words of our forebears

Weeks have past since Americans heard the House of Representative’s managers and the president’s defense team of attorneys present their respective cases for the impeachment and for the defense of Donald Trump. In the course of each side’s arguments we heard the words of some of America’s great statesmen and founding fathers invoked by each side in arguing for or against the impeachment of the president. In the “Opinion” section of the Register there appeared a cartoon of Trump commenting, “Hey! Look at that! Hamilton new I was coming!” as Trump looked over the words spoken by Alexander Hamilton in 1792.

“When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents ... despotic in his ordinary demeanor — known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty — when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity — to join in the cry of danger to liberty — to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion — to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day — it may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.”

Hamilton’s quote brings to mind Thomas Paine and the following quote from Paine’s “The Crisis.”

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis shrink from the service of their country, but he who stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

Now that the Senate has acquitted Donald Trump, let us hope that these men and women, who had sworn to be impartial and uphold the Constitution, in the future do just that, and heed Paine’s words, for it is in times like this that “try men’s souls.”

Kenneth Chain

Guilford