Rarely has any singular event stoked an objection quite like last Friday’s executive order on refugee emigration. Once more, the body politic joined in protest at international terminals around the country, just as they had joined in protest in cities across the globe.

For a variety of reasons, the past few weeks have left many justifiably anxious. Whether you found the executive order laudable or unimaginable, one must admit there remain questions regarding newly charted political waters.  

On April 5, 1968, following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, Robert F. Kennedy spoke to the Cleveland City Club on the mindless menace of violence. At the time of his speech, 1968 was fully astride in its place as perhaps one of the most turbulent years in American history: The Tet Offensive, a Viet Cong attack on the embassy in Saigon, civil rights demonstrations (some deadly) across the country, the My Lai massacre, etc.

But through the turbulence, Kennedy delivered a sobering, eloquent address: “When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies — to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.”

We face today a similar, but familiar menace, a mindless menace of intolerance. We can either

confront refugees as men, women and children fleeing persecution, or as enemies, threats willing to abuse a helping hand. What we cannot do is attempt to subjugate or master them, simply because of their beliefs or because of the region of which they originate.

There will no doubt be turbulence in 2017: Fighting has resumed in Ukraine, the crisis in Syria continues, all while we grapple at home with difficult issues of immigration, race and identity. How we traverse this rocky path will either evince or exploit our weaknesses.

To end his remarks in Cleveland, Kennedy quoted Alfred Tennyson’s “Ulysses”:

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ 

We are not now that strength which in old days 

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; 

One equal temper of heroic hearts, 

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 

2017 will test whether Tennyson was correct. If 1968 is any indication, we did not yield then and we must not yield now.