When did the decline of American character begin? Whenever. Whatever. Pick your date and trend. Not everything that happened to the American character in the past 50 years is bad—we are more tolerant, more empathetic and more relaxed—but much of it undoubtedly is. If Republicans are going to spend the next few days talking about making America great again, shouldn’t part of that discussion also be about making Americans great again—or, at very least, making us better? From it...s beginning, the impulses that have dominated Mr. Trump’s candidacy are the insult, the put-down, the slander, the threat, the refusal to apologize. These have poured out of him in such profusion and at such velocity that they have degraded Republicans simply by accustoming us to them. Mr. Trump’s apologists praise this as a refreshing burst of political incorrectness, but that just betrays an ignorance of what it means to be politically incorrect.
This column will elicit the usual mental wheezing from the True Believing Trumpsters, whose skins are as thin as their candidate’s, along with the slightly better rebuttal that the presumptive GOP nominee is the lesser of two evils. That’s pure conjecture, based on the prayer that Mr. Trump will soon transform into a statesman. People who believe this also kiss frogs.
But that’s beside the point. What’s at stake in Cleveland this week isn’t the identity of the next president. It’s the identity of the GOP: its ideas, its leaders, its followers. Above all, its character.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Fellow conservatives: the same goes for your political party.
GOP Conservative writer Bret Stephens July 18, 2016
