Last night Wyoming Senator Craig Thomas passed away. He was a conservative Republican who I would say 99 percent of this community had nothing in common with. He was vehmently Anti-Abortion and Anti-Gay Rights. He encompassed much of what we have all united on this blog to despise.
Yet many people wrote comments of condolences for his family.
I am one of those people.
Now, I'll tell you why.
What is the primary purpose of this blog? Well according to the FAQ portion of the blog, Kos defines the purpose as such:
This is a Democratic blog, a partisan blog. One that recognizes that Democrats run from left to right on the ideological spectrum, and yet we're all still in this fight together. We happily embrace centrists like NDN's Simon Rosenberg and Howard Dean, conservatives like Martin Frost and Brad Carson, and liberals like John Kerry and Barack Obama. Liberal? Yeah, we're around here and we're proud. But it's not a liberal blog. It's a Democratic blog with one goal in mind: electoral victory. And since we haven't gotten any of that from the current crew, we're one more thing: a reform blog. The battle for the party is not an ideological battle. It's one between establishment and anti-establishment factions. And as I've said a million times, the status quo is untenable
However, during the course of my blogging I have ran into a number of different bloggers who have agendas of there own. There are those crusading for election reform, an end to the war in iraq, Gay Rights, reproductive rights, those who fight racism and I can go on forever.
Me? Well I fall into this under two categories technically, but I have one goal in mind. The goal is domestic and global peace in my time through equal rights and an end to Bush's wars of aggression. To this I focus on spreading news about Democratic candidates that I want to see get elected and participating in discussions on how to end the war.
To do this I believe that as much as I despise the right and everything they have done to this country, we cannot cut off communication with them and demonize them. We cannot make them a heartless enemy and look to isolate them from the rest of the country because they are ideologically different. I am not advocating trying to change them, because hell that's next to impossible, I am advocating a policy of non-demonization.
Nothing in this life can be accomplished if we are incapable of working alongside and acknowledging our enemies. It's not possible. This isn't not a "Love your enemy" religious speech here, it's from a tactical standpoint.
In life, whether it's politics or business, you are going to run into people with fundamentally different views as yourself. They will stand in your way and impede your progress. At this point you will be faced with a decision. Do you:
- Ignore them and hope to be able to consistently fend off their challenges to your control - if you gain it?
- Try to understand and work with them, through your differences thus claiming a moral high ground around your peers and making it harder for them to try a power grab, since they are being actively engaged.
Last night I got into a bit of an argument with two men who claimed that Thomas' death was great for their cause. That they didn't care that he had died and that he was a bigoted asshole and they share no empathy or sympathy with his survivors.
To this I call bullshit. People have every right to despise Thomas for what he did in life, but to dishonor a man in death is wrong no matter what way you look at it. That is something the right would do, rip an advocate of our beliefs following their death (remember Paul Wellstone?).
It's the hardest thing in the world to stare your enemy right in the face and acknowledge that they are human. That they had a family. That somebody was up all night crying and destroyed inside because they are dead. But only in understanding and a willingness to communicate with the opposition will we ever put an end to discrimination.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Ghandi: two of the most successful advocates for change this world has ever seen. Neither one of them ever advocated a shot fired. In fact, they both openly asked for acceptance and understanding from their followers. No great end to discrimination and injustice was ever brought on through the barrell of a gun.
Even the Civil War, which brought about the Emancipation Proclamation still left hard feelings and years of Jim Crow and lynchings in it's wake. But you know what was the first turning point following the Civil War? The speech of Mississippi Senator Congressman Lucious Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar in 1874 when he eulogized that great Massachussettes abolitionist Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senae:
"[Charles Sumner] believed that all occasion for strife and disrust between the North and South had passed away...Is not that the common sentiment - or if it is not, ought it not to be - of the great mass of our people North and South?...Shall we not, over the honored remains of...this earnest pleader of the exercise of human tenderness and charity, lay aside the concealments which serve only to perpetuate misunderstandings and distrust, and frankly confess that on both sides we most earnest desire to be one...in feeling and in heart?...Would that have the spirit of the illustrious dead whom we lament today could speak from the grave to both parties to this deplorable dicord in tones which should reach each and every heart throughout this broad territory: 'My countrymen! knw one another, and you will love one another!'"
-JFK's Profiles in Courage. Pg. 140.
That one speech did more to heal the rift between the North and South following the Civil War than any of the Reconstruction Acts could possibly have. Of course Lamar was ostercised back home in Mississippi and never held his Senate seat again I told you, it's the hardest thing in the world to acknowledge the enemy as human-. However, years later scholars acknowledge that his speech was a turning point in the Senate during the post Civil War years.
Craig Thomas was no saint, let's get that straight. But in my opinion, to dishonor the guys memory in death a mere couple of hours following his passing is not only classless, but it does NOTHING to help our cause.
I am not gay. I am not black. I am not a woman. For those who want to accuse me of "Not really knowing discrimination" I say to them this: you're probably right. I don't know what kind of discrimination they endure first hand, but I've seen enough of it and read enough about it to know what doesn't work: reactionary rhetoric or violence towards the other side. The easiest way to lose public support for your cause is to go off on a man who has just died. The deceased are victims. No shit, right? But think about what I wrote again: the deceased are victims. Nobody likes to pick on a victim, and if you do you're considered an asshole.
Maybe I'm a young empty-headed idealist who still believes that things can change some day. Maybe I am totally clueless about how to win these battles.
But then again, maybe I'm not.
All I know is that I am willing to be wrong.