Posts filed under 'On this we agree'
For this occasion, I will pass it off to the Founders. Please feel free to add your favorite quotes to the mix.
“I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.” — George Washington
“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” –Patrick Henry
“A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.” — Benjamin Franklin
“Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.” –John Adams
“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.” –Thomas Jefferson
July 4th, 2009
On this day sixty-five years ago, young Americans were fighting and dying on the shores of Normandy France. The soldiers made their way onto the beach that June 6th in Higgins boats, unique high-walled boats that carried 25 men, sort of a “floating boxcar.”
Conservative author Peggy Noonan wrote about D-Day, and about the Higgins boats in the introduction of her book “Patriotic Grace: What it is and why we need it now.” Noonan tells of one soldier, his fate intricately woven with the fate of the other men in his Higgins Boat, heading in high seas to a conclusion unknown… “it took [his] five little boats four hours to cover the nine miles to the beach:”
They were the worst hours of our lives. It was pitch black, cold, and the rain was coming down in sheets, drenching us. The boats were being tossed in the waves, making all of us violently sick.
Noonan reflects in the remainder of Patriotic Grace on the difficult circumstances we find ourselves in as a people today, and of the rise of the partisan hate-filled din. Says Noonan “we fight as if we’ll never need each other,” yet our very fate may depend on one another.
And so I came to think this: What we need most right now, at this moment, is a kind of patriotic grace-a grace that takes the long view, apprehends the moment we’re in, comes up with ways of dealing with it, and eschews the politically cheap and manipulative. That admits affection and respect. That encourages them. That acknowledges that the small things that divide us are not worthy of the moment; that agrees that the things that can be done to ease the stresses we feel as a nation should be encouraged, while those that encourage our cohesion as a nation should be supported. I’ve come to think that this really is our Normandy Beach… the little, key area in which we have to prevail if the whole enterprise is to succeed. The challenge we must rise to… We are an armada. All sorts of Americans, wonderful people, all ages, faiths and colors, with different skills, fabulous skills, from a million different places, but all here with you, going forward.
Like it or not, we are in each others’ Higgins boats. Our fate, almost certainly shared.
Given that circumstance, perhaps we might use today to consider how we will best keep faith with those young Americans who left their lives that day on Omaha Beach.
Photo credit: Chuck Holon
June 6th, 2009
“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” –Matthew 25:40
The Reverend Allison DeFoor, speaking at our January dinner “Faith in the Public Square” spoke softly, but carried a big stick. It wasn’t until after I got home and listened to the tape of the dinner that I realized how profound what he said was. Whether you’re a person of faith or no faith, whether you apply them to the Prison Ministries which he had dedicated his life to or to any other group of “the least of these,” it’s hard to argue with the truth of his words (emphasis added):
So it was a pretty big reorientation for my life and if you look at Matthew 25, it might be for yours as well. To the extent that there are divisions in our culture about these issues it’s because we’re not paying attention to the orders in Matthew 25 which come directly out of the Jewish tradition. If we would [take care of the prisoners, take care of the poor, take care of the sick] we might find that many of these divisions would disappear because the divisions, really – at the end of the day – aren’t anything compared to what we’re being told to do. Towards that end, I’ll tell you that at Wakulla Prison we have 1,000 volunteers coming in to a faith and character based institution, I have personally gone to the ACLU and dialoged with them… using volunteers and no state money passes constitutional muster. I’ll tell you that we’re sitting on an 8% recidivism rate, when the recidivism rate is 33% post-release in the general population. So if you would like to come and put away your divisions in the public square and devote the public square to actually doing things as opposed to talking, we’d love to have you. We could use another thousand volunteers.
May 31st, 2009
In the busy hubbub of modern life, today too often becomes about sleeping in, shopping, getting the lawn mowed. But forgetting the real meaning of Memorial Day is nearly impossible in my neighborhood because of a neighbor.
We’ll call her Jane.
Jane’s lawn is a memorial to the sacrifice made by our fellow Americans, people like you and me, until they put everything in their life on hold to do what their country asked. And in case you didn’t notice the front-yard-turned-monument spread out right before you when you drive past Jane’s house, her sign downright insists that we STOP.
So, stop I will… to honor the memory of our neighbors killed in service to our country since this American experiment began. Those killed in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Vietnam, in WWII and WWI and those killed more quietly away from the headlines in smaller conflicts that have exacted the same big price.
To my father-in-law who died in Vietnam, and to my mother-in-law who had to raise four children without him, I remember.
In the name of my family members who served and are serving: My grandfather who left a thriving pediatric practice to join the Army in WWII, my father who spent his career in service to the Navy (first as a pilot, later as a civilian), my brother and sister-in-law and cousin who still serve today… I remember.
The Village Square has always been about finding what we agree on in the midst of so much disagreement, and this is it.
Today, as our country remembers, President Obama laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. I’m a D.C. native who’s had many an opportunity in my life to take in the breathtaking awe of Arlington. You simply can’t leave there unaffected.
For every rich and beloved life lost in the sea of crosses on the hills of Arlington, we remember.
Sure, it’s a different scale, but if you really pause to take it in, you won’t be quite the same when you leave Jane’s lawn either.
May 25th, 2009
I will never meet Monsignor William Kerr in person and I am sure my life is the less for it. Kerr died yesterday at age 68. Of late, though, I’ve spent a bit of my time learning about him and I wanted you to know what I found out.
In my job, I scour this hometown of ours for the right people to have transcendent conversation across divides. I ask lots of my “neighbors” who might be just right. I look for unique spirits in a world so much less likely to celebrate what unites us than fight about what divides us.
For our summer program “A Rabbi, A Priest and An Imam” Monsignor Kerr never really had any competition.
Kerr’s professional reputation, to a person I spoke with, was stellar. And everyone stopped to say a kind personal word about him. One source shared that “people just love that man.” The Democrat’s obit mentioned a stealth hospital visit by Nando, Kerr’s German shepherd, arranged by those who most know and love Kerr in his final days.
Not a bad epitaph as vivid evidence of the measure of this man’s humanity.
“Monsignor Kerr traveled all over the globe, touching lives everywhere as he worked to build a more peaceful world,” FSU President T.K. Wetherell said in a statement… “Florida State has lost a good friend, and the world has lost a true visionary. We are extremely saddened by this loss.”
We’ll have to find a way to move on without Bill Kerr in July, as will so many other people who I know really needed him to be there. The world needed a couple more decades of Monsignor Kerr in it, but now we’ll all have to find another way. Perhaps we’re left to multiply Bill Kerr ourselves, to rise just a little higher to his call.
Today I mourn for what we all lost yesterday. Tomorrow I’ll try to pick back up my own little tiny piece of the work to be done. I’ll do it remembering Bill Kerr. And I think maybe I’ll try to live my life well enough that someone will do their best to sneak my dog in at the end.
I’ll call it my Bill Kerr yardstick.
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
May 14th, 2009
From the LeRoy Collins Institute recently updated report “Tough Choices: Shaping Florida’s Future:”
Providing high-quality education for those students remaining in the schools remains a daunting task. Florida spends, on average, $8,437 per student, compared to a national average of $9.993. In its 2009 special session, the Florida legislature balanced its budget in part by cutting $140 per student. The high costs associated with the 2002 constitutional amendment limiting class size still loom (although there have been recent efforts by public school officials and others encouraging the legislature to relax the requirements). Florida continues to place large financial burdens on local governments to provide school funding. We reported last year that the local share of school funding in the 2004-2005 school year was greater than for any other southern state, save Virginia, and this remains true. In fact, the local share of public school funding continues to increase with no signs of slowing.
Please watch Dr. Carol Weissert, Director of the LeRoy Collins Institute, speaking on this topic at the Florida TaxWatch and Village Square Take-out Tuesday forum HERE. (Dr. Weissert’s presentation begins two-thirds through.)
March 13th, 2009
On the reopening of trading on Wall Street after 9/11:
“They lifted the New York Stock Exchange covered with ash-the monitors on the floor literally thick with ash, the trading floor badly damaged-and one week later, seven days, they were lined up ready to roar and ringing the bell. That day, for the first and only time in my Iife, I bought a stock-five thousand dollars worth, of J&J-and as I bought it on the Internet, I called my son over to watch me hit “Enter” so he would understand for the rest of his life that when America is in trouble you invest in it, you put what you’ve got right there.”
–Peggy Noonan in Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now
February 25th, 2009
This week, Bill Moyers cited a passage from Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, a passage I suspect we’d find agreement with across the partisan divide:
Upon my return to Chicago, I would find the signs of decay accelerated throughout the South Side. The neighborhood shabbier, the children edgier and less restrained, more middle class families heading out to the suburbs, the jails bursting with flowering youth, my brothers without prospects. All too rarely, do I hear people asking just what it is that we’ve done to make so many children’s hearts so hard or what collectively we might do to right their moral compass, what values to live by. Instead I see us doing what we have always done, pretending that these children are somehow not our own.
Moyers likened this to a metaphor for our whole country. Whether you agree, or think it only valuable as a description of challenges in specific communities, if we’re honest with ourselves it is true at some level. Conservatives have been concerned with cultural coarsening and moral compasses in a way that rings hollow to liberals, yet I suspect Obama’s words hit a chord. Conservatives differ from liberals in how they’d solve the problem, but can we agree this is not what we want for our children?
January 24th, 2009
“…You and I ought not to die until we have explained ourselves to each other.”
So began the late-life correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the founding fathers described in the recent HBO mini-series “John Adams” as “the north and south poles of our revolution.”
Once friends, differences in opinion and political competition had taken a toll.
They, as others in the founders’ generation, had deep philosophical disagreements. But as they went about the business of building a country, an endeavor that if unsuccessful would surely lead to their hanging, they hardly had the luxury to stop talking to each other.
Despite the differences between them and the odds against them, the founders managed to cobble together their opus – and ours – the Constitution, which despite all probability still guides this diverse group of people forward together.
But, alas, “politics ain’t beanbag” and two election cycles later, Jefferson and Adams had no tolerance for one another.
Fast-forward a couple of centuries and most of us are likely to relate to the fix Adams and Jefferson found themselves in. We, like they, have deep disagreement with – and sometimes little tolerance for – one another.
Perhaps nowhere is this gap more profound today than on matters where faith and politics intersect.
It was a bold experiment the founders undertook when they broke with hundreds of years of history to form a country without an official religion. Woven through their work was the then radical belief that individual liberty was of the highest value, more important than the interests of government and kings.
Flowing inevitably from this notion was a strong commitment to individual religious freedom. The specifics of the relationship between church and state, however, produced disagreement, much as it does today. So they agreed where they could, agreed to disagree where they couldn’t and kicked the sticking points down the road a bit.
Today our religious diversity is far beyond the imagination of the founding fathers, yet we are still a country with the freedom to worship as we choose.
Despite that astounding achievement, as the 2008 presidential contest put in sharp relief, we still don’t see eye-to-eye about the role of faith in our union, just as we don’t agree about economics, fighting terrorism, the role of government in our lives or really much of anything it sometimes seems.
Maybe more concerning than the basic disagreements, though, is the fact that we’ve largely stopped talking – and most certainly stopped listening – to those with whom we disagree. We naturally surround ourselves – socially, in church, in our television viewing – with those who see it our way.
Lost in the sea of sameness is the healthy – though sometimes difficult – struggle of ideas between “neighbors”, akin to the struggle that birthed our democracy. It was, in fact, that very diversity of ideas that some founders expected would naturally protect the freedoms they held so dear.
Next Tuesday, The Village Square will fly in the face of this recent trend, ignoring good manners – and possibly good sense – as we continue our Dinner at the Square season “Faith, Politics & Neighbors.” Our panel – Center for a Just Society’s Ken Connor, Lawton Chiles’ General Counsel Dexter Douglass, ordained minister and former Lieutenant Governor candidate Allison DeFoor and former FSU Religion Chair Leo Sandon – will debate “Faith in the Public Square.”
With two Democrats and two Republicans on the panel, they likely won’t agree.
But our foolishness only starts there. To mark the inauguration of a new president, we are inviting you to join us in lunch across the divide by inviting a conservative friend to lunch if you’re a Democrat and a liberal friend to lunch if you’re a Republican.
And, like Jefferson and Adams before you, explain yourselves to each other.
Adams and Jefferson ultimately died friends, having given history the gift of their final correspondence. They died on the same day, July 4th, 50 years to the day after the nation they built was born.
“Whether you or I were right,” Adams had written to Jefferson, “posterity must judge. Yet I ask of you, who shall write the history of our revolution?”
The philosophical descendants of Jefferson and Adams are alive and well today in us, in this amazing American experiment “in the course of human events.”
And we are still writing the history of their revolution.
Like the founders, we hardly have the luxury to stop talking to each other.
–Liz Joyner
January 9th, 2009
Good news today.
Apparently the CEOs of GM and Ford must have been reading this blog and listening to our advice.
The bosses of America’s two biggest car companies are promising to work for just one dollar a year, if the US Congress gives them access to a $25-billion loan.
That’s a start on The Village Square plan toward fiscal solvency for Detroit. Next, the CEO of the third biggest car company, Chrysler needs to go all in for the $1 annual salary. After that, it’s the employees’ (and union’s) turn to ante up on what they’ll do to ensure that American continues to manufacture marketable cars. After all that, we’ll talk dollars from taxpayers.
We’re waiting…
December 2nd, 2008
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