Our family knows the cost of political violence. Senators must show profiles in courage.
Opinion by William Kennedy Smith and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
Feb. 11, 2021 at 3:03 p.m. EST
William Kennedy Smith, a physician, and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, executive director of Retirement Security for All, are the nephew and niece of President John F. Kennedy and the nephew and daughter of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
In 2016, Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, the last of the nine children of our grandparents Joe and Rose Kennedy, co-wrote an op-ed with one of us that ran in The Washington Post, entitled “Political violence is no joke.” Written in response to inflammatory rhetoric by then-candidate Donald Trump, it read in part, “Political violence is a terrible inherent risk to any free society. … Anyone who loves politics, the open competition of ideas and public participation in a free society, knows that political violence is the greatest of all civic sins. It is not to be encouraged.” In the wake of the Capitol Hill insurrection those words may read as prophetic, but from the very first days of Trump’s campaign, it was clear where he intended to take our civic life. The real question was who was willing to help him. This week that question remains center stage.
Our family has firsthand experience with political violence. We know how it affects a family, a country and even the world, for generations. Our hearts, thoughts and prayers go out to those who were killed or wounded at the hands of the mob on Jan. 6 and to those who took their lives in the aftermath. They died in service to the highest ideals of our democracy. Calls to “move on” from those who, literally or figuratively, wave the Confederate battle flag alongside a Trump banner in the Capitol demean their memory and their sacrifice. Despite the pain of reflecting on that day’s events, we must not fail to repudiate the injection of violence into our politics.
Trump has been consistent in cultivating the threat of political violence since he first emerged as a candidate. The danger became increasingly apparent over the years of his presidency, and even more so as he lost his bid for reelection. Among those who denounced his tactics was Republican election official Gabriel Sterling of Georgia, who on Dec. 1 presciently warned, “Someone’s going to get hurt, someone’s going to get shot, someone’s going to get killed…. It’s not right.”
Judgment and action on the matter of Trump’s role in the insurrection now rests with the U.S. Senate. That body holds a special place in our family’s history. John, Robert and Edward Kennedy all served in the Senate, and John’s book “Profiles in Courage” examined the roles of eight senators in some of the great historic struggles between the competing demands of politics and statecraft. It seems clear that the measure of political courage necessary for a senator to achieve statesmanship today is infinitely greater than it was in President Kennedy’s day. The ability of lies, however ridiculous, to drive the national narrative seems almost unlimited; and tribalism, stoked by public figures, partisan media, social media and other actors both foreign and domestic, can turn a mob against anyone. Former vice president Mike Pence can speak to that point directly.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/11/kennedys-capitol-riot-impeachment-senators-courage/
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