McCain's final message

An authentic American hero warns that we've lost our way

John McCain.
(Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

This is the editor's letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.

John McCain still has something to say, even if a White House press aide doesn't think a dying man's thoughts matter. "I don't remember another time in my life when so many Americans considered someone's partisan affiliation a test of whether that person is entitled to respect," the Arizona senator writes in a new book. He fears we have lost our way. "Principled compromises that move the country forward," he says, are essential to a functioning democracy. Most unauthorized immigrants "are decent people working hard to make better lives," not the rapists or drug dealers depicted by demagogues. Torture, which he personally endured as a POW, is a moral abomination that always debases both the tortured and the torturer. Our nation is diminished by "a half-baked, spurious nationalism" that has traded true global leadership for self-interest and isolation. America's "devotion to human rights is our truest heritage," he reminds us. "We are a country with a conscience."

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William Falk

William Falk is editor-in-chief of The Week, and has held that role since the magazine's first issue in 2001. He has previously been a reporter, columnist, and editor at the Gannett Westchester Newspapers and at Newsday, where he was part of two reporting teams that won Pulitzer Prizes.