The official-sounding Loudoun Crime Commission is actually a small nonprofit in exurban Loudoun County, Virginia, about an hour outside the nation’s capital. Their motto is “Fighting crime is every citizen’s business,” and their primary activity seems to be holding a series of luncheons at a local country club, located inside a gated community, to which speakers on crime prevention are invited.
I attended their recent luncheon as part of an interfaith group organized by the All-Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) out of concern over the message of the scheduled speaker, Frank Gaffney. Gaffney founded his own nonprofit, the Center for Security Policy, and has devoted his career to labeling Islam and Muslims as an existential threat to Western civilization. He claims that Islam is not really a religion, but a plan for the totalitarian takeover of the world through jihad, essentially “Communism with God.” And that was all in the first five minutes. It won’t surprise you that I found him outrageous and specious. To counter his arguments point-by-point would require repeating those arguments, as if there were some credibility to them. Gaffney is a cold warrior, a former Reagan aide, who cast about for a new enemy when the Soviet Union collapsed. He found it in extremist interpretations of Islam, which he deems to be representative of a faith with over 1.7 billion adherents around the world. It is akin to defining Judaism by the actions of the assassin of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his supporters, or Christianity by the actions of guys in hoods who burn crosses. Let me anticipate one of the possible responses to my analogy. Gaffney did not say what so many others put forward: not all Muslims are terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslim (BTW, not true). What he said was that any Muslim who observes sharia law has the ultimate objective of replacing the United States government with an Islamic theocratic dictatorship in which non-Muslims are subjugated, women are sex slaves, criminals are maimed and Our Way Of Life disappears. I am not overstating his position. He made this argument and then connected it to Imam Mohammed Magid of ADAMS, who was not in the room. The presentation of about forty minutes leaned heavily on Gaffney’s hero, President Reagan. Gaffney is a believer in what Mr. Reagan said in 1961, when he was cooperating with the House Un-American Affairs Committee: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Gaffney was pretty direct about his belief that Islam aims to extinguish freedom. Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy is designated by the government as a 501(c)(3) organization. It therefore pays no federal taxes, and supporters can deduct contributions from their taxes. In other words, like a synagogue or church, the government subsidizes the group. There is one requirement that such an organization must follow in the public square: neither it nor those representing it may “directly or indirectly participate in, or intervene in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.” That’s from the IRS. Gaffney announced that he was prohibited from endorsing anyone, but then insisted that eight years of “Obama-Clinton malfeasance” had put the country at risk from Muslims and that only one candidate, Donald Trump, had proposed measures to uphold the oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic. Those measures included restricting immigration, excluding refugees, investigating places Muslims gather and naming the enemy: radical Islam. Gaffney isn’t the problem here. He is well-known for his dark vision of the world and his carefully crafted depiction of the dangers of Islam. But seated around me at the luncheon were members of the Loudoun County community who forked over $25 or so to be enlightened. Many of them — I won’t say “most” because I can’t say for sure – seemed to be believers before they walked in. They nodded vigorously at Gaffney’s every claim of danger. They laughed too loudly at his mild sarcasm about the current administration. They vocally agreed with the criticism of our Presidents Obama and Bush for calling Islam a “religion of peace” and for saying “we are not at war with Islam.” They clapped as if they were saving Tinkerbell’s life. Sitting among their white neighbors in a country club in a gated community in semi-rural Virginia, these citizens in the business of fighting crime were convinced that their Muslim neighbors – even the ones born and raised in the United States – were engaged in sedition (Gaffney’s word) and a stealth infiltration of America with the purpose of conquest (Gaffney’s claim). The local law enforcement officers, there at the invitation of the LCC, listened politely. The deputy who left the dining room with me was unimpressed — I had the impression he was there to witness, not learn. But the members of the Loudoun Crime Commission gathered to reaffirm the kind of America that guarantees the civil rights of people just like them and to cheer on a return to a time when Americans named one another as subversives. These are the small minds that came to see big hate.
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How’s that for clickbait? I am the old man and I tripped myself on my new pannier (saddle bags) as I dismounted at a busy intersection in DC on my way to work. My injury is a huge booboo on my knee, one that more than a week later is still weeping the gunk that will eventually harden into a scab. The blow seems to have temporarily, at least, blocked the pain from the mild arthritis in my knee joint. It is not an arthritis treatment I recommend, though it seems to have fewer potential side-effects than the pharmaceuticals that are advertised on television. In the process, I have found a metaphor for the current presidential campaign, which itself is a sort of oozing wound. I imagine that a lot of Americans, particularly of the white persuasion, have been feeling the ache of anger and disappointment increase over the last number of years, finally catching up just a little to the people of color who know those aches like a family member. On the right (Donald Trump) and on the left (Bernie Sanders), candidates for president tapped into that anger and named the cause – Wall Street, Mexico, the one percent, Muslims, just to suggest a few. The rhetoric of outrage brought pain to the surface, like a knee scraping the pavement, and propelled one of those men to a nomination and the other to a position of influence. We can decry the approach and, after the entertainment value of escalations subside, object to the further coarsening of public debate, but we cannot deny the pain. Come November 9, there will be no more candidates for the office, but the pain will not disappear. In fact, while it will take some time for the scrapes to scab over, the underlying pain, the arthritic pain, will come back. So now is the time to start thinking about how we will deal with the wounds that have formed from the raucous contest to be President. How will we treat the pain we now know is there? Current polls suggest that the people who are newest to this discomfort will be further disappointed in the outcome of the election, but what brings them to the polls will be waiting for them when they emerge. And the people whose choice will likely triumph are already too cynical to believe that there is anything but more years of limping ahead of them. This much is certain, even if the polls are wrong. Victory dances will not help, and neither will the continuation of the bad behavior that brought us to this point. The candidates and their surrogates will have some responsibility to heal the breach when the dust settles, but those of us who have a higher horizon than self-interest will be doing the heavy lifting. Will we acknowledge the authenticity of the source of the raw anger? A loss at the polls is a repudiation only of a candidacy; a victory is the affirmation only of the majority. The people who have been stirred to action must not be told to go back to their homes and pretend it never happened any more than they should be promised that every little thing is going to be all right. If nobody is listening to anything but the noise of the campaign now, come November 9 it will be time to listen to each other for the good of the people and the good of the nation. Now is the time to begin rehearsing the vocabulary of reconciliation so that we are ready to deploy it in every corner of the land. Much as we might like to believe otherwise, the work is not all in the hands of supporters of the Republican nominee, but it is no less in their hands than anyone else. The changes in our society – changes mostly for good, I believe – have made people used to privilege feel disenfranchised. It is irrelevant if they are correct, let alone deserving. They are no less part of the beloved community. And the targets of gratuitous campaign threats need to be reassured that they will not be chased away, isolated or taken from their families. They will not be subjected to special scrutiny. They will not be forced back into a time when the greatness of America was in a part of the bus where they had no seats. Two months is not a lot of time to get ready. The faith communities of this country have a head start, in my humble opinion. Except for the minority who have locked the doors of their churches, synagogues and mosques to the self-evident truths of America, people of faith have been practicing the language of reconciliation for a long time. They have begun to practice it with their own faithful who have challenged the norms of love and doctrinal fidelity, and they have made steps, some of them tentative, toward those they define as non-believers. But you need not be part of a people of faith to have faith in people. And you need not love God – or even believe in God – to love your neighbor. The person who votes for that man or that woman will be your neighbor still when the polls close. That, then, is the analgesic. That is the bandage that will shelter the surface wound from becoming infected and festering. That is anti-inflammatory that will ease the underlying pain without the need to pick off the scab. As for the old man on the bike, he now has a new mantra: “Don’t swing your leg back – slide forward and step over.” Next time: 27 Celebrities You Never Heard Of!!! Sometimes a person offers an insight that is more profound than intended, even if it pretty remarkable on its own. My favorite example is from the Declaration of Independence. When Thomas Jefferson held this truth to be self-evident, “all men are created equal,” he could not have been aware that eventually it would do away with slavery, give women the vote, lead to the Voting Rights Act, result in the Americans with Disabilities Act and underpin the Lilly Ledbetter Act. But it did. On the other hand, sometimes a profound insight has a limiting effect. In 1996, James Carville encouraged the members of the (Bill)) Clinton campaign team to stay focused on three basic messages. One of them was “The economy, stupid,” later to become “It’s the economy, stupid.” The emphasis on economic concerns, usually reduced to jobs and taxes, has gotten in the way of more nuanced and sophisticated discussions of complicated issues in subsequent campaigns. This 2016 presidential campaign is no different in that respect. The contest to capture disaffected voters has focused from the beginning on jobs and taxes. Immigrants are taking our jobs. Wall Street is not paying its fair share of taxes. Globalization has destroyed formerly dependable employment. The infamous 1% controls it all. Many is the time I looked for a phrase that would capture my discomfort with placing a dollar value on what constitutes the United States and its blessings. And then I discovered it. The phrase is this: A country is more than an economy. I will leave it to you in the end to decide whether the context is profound or limiting. I guess it depends on how it is applied. There is no economic value to many of our freedoms. Yes, a clever advocate can make the case that the long-term neglect of certain kinds of regulation would a negative impact down the road, but most of the basic freedoms in the Bill of Rights that undergird our civil society are not economic in nature. An unfettered press does not necessarily create more jobs than a controlled one, even if “free” in this case does not mean without cost. But people have not immigrated to America seeking easy prosperity. Go to Hong Kong or a country moving from communism to free market for that. Go to Sweden or England for social welfare. Housing, food, transportation, higher education – all of them are cheaper somewhere else. It is the context of America that people are seeking when they come here. When my Jewish ancestors came from Eastern Europe, they were indeed seeking the “goldene medinah,” the Golden Land. Maybe they thought the streets were paved with gold, but they discovered what the 17th-century European migrants accidentally created: the land of the free. They discovered that a country is more than an economy. In spite of their initial poverty, in spite of the resident bigotry they encountered, they mostly never decided they made a mistake. No one in my family ever went back. And that’s the America they bequeathed down the generations to me. It is the one that measures the goodness of a societal trend by how many more kinds of individuals are welcomed into the tent of civil rights derived from self-evident truths and unalienable human rights that formed the foundation on which rest the blessings of liberty. A country is more than an economy. So it is a little frightening to know where I discovered this phrase. It comes from Stephen Bannon who was, until last week, running Breitbart (a very right-wing media company) and hosting a morning radio talk show for them. Since last week, he is charge of Donald Trump’s campaign for President. And this conversation reportedly took place on his morning show during the primary season: Last year, in a November interview with Bannon, Trump regretted the loss of a worker who took his skills back to his native India. “We’ve got to be able to keep great people in the country,” Trump said. “We have to be careful of that, Steve. I think you agree with that, Steve?” Bannon did not. “A country is more than an economy,” he retorted. “We are a civic society.” In a nut shell, Mr. Bannon’s comment sums up both the ethos of the campaign he hopes to run and the decision each voter has to make. The last word in the Trump campaign slogan – again – casts a longing glance back to a time when presumably white Protestant men were in charge. You could be any race, religion or ethnicity, as long as it (at least seemed) white and Protestant. And you could be either sex, except one. In fairness, that’s the goldene medinah in which my great-grandparents landed. It worked pretty well for many white Protestant men, like Mr. Trump. Until that tent expanded (and still in many ways) it didn’t work quite as well for anyone else. Promising people the chance to earn more money, the vocabulary of business people looking for investors, has nothing to do with expanding the tent. A country is more than an economy. If there is a continuing lesson for me in this political season it is how much “traditional Republicans” love this country and what it must become. The disruptors on the left, as much as on the right, hold to a fantasy that serves themselves to the disadvantage of others. The America that is a zero-sum game is one that preserves or bestows privilege. The civic society that operates, as some Republican once said, with malice toward none and charity toward all, is the one that expands the opportunities that keep us moving forward. Some of that has to do with jobs and taxes. But a country is more than an economy. It was close to thirty years ago when I first faced an almost unbearable emotional pivot as a rabbi. A legacy family in our congregation had scheduled a naming ceremony for the first child of the next generation for late Sunday morning. And just a few days before, a brilliant, beloved and very young father died suddenly, leaving behind a devastated wife, two little children and a stunned community. I can still recall the feelings as I walked from the exquisite joy of the celebration to the crushing sorrow of the funeral. Perhaps I walked fifty steps. My insides were in turmoil; the tragedy of the death could not dampen the joy of the birth, and the giddiness of the celebration could not mitigate the catastrophic loss. I have had those experiences since. I can see now how the need to be fully present for others in each circumstance took its toll on my own inner life. But, hey – that’s the role of the rabbi. And, after all, though I am no less entitled to my feelings than anyone else, neither that naming nor that funeral had anything to do with my feelings. There were parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles awash in the miracle of life, and there were parents, children, siblings and a spouse for whom normal would never again be normal. They gathered within earshot of each other, but the tears they shed were from different wells. My role (I can’t really call it a job) was to take care of them. Those pivots certainly did not happen daily, and rarely were they between such extremes. The space around them was filled with responsibilities of my position. There were worship services to conduct, lessons to prepare and teach, meetings to attend, programs to run, staff with whom to collaborate. A hundred small decisions had to be made for every large judgment call. The long-term health of our community depended on the aggregated actions of the people with whom I worked, but the defining moments were the ones in which my voice, my words helped people make sense of the extraordinary of their lives. Other types of clergy know how I feel. School principals and teachers likewise mark their days by the regularity of the school bell and the punctuation of the unexpected. But nobody knows this better than people in public office. If the polls are right, you probably look at that last statement with a jaundiced eye. Recent rhetoric has been focused on the unreliability of “politicians” to do their jobs and uphold our values. An incredible amount of energy has been put into denigrating the motives of anyone who has spent time in public service – legislators, jurists, responders, military leaders. There is a candidate in the heartland of America whose campaign ads show him firing automatic weapons and pledging to “take dead aim” at politics as usual. And at least one candidate in this bizarre election year has sustained a campaign that ignores policy in favor of personal insults. The day-to-day aspects of the job are indeed critical. But I want you to consider what you need from the people who represent you. Consider the judge who was outraged at the treatment received by an admitted shoplifter: she was denied pants for her trip from the jail to the courthouse. The judge fined her for the crime, but apologized to her and reprimanded the inhumanity of those who mistreated her. Consider the police officer who responded to the call about teenagers disrupting a quiet neighborhood with a raucous basketball game. He called for backup. The backup was Shaquille O’Neill. Consider the presidential nominee who looked at the devastation of Hurricane Gustav and decided human suffering needed more attention than his campaign just as his nominating convention was set to convene. Consider the president who participated in the silliness of a correspondents’ dinner that interrupted the deadly seriousness of covering the events of the day. The event of his day was a high-risk operation to bring a murderous terrorist to his end. It wasn’t mentioned at all during the frivolities. Those are the pivots a leader must be able to make. To be a leader means to put aside the self-indulgent considerations to which everyone else is entitled. The leader must not turn away from the challenge. The leader must turn into it. When everyone else averts their eyes, the leader looks directly. When everyone else hands off to the next guy, the leader takes hold. When everyone else asks, “what about me,” the leader asks instead, “what about you; what do you need; how can I help.” I have had the unlikely privilege to meet many people in public service -- legislators, jurists, responders, military leaders. They are far from perfect, but the better they are at their mission, the more likely they are to acknowledge their flaws. Conservative or liberal, Republican or Democratic, faithful to a religion or devoutly secular, they accept that the needs of the people supersede their own. They have been entrusted with authority and sometimes with power and they want to use it well. They fall short and they see others fall short. The good ones respond with compassion. The selfish ones respond with attacks. As I write this, Phoenix, Arizona is washing away. Southern California is burning again. Hundreds of thousands of displaced persons have fled from wars in which they have no stake. African American parents are pleading with their children not to act like normal teenagers. Jews are feeling betrayed by old allies. Muslims and Hispanics are concerned about keeping their families intact. Leaders will pivot into the problems. Others will worry about their own injured feelings. Thanks to A.M. Many times in my 35+ years as a rabbi I have been asked to "pray over" some sort of public convocation. I admit to being of two minds. On the one hand, this very Protestant tradition is ensconced in American life, and so it behooves those of us in the clergy to learn how to do it in an inclusive and appropriate way -- one that reflects our own religious integrity but does not deliver the message to segments of our increasingly diverse society that some of you just don't belong. On the other hand, I agree with a friend who is a federal judge -- public prayer has no place in the proceedings of government. A partisan political convention is a peculiar hybrid. It is technically a private affair, but it seeks to steer the course of government. I have volunteered many times to be a part of the invoking and benedicting of occasions such as the conventions. I like to think I do it pretty well. I have been privileged to receive invitations to participate numerous times (my first time in Washington was for a gathering of Jewish Republicans; I shared the bill with Henry Kissinger, Jean Kirkpatrick and Haley Barbour -- just us four. The treat of the day was hearing Chairman Barbour correctly pronounce "Agudas Achim" after much coaching.) In spite of many attempts over many months, I did not secure an invitation to attend, let alone participate in, the Republican National Convention this year. If I had, I would have said something very similar to the prayer I offered at the interfaith gathering the day before the Democratic National Convention (with language from the Republican platform, of course). The theme, by the way, was "pursuing love and kindness." My remarks: In the spirit of this gathering, I invite you to join me in reflection. Those of us who profess a faith in community call upon our Creator by many names. Those of us who profess an individual faith seek a name upon which to call. Those of us whose faith is in the better nature of humanity call upon those internal resources that inspire them. In the end, every call is issued in the hope that we are made vastly stronger and richer by faith in many forms and the countless acts of justice, mercy, and tolerance that faith inspires. Those words appear in the platform to be considered in the hours ahead, but they are true independent of any vote or acclamation. My tradition, the Jewish tradition, instructs us to pray for the welfare of the government, explaining that the authority it wields keeps us from consuming each other alive. Where there is no respect for government, where the rule of law is replaced by the anger of the mob, our opponents become our enemies, our enemies become our demons, our demons become our leaders. And instead of e pluribus unum, instead of a unity out of the many, we become suspicious of any difference, turning on each other and fleeing in fear at the sound of a driven leaf. But a good government, that is a government which IS good and which DOES good, a government envisioned by our Founders and established by we, the people of the United States, a good government deserves respect, demands respect, inspires respect. How, then, shall we ensure a good government, one for whose welfare we continually pray? First and foremost, by the pursuit of love and kindness. Those are qualities that create a beloved community, one that cherishes every life. Love and kindness create togetherness when they bring our collective strength in support of those who need it most. Good government, for whose welfare we continually pray, is one that seeks peace and pursues it. The Torah, our sacred Scripture, demands we call for peace even in wartime, that diplomacy is always the first option to create togetherness even with those we oppose. Good government, for whose welfare we continually pray, is one that does not claim that any group holds privilege over another. My tradition, the Jewish tradition, shares the teaching with Islam that humanity is descended from a single set of parents so that no one may say “my ancestors were greater than yours.” Creating togetherness honors every member of the human family. So as we move forward into this second set of political deliberations, let me offer words of prayer I hold for those of every faith and no faith, of every party affiliation and no party affiliation, for those who will vote their principles and those who will vote their interests: May it be the will of the one who gives of the divine glory to mere flesh and blood to bless us with good leaders – leaders who ARE good and who DO good – who honor every member of our diverse family, who are strong enough to seek the peace, and who, through love and kindness, will guide us in creating togetherness. May we, the American people, thus be inspired always to pray for the welfare of our government. I recently attended the Democratic National Convention (after many unsuccessful attempts also to get an invitation to the Republican National Convention). As with every political convention, this one was a mix of soaring rhetoric, inspiring vision, nonsense and earnest theatrics. In fact, somehow I was identified as representing part of the tapestry of American life and invited onstage to stand in a tableau of ethnicity. I believe I was “old Jew.” If you weren’t paying attention, there was some controversy. Some supporters of the candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders were vocally and visually disappointed that he failed to capture the nomination for president. Throughout the four days, they erupted into chants in an attempt to over-shout the speakers at the podium. The sentiments were admirable – after all, who would disagree generically with “No More War?” – but the behavior provoked the supporters of Sec. Hillary Clinton to respond with their own chants of “USA” or “Hill-a-ry” to drown out the oratorical interlopers in canary-yellow tee shirts. My college roommate and I have been active in various causes together, but I know he will head for the exit at any protest or demonstration if people start to chant. He does not argue that chanting is not protected by the First Amendment. He just thinks it is obnoxious and annoying. He got smarter about this situation fifty years earlier than I did. I have come to object (in my heart only) to any behavior that makes me regret the Bill of Rights. And just to be clear, it is not the content of speech or the reason for peaceful assembly or the particular grievance for which redress is being sought. It is the behavior of those willing to spend down to nothing the accumulated capital of mutual respect that makes those rights so meaningful – like the yellow-breasted saps who believed they would bring an end to war by attempting to deny a speaker the floor. Politics has always been something of a contact sport. I guess it comes with the territory. But the fusing of politics and entertainment, which appears to be as thorough as two molecules of hydrogen to one of oxygen, has produced an acceptability of bad behavior in the name of gaining attention. And it ought to stop. I devote my professional life to the protection of true religious freedom. Most of the reason I do so flows from the religious right. That segment of the American population consists mostly of people who call themselves conservative Evangelical Christians and believe that the values they identify with their religious beliefs are the foundational values of the United States. They are, of course, wrong. And, by the way, they are objectively wrong, not just wrong in my opinion. Read a book (that is not written by a member of the religious right). These activists have forced court after court to rule on their manipulation of existing laws as they attempt to pervert legislation designed to ensure religious freedom for minorities. The most famous of these attempts include the county clerk whose deeply held religious beliefs prevented her from issuing marriage licenses to couples with legal entitlement and the family business whose owners’ deeply held religious beliefs prevented them from providing certain kinds of health care insurance to employees who are legally entitled to them. Civil disobedience is a time-honored tradition in the United States, but these folks are claiming that it is the law which is disobedient and they, Bible-believers they claim to be, who are being disobeyed. Maryland politico Jamie Raskin said that public servants swear on the Bible to uphold the Constitution, they do not swear on the Constitution to uphold the Bible. But now we have people on the secular left attempting to do the same thing. The sweet satire of the Pastafarians, adherents of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, made the point widely that no one need subscribe to any established religion – or any religion whatsoever – until they sued to be recognized as an actual religion. And now we have Satanists (well, not really, but they use the name for identification purposes) laying claim to the leisure hours of schoolchildren to object to the use of public buildings by rent-paying religious groups. (I went to Sunday school in a local public school, for which our synagogue paid rent, because we didn’t have a building and the school sat otherwise unused and empty. Sheesh!) Both the right and the left seem to have no argument to make other than “you’re not the boss of me.” Those arguments were always a colossal waste of recess, and they remain so now, especially since the casualty of this bad behavior is the mutual respect that holds a diverse population together. The effect is not to persuade, but to offend. In the process, more and more Americans who have in the past celebrated a wide center have fled to the margins and pledged allegiance to practitioners of crude and low-class protected speech. These are people who, knowing they may not shout “fire” in a crowded theater, merely yell, “Does anybody smell smoke? I don’t know, you tell me.” Jewish tradition, which at this writing is still protected by the First Amendment, includes a strong encouragement to go beyond the letter of the law. That means, I believe, to live life not trying to get away with as much as possible, rather trying to live up to the ideals the law tries to protect. I have certainly been obnoxious and annoying in my time (even participating in the occasional chant), and I am glad to be protected from anything more dangerous than my friend’s eye-rolling. My mother-in-law, of blessed memory, was the arbiter of a quality she called “class.” It had nothing to do with economic status or even pretensions to royalty. It had to do with comporting one’s self, even in disagreement, with a sense of respect and a willingness to be self-effacing even when convinced you are entirely right. So take off those shirts, stop pounding those Bibles, eat your linguini and learn some adjectives other than “stupid” and “great.” Try going beyond the letter of the law. One of the difficult problems in American political discourse is understanding our rights. I always feel one step removed from the conversation because I am much more concerned with responsibilities – what I can do for my country – than what my country can do for me. (At least I like to think so.) Very few people have trouble asserting what they feel they are owed, including me. But when it comes time stand for principle, rather than stand on principle, we have some issues. The disagreements we have might be illustrated by the folks who insist on different standards for the First and Second Amendments. In my experience (which does not include much time among libertarians), the absolutists who wish to preserve unhampered exercise of free speech and a free press and who object to any porousness in the wall of separation between “church and state” have a much more flexible sense of the right to bear arms. And, conversely, those who accept no restrictions on access to personal firearms are more than willing to consider limitations on what constitutes protected speech, journalism and, increasingly, religious belief. It was Justice Oliver Wendell Homes who put the matter in what I consider the correct perspective when he said, “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.” That is to say that rights which are universally granted may not be exercised in a way that indulges some at the expense of others. Some people interpret that witticism a bit too literally when they suggest that only causing actual injury should limit rights, but I understand it more generally and (I think) accurately: the exercise of my specific right may not impede the rights of others. There has been a lot of talk about privilege of late. It is privilege by another name that Holmes was describing. In the realm of religious liberty, the current whining of the religious right over the “persecution” of Christians in this country would be laughable except for its consequences. Long the majority, Christians have grown used to their values and practices being validated by public policy. Religious minorities in the US have learned to watch their noses, to use the Holmes analogy. The Protestant practice of invoking words of specifically crafted prayers at public occasions, the establishment of a Christian religious holiday as a national observance, even dating public documents with the entirely unnecessary “A.D.” (anno domini, “the year of our Lord”) have reinforced in the minds of some Christians that the default religion of the United States is Christianity. Brent Walker, the brilliant head of the Baptist Joint Committee, acknowledges the circumstances with a critical distinction when he says, “We are a Christian nation sociologically specifically because we are not a Christian nation constitutionally.” It is easy to imagine how privilege has been mistaken for right. Indeed, the Constitution giveth and the Constitution taketh away. There are certain unalienable rights, but only three of them are named in our country’s founding documents: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The rights enumerated in the Constitution are benefits of citizenship. How they are applied, modified and restricted is determined by the processes of the Constitution and the laws that rest on its foundations. That is to say that by various legislative actions and judicial rulings, there is no right in the document that may not be abridged. You can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater nor swing your fists. You can’t preach the Gospel while the play is afoot there and you can’t brandish your firearms. But while the circumstances of exercising rights may be restricted, the equality of access to those rights may not. We do not have two tiers of citizens – those with full rights and those with limited rights. Whatever is available in the public realm may not be restricted by someone swinging his or her fists. To be specific, the Christian majority must embrace the same rights for Muslims (and others) as for themselves, or they must accept the same abridgment of those rights. So far, so good, I imagine, unless we get specific about the rights in question. African Americans have a lot of legitimate questions about the right to due process. Gays and lesbians have a lot of questions about the economic and social advantages that come by the right (and the rite) to marry. Woman have a lot of questions about the right to access certain kinds of health care. And gun owners have questions about the right to continue to bear arms. All the law can go on is, well, the law. We will continue to legislate and litigate around the matters in the extension and restriction of rights until we perfect the system, which promises to be, um, forever. What is missing is not the insistence on having rights, but on doing right. As long as any citizen or group of citizens insists that the essential question is “how far may I swing my fists,” the answer is always going to be a millimeter short of somebody’s nose – an uneasy and eminently violable standard. The citizen whose public spirit says, “I respect my fellow citizen enough to stop swinging my fists just because I can” will return America to the blessings of liberty envisioned by our founders. The law itself draws bright lines, but the endeavor of law shines a light on values. Too much political nonsense is the result of selfish individuals and interest groups trying to preserve privilege by gaming their rights through calculated and purposeful exploitation of the lines while ignoring the values. What is my responsibility to my neighbor? If the answer is to ensure that we both enjoy the same quality of life that we want for ourselves, then our established rights will take care of themselves. One time, a few years ago, an acquaintance accosted me on the subject of politics, as this individual often did. He was someone I knew to be extremely confident in his own opinions and equally confident that those who disagreed were just wrong. (By the way, it had no effect on his qualities as pleasant company or a person of certain generosities.)
“I’m willing to bet,” he challenged me, “that I voted for a Democrat more recently than you voted for a Republican.” “I voted for a Republican in the last election,” I replied. “Oh,” he said. “Well, I guess I was wrong.” My vote was a for a candidate I believed would provide better representation for our community. My candidate had, in my opinion, more integrity, a better approach to some issues of concern to me and a willingness to listen to people on the other side of the aisle. The balance of party affiliation in this legislative body was at stake, and I knew that the incumbent was important to the party vote-counters. But I couldn’t hold my nose and squander my cyclical opportunity to determine the quality of representation. It was my duty to vote for the better candidate, not the party’s best interests. The Constitution of the United States prescribes the oath of office that each president is required to take upon inauguration. Article II, Section 1 reports the familiar words: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Anyone unwilling to be bound by that oath, or willing to lie in taking it, is unqualified to be President of the United States. If you vote for such a person, you are voting against the Constitution that every President must swear to preserve, protect and defend. You are voting for a person who would be, in willful abrogation of that oath, subject to impeachment and removal from office. And if knowing so you still vote for such a candidate out of loyalty to party, then you are putting party above country. You will be violating your civic responsibilities. I remind you of some of what our leader must preserve, protect and defend. Article VI prohibits a religious test for any executive, legislative or judicial office. The Fourteenth Amendment declares all persons born or naturalized in the United States to be citizens, Article IV already having guaranteed all citizens their rights. The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, an unfettered press, the right of assembly and freedom of religious conscience, and prohibits the establishment of a religious tradition by Congress. The hyperbole of campaign rhetoric is not always the best indicator of how the office will be filled. I have no affection for President Nixon, but there is no denying that he was responsible for some of the more progressive policies that define us today; he created the Environmental Protection Agency and may therefore by credited with being the father of climate change awareness. President Clinton, whose political instincts were perhaps the best in a generation, moved deliberately to the center from his campaign promises and was better for business than the Republican father and son who served on either side of him. But I would like to suggest that a candidate for any public office, but most especially on the Federal level, must be able to preserve, protect and defend what is already in the Constitution. There is vast room for interpretation on many laws and values, but no room whatsoever to place personal opinion or pique above the Constitution’s requirements. The mission statement of the United States is contained in the preamble of the Constitution itself: to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. Any citizen who casts a vote for a candidate who does not take those words as her or his personal mission is voting against the Constitution. You may not be able to make the same decision I did when I was confronted with a much less consequential decision. You may feel inherently unable to vote for a Democrat or a Republican, or you may have your own questions about Secretary Clinton or Mr. Trump or Governor Johnson or any of the other candidates of less likely success. With that dilemma, I cannot help you. The primaries are over and the voters have made their choices. But in this country, the Constitution and the laws that are derived from it, resting on its foundation, are the substance of our success and our vehicle for greatness. In order to deserve the sacred trust, the person who attains the highest office must have a demonstrated and unmitigated commitment to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. A vote for someone who does not is a vote against the Constitution. |
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