Sam Brown’s America

Captain Sam Brown is running for the U.S. Senate from Nevada. I met Sam recently. His face was burned beyond recognition. A roadside bomb in Afghanistan had detonated under the fuel tank of his Humvee.

At first, his badly scarred face unsettled me. But after a few minutes in his company, his face softened, and I caught glimpses of the very handsome man he once was and the kind-hearted man he still is. I asked myself what had motivated him to make such a sacrifice. It was soon clear: God, family, and country. I then asked myself a more difficult question: Would I have made the same sacrifice? 

He told me that after he was wounded, he despaired of finding a wife. He had always very much wanted a family, and he was trying to reconcile himself with having lost that opportunity. So, he went to the army chaplain. Sam expected the chaplain to tell him that he must leave his dream of a family behind him. But that was not at all what the chaplain said. He said that Sam would find someone who would look behind his scarred exterior. It sounds corny, but it helped him persevere. Today he has a wonderful wife and three flourishing children. 

Sam Brown believes God has called him to continue fighting for his country. This time he will be fighting internal enemies— what I call “woke radicals.” He hates how they are attacking America, its institutions and values. And most particularly he hates how they are attacking education. He knows that white children are being taught they are oppressors. He heard a mom say that she does not want her child on the back burner. Students of all colors are being taught that America is a hateful country, conceived in racism and committed to its perpetuation. What kind of country, Sam Brown asks, teaches its children to loathe their homeland. He asks as well, what kind of country ushers in millions of immigrants with cultures different from its own and then insists on not assimilating them? Such a country has a death wish. 

He sees that America is sacrificing military readiness for quotas. That she is manufacturing energy dependence, which will make her more reliant on China.   Doctors are selected because of their skin color.  Where, asks Sam Brown, is the country that is trying to live up to Martin Luther King Jr.’s  aspiration of colorblindness? 

Sam Brown can see that the woke radicals are ashamed of the flag for which he was prepared to sacrifice his life. These woke radicals kick and spit on America’s past. They lust to destroy—we have all seen endless hours of video footage of these ignorant children tearing down with glee. They hate the Sam Browns. Their ideology is utopian in its vision, tyrannical in its execution and bloody in its result. They aim to destroy America. 

There is, however, still hope. For starters, there are many Sam Browns in America, those who salute the bright stars and broad stripes. And there is President Trump, a towering figure with the virtues of a warrior. And we have as well an army of spirited, patriotic men and women march with him into battle, inspired by past victories, and sobered, but not weighed down, by past defeats.  They chase Trump, but they cannot catch him. 

Trump’s base knows the America of hard work, patriotism, colorblindness, and grit. This is Sam Brown’s America, the America Trump and his base want to defend and recover. But Trump needs our help. Trump reminds Americans that Sam Brown, by dint of his sacrifice, asks us all to defend our beloved country with the same resolution and courage with which our fathers and grandfathers defended us from the scourge of Nazism and communism. This is a noble duty. If we live up to it, as I pray we shall, we shall be living up to both America’s promise and Sam Brown’s sacrifice.