From the Center for the Study of the Presidency comes an intelligent and inspirational work, Declaration on Civility and Inclusive Leadership, setting an appropriately high bar for our nation’s leadership. It’s high time we stop being primarily Republicans and Democrats and become (deep breath, this is radical) Americans. As David Abshire and Max Kampelman write:
Civility does not require citizens to give up cherished beliefs or “dilute”
their convictions. Rather, it requires respect, listening, and trust when
interacting with those who hold differing viewpoints. Indeed, civility
and inclusive leadership have often been exercised in the American
experience as a means of moving to higher, common ground and
developing more creative approaches to realize shared aspirations.
Bill Moyers commentary on the week of political goings-on with the Reverend Wright media blitz contained in it both a finger-wag at politics as usual (hard not to love that) and the daggone best quote I’ve ever heard. Moyers:
Politics often exposes us to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I’ve never seen anything like this - this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner. Both men, no doubt, will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we’re paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burkhardt who said: “Beware the terrible simplifiers.”
“… Lessons From the American Experience for the Coming Four Years.”
This essay written by David M. Abshire, president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency, is my new favorite reading. It’s fairly impossible to pull out a quote as the whole read is imminently quotable, but here’s a go at it:
Many Americans are inclined to look back on the founding generation and its Age of Passion with deserved reverence. But though they are revered today as miracle workers, their powers, as Madison reminds us, were the powers of men, not angels. their gifts were also plenty and diverse… As the greatest and most productive generation in our history, and perhaps in world history, we must learn from the examples of these men - their ability to hold ideals so strongly and to maintain their convictions while still listening to opposition and making allowances for human failings and compromise.
Dr. Thomas Cochran, along with Jerry Paul, will speak next Tuesday night at Dinner at the Square “The Nuclear Power Debate Version 2.0: What’s Old, What’s New, What’s Hype, What’s True.”
Here’s his advice to people in his field:
Always tell the truth. Always make understatements. And talk to your enemies.
They’ve each made major foreign policy speeches recently. You know, you’ve heard a sound byte or two. Which can’t possibly accurately convey the entire message of their vision for our future.
Our future. That’s your kids, your grandkids.
Got about 10 minutes? You can read each of their messages. Technology has, more or less, run us out of excuses.
DO IT.
Or explain to your grandkids why you didn’t bother. It’ll start something like “in 2008, I was busy with something or other and I didn’t have time to really pay attention…”
If you like The Village Square, you’ll love the new movie Purple State of Mind. The website is worth checking out and you can buy the DVD online as well.
Hat tip to Lea, who has her finger on the pulse of - well - everything.
In looking back on just where such an oddball affinity came from, I’m thinking it started with its colorful use as a prop by the late great He-Coon Florida governor Lawton Chiles. In his 1991 State of the State speech, Governor Chiles waved a three-legged stool in the air as an illustration of the American system of balance of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches. Saw a leg off, and that stool won’t sit right.
I’ve come to believe deeply, even reverently, in the balance of powers. The three legs of the stool of democracy achieves what is best in human history by acknowledging what is worst in human nature… that too much power tends to get the best of us pretty easily.
When I came back around to the religious faith of my childhood as an adult, good grief if I didn’t find another three-legged stool sitting right there in my Episcopal faith. The legs of this stool are Scripture, Tradition and Reason.
For a hoot, I googled “three-legged stool.” Apparently that little stool is a metaphor for balance in just about everything - Ronald Reagan’s conservative coalition, executive managerial theory, mind body & spirit - and on and on.
I recently found another sensible three-legged stool in Jim Wallis’ book The Great Awakening:
All three sectors of a society need to be functioning well for its health and well-being - the private (market) sector, the public sector, and the civil society (nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations, of which faith communities are a part). It is indeed like a three-legged stool. Each sector has crucial roles to play, and each should do what only it can do and not replace what the others can do better.
Private vs. public, business vs. government, church vs. state. The now dull and predictable political argument rages on, straining credibility that it never settles on the obvious conclusion that it’s “and” rather than “either/or”.
That lowly three-legged stool, it sits so close to the ground - so inconspicuously that you might just trip over it. But when you need to get something way up high, whether it’s a can of tomato soup or the makings of a fine democracy, it is so there for you.
Two senators - one a Republican and the other a Democrat - were eating together in the Senate Dining Room. The Republican senator said, “You Democrats know nothing about religion!” “That’s not I true,” insisted the Democratic senator. “We know a lot about religion.” So the Republican issued a challenge, ”I’ll bet twenty bucks you can’t ¬cite the Lord’s Prayer!” The Democrat said that was easy, and began, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” The Republican then reached for his wallet and replied, “Darn, I didn’t think you could do it!”
A man was drowning in the Potomac River, about one hundred feet offshore. The Republicans ran down to the river, saw his predicament, threw him fifty feet of rope, and yelled out to him, “The rest is up to you.” The Democrats then heard about the drowning man and the Republicans’ failure to rescue him. When they reached the riverbank, they saw that the poor guy was about to go under, still about a hundred feet offshore. So the Democrats threw him two hundred feet of rope-and let go of their end.
NOBODY puts baby in a corner! (the “dirty dancing” version of throwing
baby out with the bathwater)…
So to follow Liz’s line of thought…. (3 posts down)
BABY = business and government and other things that are at the core
necessary and good for our lives and country
BATHWATER= excess and indulgence
I was VERY good at the analogies section of the SAT exam, can you tell?
Aren’t we are all bathing in that same bathwater these days? (by the
way, that is another metaphor since our bathtub is WAY too small for
all of us to be in at one time). Not only bathing in the dirty
bathwater, but clearly VERY aware of everyone’s else’s bathwater…
but our own.
I started to write this post about the excessive bathwater that seems
to be coming with the election (too much coverage, too much exposure,
too much campaigning, too much makeup on those candidates…) but
found that the excessive piles of STUFF on my desk was distracting me,
the hectic and overstuffed schedule that my three kids are on keeps me
from having time to think clearly about any subject (just about to
make an orthodontist run with the eldest child, so this has to be
typed quickly), and the additional, not really needed stuff on my “got
to get it at target” list is also staring me in the face and is a bit
convicting (but the cute spring placemats are so necessary to my life).
How can i make judgements about BIG corporate presidents being
excessive, about government over spending, about campaign spewing,
when my own budget, my own personal spending is exactly the SAME
bathwater swill. the ring in my tub may be smaller, but it is still a
ring around my tub. As the old playground saying goes “point a finger
at me and you have three pointing back at you” (said in a really whiny
kindergarten tone). My own schedule is jam packed with nary a moment
to breathe and just be a good person to others and to myself.
It is bathwater, bathwater, everywhere and nary a drop to drink.
“Cultural restoration (like charity) begins at home” (said by Russell
Kirk who i just googled and found out was a really big conservative
guy. Really i didn’t know that, i just liked that quote, perhaps
showing my conservative slant on things). If i can only manage the
draining of my own bathwater whilst preserving baby in my home and
personal life, then that may be a beginning of a cultural
revolution…. or maybe just a cleaner bathtub for me and my family.
How can I aspire to do more while I am in the overfilled tub already?
Much like the warning on hairdryers “not for use while in the
bathtub”, maybe that should be the warning on complaints about
excessiveness in other’s lives… don’t do it while ordering online
from Pottery Barn or planning another shopping trip to Target.
(disclaimer, you can substitute ANY and ALL consumer friendly stores
for Pottery Barn and Target, those happen to be my personal favorites
and I am accepting any and all gift certificates from those
establishments… wait, that will just add to my excess… won’t it?
Oh, I am in deep bathwater here….)
There are not many issues on which Mr. Buckley and this page agreed or would agree — except, perhaps, the war in Iraq, which Mr. Buckley regretted as “unrealistic” and “anything but conservative.” Yet despite his uncompromising beliefs, Mr. Buckley was firmly committed to civil discourse and showed little appetite for the shrillness that plagues far too much of today’s political discourse.
For a time back in the 1960s and ’70s, Mr. Buckley and the liberal columnist Murray Kempton were something of a traveling road show. And they were friends. Yale’s angry young man turned out to be not so angry after all. He hated most of what the liberals stood for. He didn’t hate them.
