I took a day off from blogging for the most part today because I had something better to do. Feed a family. Not my family, but a family who has a child with cancer. I fixed them pizza by the way. Trust me, Steven D may not have any Italian DNA but he can fix a mean (i.e., mouthwatering, delicious beyond all human description) pizza. And I think they enjoyed it.
I’m not telling you this to toot my own horn. I’m only one of a number of people who have signed on to help this family while they go through this health crisis. It just happened to be my night, is all. And most of us who have signed on to provide these meals or help out in other ways are quite different from each other. Some are very, deeply religious, and some not. Some are liberal, some conservative and some could care less about politics. But all of us are working to make the life of this young person and her family a little less frightening, a little more comfortable during a time of distress and anxiety for them.
In a sense we are a community, much like this one. Some of us know other members really well, others barely in passing and many not at all. But we all share the same critical values and the same goal. Even if we don’t agree about everything.
(cont.)
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Our country has been living a nightmare, not so much because we lost our communities, but because one political faction decided to tear them down and rip them apart, fragmenting them into smaller and smaller pieces. One faction which chose to raise the values of greed and individualism and “the one true religion” above all others. To actively exclude people from our national community and our national discourse, and not only to exclude them but to shun them, demonize them, scapegoat them make them seem less than human. It was toxic, it was divisive, it was corrosive and it was demeaning to our nation and our people. Unfortunately, for far too long it has been a winning political strategy.
In the face of such unremitting slanders and hatred, the obvious reaction was for those marginalized groups (liberals, minorities, gays, the poor, community organizers, etc.) to do the same thing. To form our own groups. To rant and rave about the lies, the slurs, the stereotypes and the falsehoods foisted upon the American scene by those who had made us their targets of scorn. Ergo the rise of the netroots or the progressive blogosphere or whatever the heck anyone wants to call it. In many ways it was a necessary step. We had to win back our self-respect and then demand that we receive respect for our rights, our views, and our identities from others before we could reach across aisles or build bridges.
But we cannot remain forever in two camps. As Lincoln said, “A nation divided against itself cannot stand.” With the election of President-elect Obama, we have seen the means by which we can begin to reclaim not only our humanity, but the humanity of all people with whom we share this country and this planet. Vengeance feels good in the heat of the moment, but it is ultimately an unsatisfying and a morally crippling experience. Our side won a political victory, but what we need to do is turn it into something larger than mere political gain.
What we need is a form of national reconciliation. Not with the goal of excluding our differences, or hiding them, but of recognizing them, accepting them and more importantly finding our way to see past them to the simple humanity of each of one of us. And then finding ways in which we can work together, as a community, to solve the many pressing concerns we face as a country.
I know not everyone is capable of such a journey, nor does everyone see the value in extending friendship or forgiveness to those who have hurt us. It would be easier to see the other side as simply “other,” bereft of fellow feeling, and undeserving of our empathy or compassion. To refuse to engage. But we can’t. We just can’t.
You see, we have a sick child. An unemployed father. A single woman without health care coverage. A soldier just trying to stay alive from one minute to the next. A family who is losing their home. A grandmother who has lost all her savings. Children who aren’t being taught how to read properly. Jobs that are disappearing. Fear that is rising.
If we stay apart, each to our own little island of suffering or plenty, as the case may be, ultimately all of us will drown as the flood waters of economic disaster, climate change, disease, hatred and war flow over us, inundating our lives and eradicating our society. But we need not make that choice. We can join together, across cultural and ideological barriers to offer each other help and hope. We can act alone as individuals or we can form a community dedicated to solving our problems together.
The Constitution has a wonderful phrase in its preamble: “promote the general Welfare.” It is one of the six stated purposes for establishing the Constitution, the one which follows after to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, and provide for the common defence, and just before the last stated purpose, to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. Each purpose is reliant upon each of the others. One cannot have liberty without justice, for example, nor can one insure domestic tranquility unless we both provide for the common defence and promote the general welfare. These are not mutually exclusive strands of an argument, but are cohesive parts of a whole, woven together to form a community of purposes for these United States of America.
Perhaps more than anything else right now, we need to restore our country’s emphasis on promoting the general welfare. We have seen the results when the welfare of all is ignored, even debased, at the expense of the welfare of the few. Our nation, and our Constitution, our form of government, was not established to provide a feeding frenzy for the most rapacious among us, nor was it intended provide a test case for the maxim “survival of the fittest.” We have always been a nation which saw itself as series of communities. Indeed, in one respect you could say we fought a civil war in large part over the correct way to organize ourselves as a community. Our laws have always looked to the future as much as they have to the past. Our great social movements have been created to convince the nation that this community of citizens needed to go in a different direction, needed to aspire to higher ideals, and needed to work toward the achievement of goals that previously had been maligned or denied.
And while each of us expects our politicians and our government to lead the way in finding solutions to our national problems, we also bear a large responsibility. A responsibility to seek out those with whom we disagree, and to see them not as our enemy, our adversary or our opponent in some stupid, mindless game, but as a fellow human being, who deserves respect, who deserves to be listened to and heard. Just as they need to respect us, to listen to us and to let our voices be heard, not in anger, not with vitriol, but out of a sincere desire to come together as a community of souls in this still great nation of ours, to promote the general welfare of all of us. I know it will not be easy, particularly for those who harbor bitterness or prejudice in their hearts, but it must be done if we are to heal the festering wounds that the past several decades have laid bare.
For there will always be that sick child who needs our help. The help of everyone who is willing. The help of a community who seek to promote the general welfare.
