Friday, June 11, 2004

The City on the Hill Unlike Fish, I do not have as a primary memory of Ronald Reagan a kindly grandfather with a yummy bowl of jellybeans on his desk. She, after all, (and as she rightly points out in her entries) was ten when he was elected. At ten, I would perhaps have felt the same way. (I am so not dissing Fish; I'm a fan, and I respect her position, even as I disagree with it. Seriously.) Reagan's was the first election in which I voted, and I voted against him. He represented for me the kind of craven indifference to suffering, blind unwillingness to accept anyone outside a white bread, apple pie narrow definition of American, and reckless disregard for governmental economic fitness that I now see carried to appalling extremes by George Bush. I didn't see the kindness, the optimism, the belief in the essential goodness of humanity, that are now being extolled virtually around the clock. That's not to say that my opinion of him hasn't softened with time. He probably was kind, and moral; as I've grown older, I've come to realize that like it or not, people often hold one kind of value system for their personal morality, and yet apply a different set of ethics in their professional lives. It's the way of business, and I suppose of politics, and I doubt it will ever change. I thought Reagan an extremist, an ideologue--and I laugh now, bitterly, at how little I understood of what a true ideologue (a Rumsfeld, Wolfowicz or Perle, say) might be capable of. I have trouble understanding why, in this cavalcade of veneration, no one is discussing how far from the Reagan legacy, or at least his style of governance, the current Republican government (because it is no longer just a party, it is our entire government) has strayed. The kind of respectful personal diplomacy Reagan practiced, which is credited with ending the cold war and thereby freeing so many in Communist-bloc countries to exercise greater political and economic freedom, is totally absent today. On the other hand, Reagan's desire to support the Nicaraguan Contra "freedom fighters" at any cost created the Iran-Contra scandal, which featured government officials flouting law and lawmakers with almost gleeful abandon. His respect for the American system, its precious checks and balances, extended only so far. What has this cost us as a society? I thought about this twice today. First, as I listened to part of the service at the National Cathedral--more on that in a minute. But again, as I watched the only news show (other than Jon Stewart) worth watching, NOW, with Bill Moyers, and this week's lead story on John Ashcroft. Ashcroft testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week; they have been trying to get him to release the memo justifying the use of torture which was leaked to the press earlier this week; he has refused. He has refused to even discuss the memo, or to answer any of the Committee's questions about it, and the advice it contained for the President, due to his own "beliefs" about the nature of his relationship with the President. As Senator Durbin (D-IL) gracefully but forcefully pointed out, Ashcroft's personal beliefs have nothing to do with his obligation to answer the Senate's questions. Our chief representative of the judicial branch seems to have decided that he is a subject of the executive branch, and that their relationship is therefore somehow privileged. In fact, neither the AG, nor the Solicitor General, not even the White House Counsel, have attorney-client privilege with the President. This is reserved only for lawyers he personally engages, such as James Sharp, the one he hired recently. Sharpe is a criminal lawyer, and has been engaged to deal with potential allegations, arising from the current grand jury investigation, about the President's participation in the treasonous betrayal of former CIA operative Valerie Plame. The Senate may well have a case to prosecute Ashcroft for contempt of Congress--but this story is virtually absent from the mainstream media, which instead gives us the palliative of a state funeral, with its pomp and circumstance. And, that said, the part of the service at the National Cathedral to which I listened was beautiful, and heartbreaking: not for the loss of Reagan, but rather the loss of the ideals which he espoused, whether he ultimately upheld them or not. Sandra Day O'Connor, a Reagan appointee to the Supreme Court, read from a 1630 sermon by John Winthrop, one of the original Puritan founders of the Massachusetts Bay Company . The sermon is called "A Model of Christian Charity", and is worth reading. Justice O'Connor read an abridged excerpt from it. I'm not much of a Christian, but the the power of the city on the hill analogy (of which Reagan was so fond) goes beyond religious affiliation to strike at the heart of what many Americans cherish most about our country. And it is impossible, for me at least, to hear or read these words and not think, long, hard and painfully, about how far we have slipped from our ideals. As Justice O'Connor read: Now the only way to provide for our posterity is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. We must delight in each other, make others' conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community as members together in the work of this same body. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us as his own people, for we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word to the world. It is interesting to note that O'Connor deleted a sentence, after the sentence beginning "We must delight in each other...". In Winthrop's original, the next line read, "So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. " 10:52:22 PM     comment []

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U.S. Religious Figures Offer Abuse Apology on Arab TV. American spiritual leaders condemn the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in an advertisement to be broadcast next week on Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. By Mark Glassman. [New York Times: Politics] 8:33:22 AM     comment []