The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations

by John McCain

We have done great good in the world because we believed our ideals are the natural aspiration of all mankind, and that the principles, rules, and alliances of the international order we superintended would improve the security and prosperity of all who joined with us.

The ultimate

victim of torture is the torturer, the one who inflicts pain and suffering at the cost of their humanity.

But their moral failure isn’t the truth’s failure. The moral values and integrity of our nation, and the long, difficult, fraught history of our efforts to uphold them at home and abroad, are the test of every American generation.

Will we act in this world with respect for our founding conviction that all people have equal dignity in the eyes of God and should be accorded the same respect by the laws and governments of men? That is the most important question history ever asks of us.

The cruelty of our enemies doesn’t absolve us of this duty. This was never about them. It was about us.

We can crack down on employers of unauthorized immigrants.

Except no one is even talking about doing that let alone actually doing it!

Again, that’s because virtually all adults entering our country illegally aren’t doing it to commit crimes or live on welfare. They’re seeking work they don’t have in their home countries.

The answer (which Republicans will hate) is international unionization. Get those countries living wage jobs that unions will protect!

Resentment and insecurity had been powerful drivers of Russian history for centuries. An ideological component was added for three-quarters of the twentieth century, a mere blip. When the ideology failed, it was abandoned. The other pathologies are more deeply rooted.

Good observation!

Putin’s personality wasn’t the kind to be modified by positive reinforcement, which the advocates of the reset would eventually realize.

Obama consistently operated from a social work perspective, which is logical based on his early start in community development.

A man like Putin, who all his life has stood on the wrong side of history, of morality, of goodness, can’t comprehend the power of righteousness. He is blind to the supremacy of love. He can’t see that all lies are exposed eventually, hate is overcome by love, illicit power decays, while the truth endures.

we have to stop looking at Russia and its threat to our security and our democracy through the warped lens of

politics. We cannot allow Putin to divide us . . . [and] undermine confidence in ourselves. . . . We must take our own side in this fight—not as Republicans, not as Democrats, but as Americans.

our exceptionalism hasn’t anything to do with what we are—prosperous, powerful, envied—but with who we are, people united by ideals,

We will stop him when we are confident of our strength in the world, not merely the strength of our arms, but the power of our ideals—government by consent, equal justice, free markets—to continue transforming the world into a broadening civilization that shares them.

I refuse to accept that our greatest triumphs cannot once again spring from our moments of greatest peril, as they have so many times before. I refuse to accept that our values are morally equivalent to those of our adversaries.

I am a proud, unapologetic believer in the West, and I believe we must always, always stand up for it—for if we do not, who will?

Human rights are not our invention. They don’t represent standards from which particular cultures or religions can be exempted. They are universal.

We don’t always appreciate as we should the value others place on the public statements of American officials. It matters what we say and what we don’t say. The U.S. remains the world’s leading power, and when our leaders speak, governments and people take notice.

There is nothing so rewarding as contributing, even if only in the most modest way, to the defense of another human being’s dignity, all the more so when the person is otherwise a stranger to you.

But it is a moral failure to believe tyranny and injustice are the inevitable tragedies of man’s fallen nature, that there are some places in the world that will not change or aren’t worth the effort to make better. They can be changed.

My personal belief is that to give in to the fallen nature is to deny the power of the cross of Christ. All people can be redeemed.

we are not inevitably the victims of our fallen nature. We are all sinners, far from perfection. But we can compensate a little for our flaws and the injuries we’ve caused when we fight for the dignity of our fellow man.

We can change our weakness into a strength! The fallen nature is a given, but victimhood is a choice we can refuse to make.

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

It’s natural to the human mind to use our needs, wishes, desires, the ideas that interest us to direct our lives, to inform our choices about where to live, what to do for work, whom to love, how many children to have. If the state can control some of those decisions they can control all decisions, even who lives and dies.

We have to recover our sense that we’re part of a community that’s larger than our political cohort, that we all, despite our disagreements, have shared interests and values. That requires, paradoxically, taking politics more and less seriously. If you’re alarmed by our descent into all-consuming partisanship, by the fact that much of the grassroots energy in both parties is with the closed-minded absolutists on the fringes, what are you doing about it? Are you voting in primary elections? Are you helping choose party leaders for your county, your state? Are you running for leadership positions yourself? Are you showing up for precinct committee

meetings, district elections, town halls with your elected officials? Because I guarantee you, voters on the Far Right and Far Left are. They show up. And if those are the voices party leaders and elected officials hear from most then those voices will exercise influence over the local and state parties, over the national party, and over our national affairs that exceeds the strength of their actual numbers.

Play as big a role in the mundane activities of politics as the zealots do. It’s important.

I don’t remember another time in my life when so many Americans considered someone’s partisan affiliation a test of whether that person was entitled to their respect.

If a candidate modestly promises to build relationships on both sides of the aisle, to form alliances to promote their ideas, to respect other points of view, and split differences where possible to make measurable progress on national problems, ask that candidate to run for President. Their humility and honesty commend them for the job.

we too often blur the distinction between the requirements of campaigning and the responsibilities of the elective office.

I want to urge Americans, for as long as I can, to remember that this shared devotion to human rights is our truest heritage and our most important loyalty.