Joe Biden was taught by his parents and grandparents never to turn the other cheek on personal abuse, whether from an individual or a mob.
That was integral in his early championship of civil rights and his long standing dedication to fighting against violence against women.
When his son Hunter was at Georgetown, he made a speech championing Joe’s conviction that “the greatest sins on this earth are committed by people of standing and means who abuse their power.” Hunter pointed out that “whether it was physical punishment of a child by his father or the Nazi genocide in Europe, Joe Biden had no stomach for “might makes right.””
Hunter asked his dad to make a speech at Georgetown for the Jesuit Volunteer Corps about how religion influenced his politics. “As I went through it,” Joe Biden said later “I realized that the one thread that goes through everything in my public career that is totally consistent with the Catholic social doctrine that I was this opinion that the cardinal sin a government, an individual, a corporation, a business, a father, a parent can commit is to abuse the power they have, whether it is psychological, physical, financial, or political… It was one of the reasons I ran for the Senate. I was so angry. The kicker for me was when there was a march on Washington and Nixon said those who were protesting the war should not be carrying or wearing American flags. I thought to myself, that son of a so-and-so. who does he think he is, defining what Americans are.”
Biden’s abhorrence of the abuse of power also led him to take Beau at 15 (and later Hunter at 15) to Dachau and the Berlin Wall.
Beau later said that his dad wanted them “to use the memory of the Holocaust, that we as a nation and a people {had to be} vigilant that it would never happen again….. It goes to what animates by dad’s public life — the necessity to stand up to bullies… There is no difference between the private man and the public man. He is the same.”
Joe Biden abhors people who abuse their power. As president, he will make sure that those in positions of power use their power for the people they represent.
Joe Biden will be a great president.
This is Day 90 in my series 100 Days of Loving Joe Biden
Did you miss any of the 100 days? Here are links for all of them: