Kudos to WCHS students
In 1630, John Winthrop, the Puritan governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, delivered a sermon aboard the ship Arbella before landing in New England, reminding his fellow travelers: “We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”
Winthrop’s meaning was double-edged. If the colonists failed to uphold their covenant with one another, the world would see their failure. His message focused equally on accountability and greatness.
Winthrop’s phrase didn’t gather much political momentum until President-elect John F. Kennedy adopted it in a speech to the Massachusetts legislature in January 1961, just before his inauguration. President Ronald Reagan then made it his signature image, using it repeatedly, most famously in his 1989 Farewell Address, in which he expanded the imagery into a “shining city on a hill,” describing America as a beacon of freedom and opportunity for the world.
During one of what I consider to be America’s darkest historical moments, a breath of fresh air and vibrant hope blew through our community on March 6 and the following days.
According to The Woodford Sun’s March 12 edition, about 100 Woodford County High School students engaged in a well-organized, thoughtful and sincere expression of their First Amendment rights to voice concerns about how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is addressing immigration law under the current presidential administration. According to the Sun, two powerful young women organized and led the walkout in a respectful and patriotic manner. These two young women, their schoolmates, teachers and administrators set examples from which all of us can learn and benefit.
Even better, our local paper, in another demonstration of the incomparable power of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, ratified in 1791 (161 years after Winthrop’s sermon), provided front-page coverage of the event, along with a very thoughtful and compelling piece by Scott White in his White Lines column. These two contributions to our collective civic engagement set Versailles and Woodford County as the “city upon the hill,” and made me deeply grateful, again, to be a part of this community.
Most Americans agree on the importance of the rule of law. We likely agree that we want compliance with our immigration laws. We probably also agree that we want those laws to be fair and just. Compliance with what observers across the political spectrum agree is a fundamentally broken immigration system must include common decency and respect for all people, or else we stand to lose the status of greatness that Winthrop prophetically foretold. Law enforcement, decency and respect for all must never be mutually exclusive in the “city on a hill.”
I am grateful that high school students in our community seek to hold us accountable to standards of decency and respect for all people. Given the abject failure of elected officials from both political parties to fix our broken immigration system over the past 40 years, given their shared addiction to the division they sow among us regarding immigration issues, and given the shameful tactics currently deployed by the present administration, we should all thank both these high school students and our local newspaper for shining the light from our community.
Perhaps we should commission these same students to develop the world’s greatest immigration system, one reflective of what Winthrop, Kennedy and Reagan described. They sure seem better qualified and more capable than the 538 members of the United States Congress.
John-Mark Hack
Versailles