Morality in Blue Nation, Red Nation
Peter Jennings and Cokie Roberts of ABC News had a conversation last night about the role of what they called "moral issues" in the outcome of yesterday's election, that while on "the wings" of the country (California, New York, and New Jersey), the big issues were exactly what they were expected to be, in between, in that mass of red in the middle, Iraq didn't play as big a role as expected. These "heartlanders" had something else on their mind apparently, said Jennings and Roberts. That something else were the "moral issues" at stake.
We have lots of conversations about competing moralities around my house. There is a deep division in this country about the whole notion of morality, which is, in itself, a strained idea in a world where the chief morality is that there is no real basis for one.
In many ways, yesterday's vote (and perhaps all votes) are exercises in the ongoing public conversation concerning the nature of good and bad (evil not being a terribly PC idea.) In the following, which is worse:
--a man cheating on his wife and family, or a corporation exploiting third world workers, cheating US workers out of wage-earnings that could support their families?
--the killing of an unborn something (child or fetus depending on which morality you're arguing), or the denying of the woman's right to live freely, as she chooses?
--homosexual practice (of any kind), or the alleged bigotry that would deny two loving human beings to live out their natural inclinations in the same honor and approval previously reserved for that heterosexual ritual of union called marriage?
--a national leader that brutally oppresses his people as a matter of routine, or the democratic leader that liberates them from that oppressor through (alleged) disingenuous means, creating a chaotic morass costing far more lives than anyone expected?
--a man frozen by inaction because of the complexity of the issues, or the man of action rigid in belief (used to be called conviction) whose actions prove disastrous?
--a person shirking (pejorative word, that) personal responsibility, or a society that doesn't provide the means whereby a person unequipped to take on (much less pejorative) personal responsibility is helped to take it back up? Or a society that frankly does what it can (in the eyes of some) to keep that person from ever taking it up?
Don't we all just want what's "best?"
Isn't it funny that in a postmodern world that doesn't really buy the notion that there is such a thing as "best" (or even "better" for that matter), individuals and nations will go to war to prove that they have the answers for what is "best" after all?
George Will and Jennings went on to talk about the long time connection between religion and politics in American life, dating all the way back to those first folks who beached at Plymouth Rock. Religion, or lack of it, plays a huge role in these defining American moments, and frankly, in spite of all the crying for separation of church and state, it can hardly be otherwise. Religion is about life, as is politics, and both engage in defining the good and the bad, and working to create means of perpetuating the former and battling the latter. What is law, if not just that?
The battles will move on, continue to be fought, perhaps with even greater intensity, greater rage. But I at least take comfort in the fact that, for now, the American experiment holds, because somewhere beneath the battles, there is a morality that Americans agree on, and that is this: that we all have a say in what happens, and that protecting that freedom is worth the trouble of changing the system through the processes of law rather than revolution.
But it's not a given that it will stay that way...
10:39:13 AM
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