Savor this defeat

Today I’ve seen too many peo­ple who are deflat­ed and dis­ap­point­ed by the elec­tion results. Of course, I share your dis­ap­point­ment. I felt despair myself as I watched the red stain spread across our nation last night. This morn­ing I felt some small twinge of hope as I saw that Ohio had not yet been decid­ed, but it still looked grim. With Ker­ry’s con­ces­sion, of course now it’s all over.

But today I feel no defla­tion. This is not an ide­o­log­i­cal vic­to­ry; it is the vic­to­ry of cow­ardice and fear over strength and resolve, and such a vic­to­ry is always tem­po­rary. We chose the wrong man as our cham­pi­on against evil, and we need take this as a les­son. John Ker­ry could not save us; he could only be the instru­ment of our attempts to save ourselves.

Now is not a time for tears. This is not a time for sad­ness. This is a time when strength is called for. Do not cow­er in the face of the mon­ster, but stand firm and have faith. This is a les­son that we have to do more than just denounce evil in order to restore the soul of the nation. We have to build strength and lead. This elec­tion was decid­ed by fear, and the fear­ful will even­tu­al­ly fol­low the strong.

This elec­tion was our fail­ure. It is not up to us to fix our fel­low Amer­i­cans and debate them into what we think is right, but rather to show them that love and courage will always pre­vail over hatred and cow­ardice. If we fail to demon­strate this, who can blame the peo­ple for run­ning to the false hopes offered by Bush and his crowd?