We are awash in rhetoric. The president tweets with abandon. The democrats debate with a lust for power. And the media is flooded with analysis and commentary.
Where is the simplicity of conscience?
I read about the tragedies this weekend from gun violence and I feel deeply saddened. We can do better. We should do better. And yet we debate about the soul of our society as if it is something that can be intellectually analyzed.
It cannot. It must be felt. It must be believed in.
So hello there, Democratic candidates for President of the US. And hello there too, Mr. Sitting President. Please stop with the hatred and the combative language. Give the statistics a rest. This country – our world – may not survive the onslaught of this modern madness unless somebody with a microphone or a twitter following starts to lead with values, with dignity and decency, with conscience.
A person need not follow one type of religion, need not be of one color or class, or need not be adhere to one political tradition to subscribe to a common conscience. It is really quite straightforward: we should care about more than ourselves. We should then do our best to find ways – together – to help each other and to live in a society where success means more than dollars, titles, and authority. We should cherish what we hold in common, not delight in bickering over what is different. We should remind ourselves that it is our core beliefs, our shared values, that will enable us to leave our children a better world than the one we were left.
Where points the moral compass of this place we call the United States of America? This is not a question about the nature of your belief in a supreme being. It is a question about the nature of your belief in good. In collaboration. In the collective. In the us of USA.
I am tired of the predictable yet action-free talk that follows mass shootings. People are dying – unnecessarily. Are we not capable of doing something? Or are we not capable of doing something perfectly, something without disagreement, something without political aggrandizement and recognition? It seems that we are paralyzed by personal pride, the need to be right, and the importance of not upsetting some sacrosanct loyalty to documents signed over two hundred years ago by human beings no less fallible than ourselves. Wake up! The people we revere in our nation’s history would be horrified by our lack of substance – as human beings – our inability to adapt – to contemporary challenges – and our vapid excuses for inaction in the face of preventable malice and calamity.
And, if they were not horrified, they do not deserve the faith we have placed in the documents and traditions they have left us.
So take heed, politicians! Enough of all the blather. We do not need the intellectual babble. And no longer shall we excuse the dividing verbiage of blatantly racist and individualistic views. My support and vote will be for the one of you with the courage to talk about the values that I learned in grade school led to the idea behind this country: unity, tolerance, diversity, and liberty. Will the soul of the United States be decided by the details of someone’s specific plan for universal health care? No. Will the deaths from future mass shootings be avoided by endless circular arguments related to the second amendment of the US Constitution? No.
Stop wasting words. Stand up for common values. Defend what it means to be a society. Inspire us to live with conscience.
e pluribus unum.