This was written to Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) during the GOP primary, late may 2016. It is reposted here as a matter of record.
Dear Senator Cruz, and whomever
else is concerned with the current state of affairs,
I am writing this letter to
express my opinion, and offer my advice for your consideration, regarding the
current speculation regarding the potential of some sort of collaboration or rapprochement between you and Mr. Donald Trump. I am
writing this also in case you are considering succumbing to the well-known
pressure from the entrenched party elites to endorse Mr. Trump in the name of
“unity” of a political party. I am writing as one who is also being surrounded
by clamor to pay homage to a golden calf, and to embrace ideas that I have
always opposed, and renounce other ideas that I have held in higher regard than
any party or organization. I am writing this as an open letter as well, for any
who may desire words to consider regarding what we, who have thought ourselves
lifelong Christians and conservatives, ought to do, now that our party (or
former party) has seen fit to anoint a man utterly repulsive to everything we
stand for, as its presumptive nominee.
I am not a man of such prose
and eloquence so as to fully capture all the reasons why acquiescence in this
would be terrible, but I will attempt anyway. Perhaps I need only point to the
example of Dr. Ben Carson, who has sullied himself with
the naïve notion that lending his good name and character to a man of Mr.
Trump’s stripe will somehow benefit him, or America, or anyone except Mr.
Trump. What has since become of him? Has Mr. Trump
apologized to him even once, even in private, for comparing him with a child
molester?
If you agreed to a similar
fate, you would utterly cease to know what stature and respect you currently
command, even in your difficulties. You would fade from all respect both in the eyes of the principle and the
eyes of politics, as you would cease to stand out. You would simply be merely
another anonymous face in the crowd of sycophants at a king’s court. By failing
to be distinct, or principled, and merging with the vast sea of those who are
cynical and corrupt, you would fail to be noteworthy any further. In addition,
you would be accepting him and all the base lies he has spewed about you (and
still worse, your wife and father, among others).
If you carry on the fight,
however, know that you will undoubtedly pay a heavy price. Successful in the
election or not, be assured that Mr. Trump and the leadership of the Republican
Party, the same establishment that Mr. Trump has railed against in feigned
outrage, will seek to end your career and public service. You will, like the
rest of us who have refused to prostrate ourselves before him, be called a
traitor, a coward, a spoilsport, a poor loser, and a shill for Hillary Clinton.
Do not be deterred! Some have said that it is time to bend our knee to their
messiah, to accept his victory, and fall into line behind him, that he may
bring forth his contradictory and vague utopia. Yet this I cannot do, as I know
of only one messiah, and He has not walked among us for some two thousand
years.
Even if they were to somehow
take everything from you, leaving you naked in the gutter, you would have the
one thing that no man can take without your consent: your dignity. With your
dignity in place, you are still richer in spirit than any billionaire, and that
is worth far more, as not even all the material wealth in the world can buy
character, integrity, or a good legacy. Strip away a man’s façade, and you will
see who he truly is, for richer or for poorer. What are you, truly? We can
reasonably imagine what our present domestic enemies would look like, stripped
of their trappings and status: vain, insecure, shallow, cowardly wretches,
scheming and conniving with and against each other as they try to chase the
prevailing wind. You, however, may show a different example to an America
yearning for any kind of real leadership at all. So long as you stand with your
spine straight, however persecuted, poor, and hated you may be, then you stand
taller than even the highest mountain.
While it is true that Jeremiah,
and what few faithful remained, could not alone prevent the fall of Jerusalem,
and that his words were not heeded until the fated hour had already come to
pass, and doom had already been decreed, he still stands shining through the
ages as an example of faithful courage and fidelity to virtue. He was imprisoned
and treated far worse than
any of us ever were, for the crime of speaking the truth. How can we be any
less than he? Was he spat upon less than us? Were his words derided as treason
and folly any less?
Supposing we were to bend our
knee to this man, what would necessarily follow? Are we then to acknowledge the
bankruptcy of all our principles? Shall we admit to the whole world that we
have no answer to a statist populism, the inbreeding of liberalism with
incoherent anger? Are we to become Democrats, and our party one of essentially
the same ideas masquerading in a patriotic guise, promoting the illusion of any
distinction? Where then will arise the counterpoint to these foolish and
emotional notions that are strangling America? Will that shining city on a hill
that was founded centuries ago be allowed to become a hollow and dead husk, for
want of good men to champion its cause? If Mr. Trump is considered an
acceptable compromise of everything we have ever claimed to stand for, then who
exactly is too far? Will the legacy of Lincoln, Reagan, and others, truly be
forsaken?
If we are too cowardly to stand
against the wind, then who can we count on to do so in the future? When the
time comes for an even more abject surrender of whatever pitiful shreds are
left, what example shall we leave them, if we demonstrate that at the crucial
hour, we simpered quietly and obediently in pathetic moral weakness? Will we be
looked upon as the men of Munich are, as
the men of Vichy are: collaborators in our own debasement and destruction? Will they ask why there
was not even one last besieged outpost of the values that the nation was built
upon? Will they even know what those values are, if we allow our backs to sag
now, our nerves to fail us, and meekly accept the easy wrong over the hard
right?
It may be that God has already
determined this to be an hour of testing and trial. Perhaps the likes of Barack
Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump, and worse, are
foreordained, and that their madness must come into the world, and, for a time,
lead America into a dark wilderness. Woe to us, however, if we should aid and
abet such malcontents with our silence and complacence! To paraphrase the
immortal words of Martin
Treptow: we must act as if the whole issue of the struggle depended on
each of us alone. If the last public holdouts of decency, liberty, tradition,
and faith sell out, then that cause will be dealt a debilitating blow from
which it may not recover. Even if it does, we would all do well to recall the warning of Mordecai to Esther: that relief and succor
may come even if we refuse this cup, but it will fail to absolve our guilt, nor
cleanse the tiniest amount of our disgrace.
It is in light of these
reflections that I prevail upon you to stay the course, to maintain the fight,
to be the leader America needs, even if that does not bring you to the White House
or other pinnacles of worldly power. While you must never succumb to the hubris that
has become the hallmark of this interloper, I implore you to endeavor to be the
last major voice of our American cause, especially if none other is able or
willing to take that mantle or bear that wearisome burden. Even if the only
person standing with you for our values, our principles, our basic American way
of life, is me (and certainly I am not alone), then nevertheless stand you
must!
-
Joshua Nybo
