Let Freedom Ring

"It’s the kind of demagoguery that often precedes fascism, and we all have a responsibility to speak out against it.”
- quote by Martin O’Malley on Donald Trump’s call to stop all Muslims from entering the country -

"We can stop wondering if we would have protested the anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust. This is exactly how it begins. Now's the time to speak up and to act."
- quote by Rachel Held Evans, in response to Donald Trump's statements re banning Muslims from entering the United States -

I have been thinking and feeling the exact same thing that Martin O'Malley and Rachel Held Evans express in their respective quotes above: now is the time for each of us individually, and for our great country, to find out what we are made of. Speak up now or it may be too late. So let me begin:

I think what is great about America is our constitution, our pluralism, our tolerance, our democracy, our diversity, and our rule of law. Terrorism is not as great a threat to any of that as is us turning our back on all of that due to our own fear. If we were to ban all Muslims from entering this country, including--apparently, according to the one who has put this idea forward--all American citizens who are Muslim, we would be throwing out our civil rights, our rule of law, our constitution, everything that makes us great and is worth fighting for.

We cannot win "The War on Terror" by giving up everything voluntarily that makes us great. We cannot win by being ruled by fear and ruling with a fascist fist. We win by staring the terrorists in their eye and not blinking. We win by standing by our constitution and pluralism and rule of law, and by keeping our heads and our civil rights intact. We can't fight terrorism and fascism by becoming what we fear. We can't protect the United States of America by making her unrecognizable and not worth fighting for. We are about freedom and tolerance. That's worth fighting for.  And to keep that, to fight for it, we must trust in the strength of it.