Speaking Truth to Power
On April 20, 1985, then US president Ronal Reagan hosted a White House ceremony to award the Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement, the highest honor that the US Government gave to civilians at that time, to Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, for his work as chairperson of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.
Wiesel knew that later that month Reagan was scheduled to visit Germany’s Military Cemetery at Bitburg, where 47 former Nazi SS troops were buried, to join then German Chancellor Kohl in laying a wreath at those graves.
Many in the US were displeased that Reagan was going to honor Nazi war dead in this manner and were not mollified by the fact that he was also scheduled to pay a visit to Bergen-Belson that same day, the camp where Anne Frank was buried after her death there.
Wiesel, in his acceptance speech chose the moment speak truth to power. He looked at Reagan and said in a voice seemingly filled with trepidation:
The issue here is not politics, but good and evil. And we must never confuse them. For I have seen the SS at work. And I have seen their victims. They were my friends. They were my parents. Mr. President, there was a degree of suffering in the concentration camps that defies imagination. I am convinced, as you have told us earlier when we spoke, that you were not aware of the presence of SS graves in the Bitburg cemetery. Of course you didn’t know. But now we all are aware. May I, Mr. President, if it’s possible at all, implore you to do something else, to find a way, to find another way, another site? That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS.
News reports of the day indicated that Wiesel was advised not to embarrass the president but clearly, he felt that someone had to say something, he had the microphone and the audience and he acted as his conscience dictated. After the speech President Reagan shook Wiesel’s hand but made no further reference to Wiesel’s admonition. At the end of the day, it did not result in a change in the president’s schedule but Wiesel was applauded widely for following his conscience and seizing the moment.
Contrast this with what happened at the National Cathedral in Washington last week at the traditional day after inauguration prayer service.
Bishop Mariann E. Budde, the leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, was about to end her homily when she, like Elie Wisel, decided to speak truth to power.
Standing just seven feet above and 40 feet away from both President Trump and Vice-President Vance, and having heard the new administration’s plans to expel thousands if not millions of illegal immigrants from the US, she said:
Let me make one final plea, Mr. President: Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives. And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they — they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome them here, Mr. President.
Unlike Reagan, President Trump did not shake her hand after the service ended. Sitting there he was clearly unmoved and more than a little upset. The following morning, he posted on his social media platform Truth Social, that he and the nation deserved an apology from the “so-called Bishop” and “Radical Left hard line Trump hater.”
Forty years after Elie Wiesel’s statement of conscience was respectfully accepted by President Reagan, we see what happens when a voice of conscience speaks truth to power. All of us should be able to recognize that the difference is stark, disappointing and frightening, all at the same time. The reluctance, or the unwillingness on the part of political leadership to hear a different voice, does not augur well for the future of humanity. It is a sad chapter in the 249-year history of American democracy to be sure.
We are living in a time where large swaths of humanity in presumably democratic societies are afraid to voice an alternative opinion, afraid of being ostracized when they disagree with their friends and relatives, afraid even of being persecuted for having alternative views. In such a society those few people who have the moral fortitude to rise and speak truth to power need to be honored for their commitment, not shamed as a result. A society that cannot abide by alternative opinions cannot long endure as a free society.