Churchill did not give his “We will never surrender” speech from a bunker. Gen. MacArthur did not hide in a foxhole. When all seemed lost on Little Round Top, Chamberlain’s order was “fix bayonets and charge.”

Battles, countries, and history are not won by the fearful and timid. They are won by the brave. For the first time in my life many, but not all, of our leaders are telling us to shelter in place and to be afraid. The daily message is to surrender your liberties, submit to the will of the collective, and “all will be well.”

I remember the nuclear attack drills of the ’50s, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the Hong Kong flu of 1968, the global cooling scare of the ’70s, the global warming scare of the ’90s, the Y2K scare of Dec. 31, 1999, and now we have the Pandemic of 2020, with empty hospitals, stacks of unused ventilators, idle doctors and nurses, and scary headlines from afar.

It is time for us, as a country to say, “Enough!” We need to put this sorry chapter in our history books and move forward, while protecting the weak and vulnerable. It is time to remember who we are and to start acting like the men and women we have always been in, “The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.”

Joe Grant

Wiscasset