True American Heroes.

Sometimes you have to part what is right from what is wrong. And what makes this

depending on moral faculties rather than textualism is, that these moments of truth rarely is about what is legal or not, because what is legal may very well be wrong,

while what is illegal, may very well be right. Rising up against any wrongdoing by powerful political institutions in society will

almost certainly bring with it unwarranted collateral damage. But history is defined by some who stood up against legal wrongdoing and others who protected the illegal

righteous. There are moments of legal wrongdoing as there are moments of illegal

righteousness, but what heroes have in common is, that they always manages to get down on the right side of history. Before the rest of us.

And new heroes must be found in the years ahead.

What made western societies prosperous is political pluralism and strong political institutions. What has shaped western civilization is inclusion and diversity.

What is taking place following January 20. 2017 is a weakening of pluralism, a challenge to our political institutions, exclusion and cultural cleansing. And what

makes this a moment for new heroes to be found is, that all of this is playing itself out in the Presidency of the United States of America.

Many will expect resistance to build from within. But successful resistance against

legal wrongdoing has predominantly been shaped from the outside. Any opposition to existing political institutions is by definition, revolt or counter revolution, and both are

processes shaped from the outside or demands proactive intervention from the inside.

In the modern democratic society, revolt and counter revolution is translated into the appearance of new political change agents and members of the press who break

with decades of collusion with well established political institutions. As the textbook is torn apart by the one part, the textbook must be completely

thrown out by the other part.

As civil servants, power in society and members of the press, each establishes their private- and morally based ‘lines in the sand’, they will realize that there is only one

way to be on the right side of history, and that is by disenfranchising themselves from the legal wrongdoing they are about to become part of.

Collusion is a poor servant of resistance.

Resistance carries a cost, but that is the very nature of resistance. Not accepting the costs and inconveniences of own beliefs, makes one collaborator of others beliefs.

And it is here ‘lines in the sand’ are established.

What we are witnessing is quite probably the beginning of the end to many of the properties associated with the presidential office in the US, and many commissions

and congressional hearings, supreme court rulings and new legislation will muster this effort to make sure that the US constitution never again will harbor a presidency

that can threaten the very core of the beliefs on which the constitution is build. But it will be the new heroes that will make this come true, and the rest of us must

pray, that it happens quickly enough to allow us not having to fight this challenge any further than to ‘the end of the beginning’ for our part.

America has show the way for a democratic society based on human rights all the

way back from the Philadelphia Declaration of Independence and has provided guidance for political institutionalism as it found its different expressions in Western

society. But in all of the democratic constitutions, and in all of what has directed our

societies to unparalleled wealth, has it been political pluralism, strong political institutions, inclusion and respectful diversity that has been the principal drivers. And

that is what is at stake here. And that is why we are waiting for our true American heroes.

Once again.

Klaus Riskaer Pedersen

Jose Ignacio, Uruguay, February 2017.