I’d noticed the news report that obscure Congressman Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), age 76, had broken a hip in a fall, gone through surgery, and then been moved to hospice; it turns out he also had ALS. As I grow older, 76 doesn’t seem as old as it once did, so I felt sad for the man and his family on a personal level. A week or two later came the notice of his passing, which of course will bring up questions about his successor. But there was little notice about his qualities.
Thankfully, Andrew Sullivan, who is a conservative who has little use for the Republicans in general, celebrates the man’s life in the third part of his weekly tri-partite column:
But he also had a conscience and an independent streak, and when it became clear that the Iraq War had been based on phony intelligence, he actually changed his mind. More than that: He took moral responsibility for his vote for the war, and rethought a great deal of his previous views. Ashamed of what he had done — and the lives lost because of the war — he went on to write 12,000 letters to family members of service members killed. “In terms of his skepticism of authority and power in Washington, I think part of his wiring changed,” Congressman Mark Sanford, told the Washington Post. “He started looking at leadership’s claims with a skeptical eye, and that’s led to the independence you now see on a regular basis.”
I wonder how many people, such as my reader and myself, would actually take moral responsibility for a mistake of this magnitude, and how many of us would shrug it off and hide. This is the sort of behavior best termed exemplary, and I’m thrilled to see it in a Republican, a member of the party that houses such politically craven creatures as Ryan, Nunes, and Graham.
He was that very rare creature: a true Republican fiscal conservative. Because of this, he voted against the Trump tax cut, which is even now adding exponentially to $22 trillion in debt. Pressured by Tom DeLay to vote for some of the appropriations bills that bankrupted the country under George W. Bush, because “these are Republican bills now,” as DeLay explained, Jones replied, “Yes, Tom, but you’re spending more than the Democrats did.” For being this kind of constitutional and fiscal conservative, Jones was denied any significant committee roles during his 12 consecutive terms in the Congress as a Republican.
I mentioned measurement in the post title. If you have some concerns about a leftist friend, tell them about the late Rep. Jones. Maybe pull out the significant parts of his column and make them read it. If they celebrate his passing because it’s an opportunity for the Democrats to pick up a seat, well, you may have a political cultist on your hands.
Treat with caution.
