Friends of Padre Steve’s World,
I pride myself in holding to a code of honor that I learned as an Army ROTC Cadet at UCLA back in 1981 to 1983. It was the West Point honor code: “A cadet will not lie cheat or steal, or tolerate those who do.”
While attending the Virginia Military Institute about the same time that I was at beginning my military career as an ROTC cadet at UCLA, and enlisted member of the California Army National Guard, Governor Ralph Northam was graduating from the ROTC program at VMI where he headed the honor court of the Corps of Cadets.
Today, after the revelations of his personal page in the Eastern Virginia Medical School Yearbook became public knowledge which included pictures of him in either blackface, or dressed as a Klansman, the governor offered a bizarre explanation and refused to resign his office despite the condemnation of the Virginia Democratic Party, Senators Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, Former Governor Terry MacCauliffe, Representative Bobby Scott, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and far to many more Democratic Party leaders than I can list here.
Now I personally believe that he has probably grown into a better person than he was in 1984, but even so his political judgement is flawed and his arrogance in thinking that he can escape this is mind boggling.
I am a Democrat, and if I am going to criticize members of the GOP, including President Trump for racist rants, behaviors, and affiliations I cannot be silent when a man who I admire and respect cannot own responsibility for his actions as a younger man. If he had any conscience or sense of political sense he would have admitted that these pictures existed before he ever ran for office in the House Of Delegates, not to mention Lieutenant Governor and later Governor.
Honestly, I don’t believe that those pictures represent who he is today, but his incredibly inept explanations and disregard of his party and it’s leaders in an era where everything that he supposedly stands for today is under attack by President Trump and the Trumpified GOP is completely irresponsible and harmful to his party and the country.
For me it all comes down to honor. I have written about this before, and I must be honest. Governor Northam must resign to save himself and the agenda that he was elected to advance. Everyone has skeletons in their closet, but not everyone is elected to serve in public office. Election to such office, demands a higher sense of responsibility than being a private citizen. Had he not entered politics and been elected Governor of Virginia, such an oversight wouldn’t matter a bit, except to his closest family and friends; but he is the Governor and as such this matters far more than it would had he remained a private citizen.
Likewise, if he was only a politician, but not a former Army Officer, not the former head of the VMI honor court, and not a physician who swore an oath to do no harm. Likewise, knowing these photos existed he deceived the African Americans who worked with and for him during his campaigns by not admitting to their existence before they became the issue that they are.
The problem is, that many white Virginians, as well as white citizens of other states see nothing wrong with the pictures. But for Virginians this is part of our dark and racially charged past. My family were all Virginians, and both sides of my family fought for the Confederacy, in the same regiment, the 8th Virginia Cavalry. Both sides of the family owned slaves, and fought to to keep them. The only rights that they fought for was the right to enslave others and to,support laws that forced Free States to comply with slavery. That was what the compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Law Of 1850 were all about.
Today, Governor Northam in his policies and politics stands against what the Confederacy stood for, but privately he cannot take responsibility for his incredibly stupid, insensitive, and racist acts documented in a Medical School yearbook that he supplied the photos for his page.
Those actions took place 35 years ago, but this weekend he brought them into the present. Despite his stated desire to take Virginia to a new future, he took us all back to a past that sadly it has never fully abandoned.
It is time for him to resign and hand over the Governor’s office to Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, a descendant of Virginia slaves. Lieutenant Governor Fairfax will be much more effective than the politically, and morally crippled Ralph Northam. Every minute Northam remains in office supplies Trump and his allies with the free advantage of an unforced error. It is the “own goal” that keeps on giving.
From a point of honor, from a point of simple decency, and from the simple pragmatism of real life politics Governor Northam has no choice but to resign. Of he doesn’t he’s a fool. He needs to be honest. There is nothing else that he can do unless he hasn’t changed over the last 35 years. Of that’s who he really is he should simply become a Republican and join the ranks of every major White Supremacist in the county.
That’s just my opinion, but I still believe in a code of honor that Governor Northam at one time supposedly upheld.
So, call me an old fashioned Pharisee, but I still hold to the Cadet Code, and the Motto Of West Point: Duty, Honor, Country.
Until tomorrow,
Peace,
Padre Steve+
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