{"id":161293,"date":"2025-03-28T07:36:49","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T07:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-march-28-2025-patriotic-speeches-alexander-vindman\/"},"modified":"2025-03-28T07:36:49","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T07:36:49","slug":"americanstudies-march-28-2025-patriotic-speeches-alexander-vindman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=161293","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: March 28, 2025: Patriotic Speeches: Alexander Vindman"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

[250 years
\nago this past Saturday, Patrick Henry delivered his \u201cGive me liberty or
\ngive me death<\/a>!\u201d speech to the
\nVirginia Assembly<\/a>. So this week I\u2019ll AmericanStudy that and four other
\npatriotic speeches!]<\/p>\n

Since I
\nbegan this week\u2019s series with an excerpt from Of
\nThee I Sing<\/a><\/i>, I wanted to end it with another, the opening paragraphs of
\nthe book\u2019s Introduction:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOn November
\n19th, 2019, Army Lt. Colonel and National Security Council (NSC) official
\nAlexander Vindman testified before the House of Representatives\u2019 impeachment
\ninquiry into President Donald Trump. Vindman, who had first-hand knowledge of
\nthe telephone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president, offered testimony
\nthat was highly damaging to the president, and so Trump\u2019s defenders and allies
\nwent on the attack against Vindman. They did so in large part by using his
\nstory as a Ukrainian American immigrant to directly impugn his patriotism and
\nimplicitly accuse him of treason: after Fox News host Laura Ingraham
\nhighlighted Vindman\u2019s background in relationship to his work as a Ukraine
\nexpert for the NSC, law professor and former Bush administration official John
\nYoo replied, \u201cI find that astounding, and some people might call that
\nespionage\u201d; and the next morning CNN contributor and former Republican
\nCongressman Sean Duffy went further, claiming, \u201cI don\u2019t know that he\u2019s
\nconcerned about American policy, but his main mission was to make sure that the
\nUkraine got those weapons . . . He\u2019s entitled to his opinion. He has an
\naffinity for the Ukraine, he speaks Ukrainian, and he came from the country.\u201d
\nUnstated but clearly present in these responses is the idea that Vindman\u2019s
\ncriticism of the president had marked him as unpatriotic and even un-American,
\nopening up these broader questions about his affinities and allegiances. <\/p>\n

Just over a
\ncentury earlier, however, former president Teddy Roosevelt began his 1918
\nMetropolitan magazine article \u201cLincoln and Free Speech\u201d with these lines:
\n\u201cPatriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the
\nPresident or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he
\nhimself stands by the country . . . In either event it is unpatriotic not to
\ntell the truth\u2014whether about the President or anyone else.\u201d And in the prepared
\nstatement with which he began his testimony, Alexander Vindman expresses his
\nown vision of patriotism clearly. \u201cI have dedicated my entire professional life
\nto the United States of America,\u201d he begins. \u201cAs a young man I decided that I
\nwanted to spend my life serving the nation that gave my family refuge from
\nauthoritarian oppression, and for the last twenty years it has been an honor to
\nrepresent and protect this great country.\u201d He contextualizes his ability to
\noffer such honest public testimony as part of \u201cthe privilege of being an
\nAmerican citizen and public servant.\u201d And he ends with his father, whose
\n\u201ccourageous decision\u201d to leave the U.S.S.R. and move his family to the United
\nStates had, Vindman argues, \u201cinspired a deep sense of gratitude in my brothers
\nand myself and instilled in us a sense of duty and service.\u201d Addressing his
\nfather directly with his closing words, Vindman makes a moving and compelling
\ncase for Roosevelt\u2019s point about the essential patriotism of telling the truth:
\n\u201cDad, my sitting here today . . . is proof that you made the right decision
\nforty years ago to leave the Soviet Union and come here to the United States of
\nAmerica in search of a better life for our family. Do not worry, I will be fine
\nfor telling the truth.\u201d\u201d<\/p>\n

As I go on
\nto trace there, and as has only become more evident in the years since, Vindman
\nwas not entirely fine, as he paid both a professional
\nand a personal price<\/a> for his truth-telling critical patriotism. Here in
\nMarch 2025, a couple months into the second and even more radical and unhinged administration
\nof the President whose allies and supporters levied those attacks on Vindman,
\nit\u2019s fair to say that critical patriotism has become one of the most fraught perspectives
\none can take on the U.S. government. But, as I hope every figure and speech in
\nthis week\u2019s series has illustrated, critical patriotism has always been fraught
\nand fragile, always put those who express and fight for it in danger, and
\nalways been an absolutely essential element of our nation\u2019s ideals and
\nidentity. May we learn from and live up to the legacies of these figures, and of
\nall our critical patriots, past and present. <\/span><\/p>\n

March
\nRecap this weekend,<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben<\/span><\/p>\n

PS. What
\ndo you think? Speeches you\u2019d highlight?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[250 years ago this past Saturday, Patrick Henry delivered his \u201cGive me liberty or give me death!\u201d speech to the Virginia Assembly. So this week I\u2019ll AmericanStudy that and four other patriotic speeches!] Since I began this week\u2019s series with an excerpt from Of Thee I Sing, I wanted to end it with another, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[6407,13299,7095,38865,63679,66099],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-161293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-alexander","tag-americanstudies","tag-march","tag-patriotic","tag-speeches","tag-vindman"],"yoast_head":"\nAmericanStudies: March 28, 2025: Patriotic Speeches: Alexander Vindman - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=161293\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"AmericanStudies: March 28, 2025: Patriotic Speeches: Alexander Vindman - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[250 years ago this past Saturday, Patrick Henry delivered his \u201cGive me liberty or give me death!\u201d speech to the Virginia Assembly. 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