A Caution to Conservatives

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I long ago tuned out the profanation of journalistic integrity that pretends to be the successor to the legacy of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and the crop of journalists, coming of age in the '60s, who followed them. That means I rarely find my mind assaulted by the likes of Fox, CNN, MSBC News, who daily provide glimpses of what a life emptied of grace will become. My yearning to encounter the faces of suffering in Haiti caused me to tune back in briefly, and the binary, crass, oppositional logic deeply embedded in the discourse that has vanquished serious journalism - the fourth estate of our republic - leads me to worry if we as a people have lost our bearings.

Perhaps most tragic in our loss of a journalistic corps that sees and carries itself with the dignity and decorum and thoughtful patriotism formerly expected of the fourth estate is that the American people are constantly barraged with a dualistic worldview that reinforces the gnostic claim that reality consists of "us" and "them." For the integument of our diverse American society has always been bound together by a premise that is deeply theological - the assumption that, as C.S. Lewis reminds us, on the face of our neighbor we encounter the weight of glory.

The virtue of charity denies the claim that the world consists of "us" and "them" and insists instead on the first truth implicit in the prayer our Lord taught us to pray: every time we pray "Our Father who art in heaven" we assert that the truth about our world begins with a "we' that was forged on the Cross. Authentic patriotism look like enfleshed charity, not tea parties which intoxicate us with the blinding toxins of gnostic dualism.

Those toxins prevent us from seeing our fellow Americans who advocate ways of ordering our common life that compete with our own prescriptions as they almost always are: sincere, thoughtful, limited by the same brokenness that limits all humankind, and just as passionate as ourselves about making our people a beacon of light to all the nations. The freedom for which America has long stood begins with liberation from such blindness. Authentic patriotism sees the grace embodied in even our nuttiest neighbor, and walks alongside in respect and a posture of receptivity, even as we battle politically in our efforts to discern how best to order our life along our common journey.

This leads me to offer a caution to conservatives who revel in the heady rush of their strategic victory in the recent Massachusetts race to replace Senator Kennedy. There is a great temptation to continue the nihilist politics of dualism - practiced by both sides - that dismisses and disrespects the opposition. But that would be a tragic mistake for our nation. We have been weakened in the last decade by a series of calamities, some self-caused and some not, and we are not yet recovered. The message of Massachusetts has been sent. Now is the time to return to the grace of walking alongside one's neighbor. We need to rally around our president, expect the best of him, and pray that he is granted the gifts of wisdom and fortitude. We need to return to the politics of charity.

I appreciate George F. Will as a conservative who gets this. In a column calling upon the president to seize the opportunity created by Massachusetts's mandate to moderate, he presses his own political prescription while eschewing the politics of dualism. I hear in his words echoes of Morrow and Cronkite. We do well to expect great things of all of our presidents - and not just the ones who won our votes, and to support them with principled, respectful argument as we participate as citizens in our public discourse.

If Obama can now resist the temptation of faux populism, if he does not rage, like Lear on the heath, against banks, he can be what Americans, eager for adult supervision, elected him to be: a prudent grown-up. For this elegant and intelligent man to suddenly discover his inner William Jennings Bryan ("You shall not crucify America upon a cross of credit-default swaps") would be akin to Fred Astaire donning coveralls and clodhoppers.

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