Some leaders don’t leave a legacy, they leave a residue.
“No,” she said. “It is not right. It is not liberty. It is
not freedom. It is not justice. And it will not be until we are all treated
equally, until we all enjoy real equality.”
“Equality?” he said. “All treated equally?” He turned to
look out the window. A belligerent bluejay landed on the edge of the birdbath,
scattering the three sparrows and the finch frolicking in the shallows. “Only
death treats all equally. Men just do the best they can.”
Distressing though it is, I realize that we are deep
in the madness of another election cycle (they are all a minor form of
psychosis, you understand). I understand as well that that means there will be
an endless fury of comments, provocations, musings and memes across all mediums
--- television, radio, print, internet, telepathy, all of them --- and that,
given the frailties of my own intellect I will be moved --- compelled, perhaps
--- on occasion to respond to same. Let me then establish for myself this first
principle of the discussion, absent which I will endeavor with all my strength
to restrain my tongue: there is no such thing as an Italian American, there is
no such thing as an Asian American, there is no such thing as an African American,
there is no such thing as a Polish American, there is no such thing as a German
American (continue as you will); there is only an American of Italian descent,
an American of Asian descent, an American of African descent, an American of
Polish descent, an American of German descent (continue as must we all).
(At the Museum,
standing before the El Greco, Christ on
the Cross with a View of Toledo)
Eloi, eloi, lama
sabachthani...All history is the echo exploded from
Golgotha, Christ’s final cry of agony and despair cascading as though
atomically through all the intersecting revolutions of the temporal ---
irrational, salvific, and deafening. We…all mankind…are swept up in its wake,
winnowed in its vortex.
There is a difference between the words “tolerance” and
“acceptance”, and the effort to make them synonymous, whether the imprecision
be the result of a deliberate ignorance in service of a desired end or simply
of sluggishness of thought, lies at the root of much discord. That I
acknowledge that you steadfastly hold
as absolutely true the position you take in regard to the structure of the
universe and of the societies within it and that I assent to occupy that same
universe and those same societies peaceably alongside of you constitutes
tolerance; that I hold as true that selfsame thought and position constitutes
acceptance. Both civic virtue and religious charity compel absolutely toward
tolerance, neither compels absolutely toward acceptance. And we would be well
advised to realize that of the two it is tolerance that demands reciprocity.
He
who lives his life to its close and has not after some fashion found God (or
been found by Him) has squandered his existence.
The
fruit of one’s own labor is increase, the fruit of the labor of others is
profit.
The function of government is to make manifest the
constellated virtue of the governed, though more often than to be wished it
simply makes manifest the lack thereof.
Long
imagined as the world’s melting pot, America becomes daily ever more likely its
winnowing house, its threshing floor.
A
profound faith informing a stubborn and wide ranging intelligence tempered by
humility and doubt is the single most reliable protector of the separation
between church and state, a fact we need keep in mind in considering candidates
for our highest court. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and
unto God the things that are God’s.” The reason capable of making that critical
discrimination is a relatively rare instrument, its master a rarer maestro yet. In practicing his art he is
most often called upon to act as though he were chaplain to a congregation of
atheists, serving at one moment as purgatory's concierge and at another as
hell's bellhop.
“Vox Populi, Vox
Dei.
This antique aphorism, subject over the centuries to a fluid range of political
interpretation, is often in our day deployed in defense of the purest ideals of
democracy. Notwithstanding the almost casual common acceptance of its
centrality to the governance of a free people, unbiased observation suggests
that the axiom be more closely examined. Even an American, the soul most ardent
in the application of the principle, is forced upon reflection to conclude that
the persistent clamor of the people has not yielded the comity one would assume
to be an expression of the voice of God. Perhaps then it is the case that the
voice of the people is too often raised less as the echo of God’s voice and
more as a response to it…and the state of the polity is a measure of the
disparity between the two.” A. Burnbridge (from
a lecture “Syllogisms and Stumblingblocks” at the University of the Americas,
1997 )
I want to live in a world where I never again have to hear
anyone say, “Politics is a dirty business.” Clearly, this is not that world,
nor, I suspect, will it ever be. Here, march though they may beneath the banner
of “leadership,” politicians aspire only to power, the ability not to conduce
to unity but rather to compel it by force. The sole valid purpose of political
power --- and thus the only justification of the social hierarchy that it
establishes (or dismantles) --- is the elaboration and maintenance of the
common good. But the fulfilment of that purpose demands as prerequisite the
effort to define the notion of “common good.” This effort constitutes civic
education, and in this world “civics,” a nobler instruction, has been replaced
by the more Machiavellian “political science.”
The teaching of civics creates citizens, the teaching of political
science creates politicians. A society of the free can exist without
politicians; without citizens it cannot.
Citizenship is localized; it presupposes both place and sovereignty
and is specific to them. One is a citizen of a sovereign nation. That one can
in any genuine sense be a “citizen of the world” is a thought so vapid as to
decay rapidly into incoherent delusion, comforting, vacant, and dangerous.
Certainly it can be asserted that the world is indeed, in an expanded sense at
least, a “place,” but that it is, ever has been, or indeed ought to be understood
to constitute a single sovereignty (speculation on the nature of the divine aside)
numbs the reason and dissolves the very notion of citizenship. The world in
which we find ourselves comprises an assemblage of nations --- individual and
unique entities sovereign and self-willed --- destined, perhaps, to be
ultimately an organic unity but failing yet the attainment even of genuine
community. Globalization, one world community, the brotherhood of man, the
unity of human consciousness, the beneficent interconnectedness of all human
action, the butterfly effect…pipe dreams all and all the more dangerous as
presently imagined. Perhaps the state of being hinted at by such concepts is
indeed devoutly to be desired. That the consciousness of man --- inherently
flawed, inherently unstable, inherently divided --- is capable of creating for
itself that state of being is a grotesque delusion.
It is likely that the nation is the maximum
expanded form of social organization of which man is capable, just as it is
certain that the family is the root form from which all other forms derive. The
unity of the family, the cohesion of its bonding, is an ontological fact as
self-evident as the binding forces of physical reality. The binding forces of
all further social elaborations are not so organic. They derive not from any
root structure innate of humankind but represent, in the individual and thus in
the aggregate, acts of will, intentional shapings of the direction of
consciousness, whether thoughtful or casual. The society they constellate is a
choice, not a fate, and rests not on resignation but on assent. And I doubt
deeply the ability of the individual to extend that assent beyond national
coherence.
