I believe…

Sarah Kendzior encourages us to document what matters to us, what we believe in – against the day that we may be tempted — or forced — to abandon those principles. In that vein, I believe …

• … in honesty.
• … everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.
• … the United States Constitution is the foundation of the republic.
• … in the rule of law.
• … not even the President is above the rule of law.
• … the American people have a right to know to whom the President is indebted, with which foreign countries he conducts private business, where his wealth is invested, the extent to which he has shared their burden in paying income taxes (or not).
• … disparaging someone for who they are – based on their skin color, their gender, their sexual identity, their age – is unacceptable.
• … taking someone to task – with respect – for their choices, including who they support among elected officials, is appropriate.
• … those who would call themselves my “seniors and betters” will be held to correspondingly higher standards of behavior.
• … aiding and abetting our adversaries is treason.
• … a President, nor his family, should profit directly from his role in the Presidency.
• … it is unacceptable that a hostile foreign power interferes with free and fair elections in the US.
• … the government is comprised of thousands of intelligent, committed civil servants who go to work every day trying to deliver good government to the people of this country. Those people deserve our respect. In our military services. In the Departments of Defense, Energy, Education, State. Who serve on the US Secret Service.
• … it is unacceptable that the President of the United States maintain a private security force which is not accountable to the American people.
• … that “President” is a 24/7/365 job.
• … that the President governs over all the people in America, not just the small fraction of the population that voted for him.
• … America’s allies deserve to know that we are good neighbors and that they can count on us.
• … the press and the media serve as the eyes and ears of the people into the activities of the President and his administration; to deny them is to deny the American people the accountability we deserve.
• … we should make it easier for people to vote rather than harder.
• … that women are autonomous; a woman has the right to make decisions about her own life without the government interceding in decisions between her and her health care provider.
• … that it’s important to reduce the number, cost and consequences of unintended pregnancies not by banning abortion, but by providing access to education, contraception and living wages – which have been shown to be effective in reducing the number of unintended pregnancies.
• … climate change is real and accelerating and without sustained efforts to slow down our impact on the planet, we risk rapid degradation of the biosphere on a global level.
• … ramming through unpopular legislation in closed, quickly convened sessions of a legislature (as in Texas and North Carolina) isn’t what American democracy should look like.
• … cruelty – intentionally inflicting harm on others – is unacceptable.