Profiles in cowardice

Profiles in cowardice

The late President John F. Kennedy, while still a senator, published a book titled Profiles in Courage.  It won the Pulitzer prize in 1957.


The book is a series of extended anecdotes from the lives of American statesmen, whom Kennedy praised for acting on principle, in the national interest, even at great personal and professional cost to themselves.

Our nation's history is replete with figures whose acts of courage in times of crisis lifted us from the status of colonies and slavery, to that of an independent nation, a world power, promoting freedom and the dignity of all humankind.

Where are they today?  Where are the heroic figures?  Well might we ask.

Nearly eight years ago, I repeatedly wrote blog posts in which I confidently expected that such men would step forward, some from the shadows of government offices, some from the military, and some from industry.  I expected that, surely, there are patriots in high places who saw what so many of us clearly see, a republic being dismantled before our very eyes, and set on the road to socialist tyranny.

My expectations went unfulfilled.  There was nothing on the order of the fictional Seven Days in May.

That novel ended with an attempted coup d'état that failed, and which the author held forth as a crime against the Constitution, however well-meaning it may have been.

In reality, it has been said that the coup has already occurred: the Constitution has been subverted by entrenched, official corruption at the highest levels, including the Department of Justice, the State Department, and the White House, not to mention the Internal Revenue Service.

As we approach a historic presidential election, we see recent revelations of that corruption on a scale so vast, so deep, and so painfully severe that it may become irreversible if that corruption is (re-)elected to power in the person of Hillary Clinton.

The emergence of Donald Trump is due to the fact that millions – yes, millions – of patriotic Americans have finally given up on the system producing a courageous leader from among the political hierarchy.  No Democrat, nor any Republican, has filled the bill.  We have concluded that, as Trump has mentioned, we have nothing to lose by taking a chance on an outsider.  Several of them came forward, including Dr. Ben Carson and Herman Cain.  None of them had ever been elected to any political office, and all of them were therefore free from the stain of official corruption.

For a brief time, I held forth hope that this year's profile in courage would be the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey.  Alas, he came short, one step from being our national hero.  Having laid out a powerful case on which to indict Clinton for violations of national security laws, he waffled at the last moment and declined to recommend that indictment.  Many of us smelled the familiar scent of heavy-handed influence from the DoJ and the White House.

Even when Comey seemed to have come to his senses and informed Congress that he is continuing the investigation, it seems that he acted not from courage, but from cowardice.  Believable reports have it that his hand was forced by his underlings, FBI agents who have conducted the investigations themselves and who know in detail the severity of the corruption involved.

We need more.  Comey needs to step boldly forward and give official status to what we already know about the sleazy web of corrupt officialdom on the brink of revoking our basic rights.  It is unlikely that he will.  A more robust and principled man would already have not merely recommended indictment of Clinton, but actually and audaciously arrested Attorney General Loretta Lynch for obstruction of justice.

If elected, Trump will almost certainly do something along those lines, but given the intense efforts by the left to commit election fraud, it is quite likely that Trump will be declared to have lost the election.

Is there no group of FBI agents who will brazenly appear uninvited on the national stage to make known their case?

If not, then post-election, there may arise the necessity for another group of men and women to become themselves the newest profiles in courage.  They are you and I.



By Robert Arvay