Standing Up?
When using the self-checkout, the register asks me: “Did you scan the items under your cart?” Every time, I’ve got to stop and think for a moment. How do I answer that honestly? If I don’t have anything under my cart, then it seems as though the answer should be “no,” I didn’t scan them because there’s nothing there to scan. But I know the store wants me to answer “Yes,” and that’s generally what I do. Seems like either answer could be correct.
Following Tuesday’s State of the Union address to Congress, there was discussion/argument about a question raised by the president. At one point in his one hour and forty-eight-minute speech, he asked members of Congress to stand if they agreed with the “fundamental principle” that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” PBS reports that “Republicans stood and applauded for two minutes,” but Democrats remained seated. The president “berated Democrats for not standing,” saying, “Isn’t that a shame? You should be ashamed of yourself, not standing up. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
I’m not a constitutional scholar, but this question seems as though it could be answered in different ways. The first way is as the president suggests, that citizens should have priority of protection, and thus patriotic Americans should stand in agreement at his direction. A second way to look at this is by recognizing that the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution says, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.” In the use of the word “person” rather than “citizen,” we might conclude that all people have equal worth and are thus worthy of the protection of the government regardless of where they were born.
Those sitting in the chamber on Tuesday night had to make a quick choice: do I stand or don’t I stand? Does this fit my understanding of the fundamental principles of my country or doesn’t it? Does my worldview or political party require me to throw the immigrant under the bus to “save” my U.S. citizen neighbor? Or could this be a both/and response?
Each day, we are faced with a variety of circumstances where we must make an immediate decision, one where we might choose differently if we had more time to consider the background and the implications of our choice. I’m thinking of the locker room decisions made by the members of the USA men’s hockey team on Sunday. In overtime, they had just won the gold medal for the 2026 Olympics, and they gathered in the locker room, goggles on their heads to protect from the sting of champagne, and beer in hand, laughing and cheering as they celebrated the thrill of victory. In their midst was the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (why?), who pulled out his cell phone. “Hey, men,” paraphrasing here, “the big guy wants to talk with you.”
Moments later, a distasteful joke from the White House broke into the euphoria in Milan, and most of the young men in the room responded in laughter. That moment turned a raucous celebration into an indictment of sorts upon the hockey players, as it came at the expense of the women who had also won the gold medal. Jack Hughes, the goal-scoring hero of the team, later explained: “You’re in the moment and the president calls. We’re blaring the music. It is what it is.” He continued: “We have so much respect for the women’s team, and they have so much respect for us. We are all just proud Americans.” I get it. Do we really expect the adrenalin-filled twenty-something hockey players to say, “Now just wait a minute, Mr. President. That’s wrong”?
“You’re in the moment.” We’ve all been there. In the workplace, at school, at a coffeeshop, or in the locker room. We respond in the moment. We say words we wish we could take back, or our silence brings a look of betrayal to the face of someone we care about. It’s not the time or the place, so we just go along with the crowd, allowing the cruelty or misogyny to linger.
I’ve been reading about the McCarthy era in U.S. history, where many people were publicly accused of being communists, generally without any evidence. Finally, a young senator from Maine, Margaret Chase Smith, had enough. The senate website describes her reaction. “At first, Smith hesitated to speak. ‘I was a freshman Senator,’ she explained, ‘and in those days, freshman Senators were to be seen and not heard.’ She hoped a senior member would take the lead. ‘This great psychological fear...spread to the Senate,’ she noted, ‘where a considerable amount of mental paralysis and muteness set in for fear of offending McCarthy.’”
On June 1, 1950, her declaration of conscience affirmed: “Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.” She asked her fellow Republicans not to ride to political victory on the “Four Horsemen of Calumny–Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.” McCarthy continued to terrorize many in the country, but finally, in December 1954, “the Senate belatedly concurred with the ‘lady from Maine’ and censured McCarthy for conduct ‘contrary to senatorial traditions.’”
Sometimes, we are waiting for a “senior member” to take the lead. Sometimes, in the moment, we go along to get along. But when does the time come when we must speak, we must act? “There is a time to keep silent and a time to speak . . .”