This is my first diary. I'm a progressive living in middle Tennessee who worked hard during the last election cycle for hope and change. Over the past 18 months, I've watched in disgust as Republican leaders have chosen obstructionism over governance and allowed a small group of tea partiers to hijack our national agenda. I watched in frustration as Democratic Congressmen from my own state helped weaken the health care reform legislation that I was working furiously to strengthen. And I watched in horror as Democratic Party leaders in the region tried once again to promote Democratic candidates who were ideologically indistinguishable from Republicans.
Well, no more. I want candidates who share my values, not candidates who cherry pick which values they can support based on public opinion polls and market research. I want candidates who are unapologetic about being liberal/progressive and who will fight for what’s right, even when they have a lot to lose.
That’s why I was so excited when I read a Huffington Post article "Opponents of Mosque Using Fear to Divide" the other day by Tennessee congressional candidate Ben Leming. Mr. Leming is running for the 6th Congressional District seat that Bart Gordon is vacating and he’s running against a bevy of Republican candidates who seem to be scrambling over each other in their mad dash to the extreme right.
So, when Leming's statement made the local paper and posted several entries on his Facebook page chastising residents in Murfreesboro, Tennessee for opposing the construction of a mosque in their community, he demonstrated to me that he was willing to take a firm stance on a controversial issue based on what’s right rather than on what’s popular.
On his Facebook page, Mr. Leming, a Marine and Iraq War veteran, speaks eloquently about how he fought to defend our way of life and to protect the rights that we have as citizens of the United States, including the right to worship as we see fit. But he points out that those rights extend to all of us, even to those with whom we disagree.
He reminds us that the only way we’ll defeat terrorism is by protecting our way of life and upholding the democratic principles that set us apart from other nations. He points out that "the people that strongly oppose these places of worship are the same loud, angry, and often frightened voices that we hear too often in our public discourse these days." He reminds us, "Instead of acting out of fear, we need to act out of courage." and that if "we act out of fear and abandon our principles, then they have won."
It didn’t take long, of course, for Lou Ann Zelenik, one of his Republican opponents, to issue a statement claiming that the mosque was actually an "Islamic training center" and part of "a political movement designed to fracture the moral and political foundation of Middle Tennessee" and that we have no obligation to open our society to the American Muslim community "until they separate themselves from their evil, radical counterparts."
Mr. Leming’s call for abandoning the politics of fear and fighting with courage and conviction to defend our American values is the cool voice of reason that Middle Tennessee need in response to all the overheated rhetoric that seems to define our current political climate.