In an Era of Falsehood, What Does It Mean to Honor Our Parents?

 In a time of knowingly falsified law enforcement reporting about all living Americans, what does it mean when the FBI reaches back to defame the dead?

In my own case, in which the FBI appears to now be engaging in the ignoble business of defaming my deceased parents, it means the agency has been caught in some rather appalling lies about an honorable American family, and they don't want to accept accountability for the years-long deceit of the DOJ, the Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court.

Yet, when I speak about my parents, I honor them by speaking the truth.

My father was a deeply courteous person, kind, stoic, adventurous, brilliant, wise, determined, courageous, and virtuous.  His presence was like a mountain, or the sea, or the truth.  You could count on it.  There was something monumental in his character, and this quality made people desire to be in his company, to speak with him, to ask his opinion, to follow his guidance.

His standards were impossibly high, but you wanted to meet them, to exceed them, to earn this noble person's admiration, to call him your good friend.

And my mother?

My mother was a force of nature:  gifted, knowing, a fierce advocate for the vulnerable, a sacred person.  Music followed her everywhere she went.  So did books, flowers, adoring children, school teachers, opera singers, scientists, politicians, and ministers.  My mother was not only the life of the party.  She was life itself.  She judged others not on the basis of their power, but on the basis of their hearts and minds and intent. My mother was accustomed to doing the impossible so frequently that others began to expect it of her.  I know I did. 

You wanted to be by her side to see what would happen next.  Because it was going to be astonishing, and it was going to be miraculous, and it was going to change your life.

Once, a stranger followed her through an airport, demanding an autograph.

"You're somebody!  You're somebody!" the woman insisted.

"Yes, I am somebody," my mother laughed.

My parents were formidable people, leaders, people who changed their part of the world by walking into it.  They were determined to make a positive difference for others, and they did.

And now, I stand in defense of their memories.

Richard Pierre Von Herzen and Janice Elaine Von Herzen.

Thank you for your irreplaceable kindness, courage, integrity, discovery, art, inspiration, depth, brilliance, insight, leadership, and teaching.

Thank you for your goodness.

Thank you for the soulfulness that informed your accomplishments.

Thank you for your ever-present belief in your daughter.

Your wisdom still guides me every day of my life.

That's a legacy that I hope will make a difference to countless others.

I honor you with the truth about your lives, and that honor will continue.

I cannot be paid or threatened to abandon it, because the truth about your lives cannot be killed or suppressed or betrayed.

So, too, the truth about the living cannot be killed or suppressed or betrayed.

Good Americans, do we need the FBI's knowingly falsified law enforcement reporting in order to diminish what we know about one another?

No, we do not.

Does the FBI need to maintain its programs of knowingly falsified law enforcement reporting in order to meet its mission and objectives?

Again, no.

Will our future be elevated, enriched, or expanded because we allowed the FBI to gratuitously defame the living and the dead, our neighbors, friends, family, and associates?

In no measure.

The truth does not have to be a casualty of this moment in history, nor does our insistence on our own virtue, or our gratitude toward those who came before us.

So, I invite the FBI's South Bay Chief of Station to a conversation about my honorable parents.  A peaceable conversation.  A respectful conversation. And one in which his accountants explain themselves.

Our origins cannot be reduced to institutional defamation, desecration of property, or diminishment of the leaders among us.

And while not all truths must be spoken at all times, this one does.

An abandonment of our parents' virtue is nothing less than an abandonment of our own.

For if we cannot speak to their own goodness, who, then, will speak for ours?

Lane MacWilliams