Month: December 2012

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Reconciled Worlds

And every stone shall cry

In praises of the child

By whose descent among us

The worlds are reconciled.

Reading the pundits after Apocalyptic Friday, you could be forgiven for wondering how the worlds of the NRA, Gun-Control Advocates, Tax Reformers and Tax Resisters could ever be reconciled.  Anger is coursing through the veins of lobbyists, Congress-people, and the media. Indignation is cresting at the moment in the year when we celebrate peace and goodwill to all.

It reminds me of a beautiful summer day when I sat in my car across from my apartment, having just fought bitterly with my wife.  I was thinking, How could the flower beds look so beautiful and the birds be singing blissfully when I feel so angry and misunderstood? What a waste of glory! I think it was nightfall before I could recover my perspective and proceed on with thirty-seven years of marriage, and yet the incongruity of that moment remains with me.

It is hard to forgive those who hold their principles against you, as though you were the thoughtless heathen and a threat to moral society.  They mock, not only your principles, but even your benign intentions.  They see you as a party, an advocacy, a hired gun, or an ideologue, not as a person with scruples.  They demonize you.

But that’s the problem with principles. They override facts.  You hang on to principle because it is immune to change. And it always sounds like virtue, even when it is stubbornness.  It keeps you safe in your enclave and the rest of the world in their unprincipled society.  The smaller the enclave the more stubborn the principle, a principle that defies reason and fairness.

In conclusion, I reiterate the sentiments of the protagonist of Silver-linings Playbook,

It is better to be kind rather than right.

 

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Rights and Wrongs

Rights are not sacred. They are precious, but they are also insidious, as the week’s events will testify. The right to free speech can lead to indoctrination or hate speech. The right to privacy can lead to the elimination of human life. The right to bear arms can lead to carnage.  Rights can be perverted to wrongs.

Indignation comes naturally to our lips, because we think our rights are sacred. We are obsessed with defending them to the detriment of those they harm and offend.   We don’t assume a point of view, we establish it. We don’t contend with the opposition, we batter it.  We don’t elect representatives, we purchase them and seal their allegiance.

The problem is, it is all based on good intentions.  We have every right to be proud of our democracy, our freedom to speak and assemble, and our right to arm ourselves. We are a model for emerging democracies, not to copy, but to study and learn from. We have struggled to clarify these rights over years of elections and judicial decisions, and we have come a long way.

But we are also arrogant in our rights, and it takes unspeakable tragedy to shake us loose from them.  This is not to make us responsible for the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. Only one man can be faulted for that. But we have a problem with rights like the Gollum has with its “preciousss” ring.  We don’t respect our rights, we enshrine them.

To this date, December 18, 2012, no one has tried to make political fodder of the Newtown tragedy. It proves we have restraint and a sense of the sacred.  It proves we can make a moral treaty.

Someone will shortly violate that treaty, because someone always does.  When that happens, we should remember our rights, especially free speech, but we should also remember our wrongs: arrogance, privilege,  and presumption.  We should not tolerate political gamesmanship in the face of tragedy or indulge those with an ax to grind.

We may have inalienable rights, but they are not incorruptible.