Letters To My Country

October 18, 2012

"Every Senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave. This chamber reeks of blood. Every Senator here is partly responsible for that human wreckage at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval and all across our land—young men without legs, or arms, or genitals, or faces or hopes. There are not very many of these blasted and broken boys who think this war is a glorious adventure. Do not talk to them about bugging out, or national honor or courage. It does not take any courage at all for a congressman, or a senator, or a president to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Vietnam, because it is not our blood that is being shed. But we are responsible for those young men and their lives and their hopes. And if we do not end this damnable war those young men will some day curse us for our pitiful willingness to let the Executive carry the burden that the Constitution places on us."

—

George McGovern, speaking on the Senate floor in opposition to the Vietnam War, 1970.

It was recently reported that McGovern has succumbed to old age. Like most American politicians, he was flawed and at times seemed to contradict himself. But on the Senate floor in 1970, he told the truth to a room full of men who didn’t want to hear it.

As PPG noted earlier, McGovern was a fearless advocate for progressive policies. By the time he was running against Nixon, his opposition to the War in Vietnam had reached fever pitch; and despite his so-called radical stance, history proved McGovern right with respect to the folly that was our involvement in Vietnam. He represents a progressive politics of a different age: when the American Left was unafraid to point out that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, and didn’t feel the need to apologize for criticizing American institutions. With McGovern, we lose a courageous voice in a time when real courage on the political stage typically loses votes; but if ever there was a profile in courage, George McGovern’s decision to throw his political career to the wolves in order to tell the truth about Vietnam ranks among the better of them.

12:51am | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZMMjnxVVywjk

(Notes: 268)