The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity. (W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”)

When have these words from Yeats had more relevance than today?  With the retirement of Olympia Snow, the parade of moderates leaving the U.S. Senate has become a stampede.  The voices of moderation are sounding fainter and fainter.

Barry Goldwater said famously, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue.” And Barry Goldwater has begun to look very amiable in this political climate.  Goldwater could always work across the aisle to draft legislation he believed in. He was a surprisingly tolerant Senator, when there was work to be done.

Today’s Congress operates as a “take-it-or-leave-it showdown,” said the New York Times today (March 1), paraphrasing Senator Snowe.  The “showdown” has become a  grinding halt.  The work of legislating has become the work of posturing, taking an inflexible political stance to demonstrate the will to get one’s own way. In some quarters this is characterized as standing on principle.  In others it is the collapse of good will.

For some reason the voting public is not impressed with “standing on principle,” as the approval rating of Congress has plummeted to the single digits.  There are principles and there are demands, even as in the international arena there is terrorism and there are sanctions.  Terrorism is taking extreme actions on the basis of beliefs, while sanctions are mounting and unified pressure to oppose repugnant policies.  Which of these best characterize the standoff we currently see in Congress?

It is certainly hyperbole to call the Congressional stalemate “terrorism,” but it falls far short of “sanctions,” because the pressure is coming from a minority of representatives and their resistance to productive legislation is losing its support. The “principled” right certainly found its limits with the passage of the payroll tax relief and unemployment extension in the last month.  Didn’t they actually cave in to the suffering of their middle class constituents? Didn’t they abandon their principles in the face of dire need? So no need to label these legislators as “terrorists,” because they were willing to compromise to save their collective necks, if not for the good of their constituents.

With eight months to go before the general election, the candidates at all levels should be choosing between “passionate intensity” and “conviction.”  And the voters should be discerning who has conviction and who has only passion. There is plenty of rhetorical passion in the media stream, but there is less conviction. Convictions have to go deeper than partisanship. They have to be grounded in serving “the greatest good for the greatest number” (John Stuart Mill).  There should be no unequivocal promises or tax covenants that would compromise this conviction. There should be no one-issue candidates. There should be candidates who will stand up to the bullies, the ones who press their case to bitter stalemate.

If the moderates are leaving, then God bless them for their service. Now we should replace them with men and women of good will, a working majority that will take seriously its responsibility to govern and not to willfully obstruct.