When Dave Talley, a Tempe homeless man, found a backpack this month at the light-rail station near Rural Road and University Drive, his first thought was to look through the bag for the owner's identification or contact information. Instead, he found an envelope containing about $3,300 in cash.
The temptation to keep the money was almost overwhelming, he said. Then, his conscience kicked in.
"The reality set in that it wasn't my money and it needed to be turned over," he said.
"I could've done a lot of things with the money," he said, "but none of them would've been right."
Dave Talley was homeless, but he didn't allow his misfortunes to compromise his beliefs, and by following his convictions he set a great example. He simply did the right thing.
Many diarists on the Daily Kos have advocated taking a pragmatic approach for accomplishing Democratic objectives. They believe it is more important to compromise than to achieve nothing at all. And they argue that "purists" are wrong to insist our democratically elected leaders do the right thing. In their mind, ideologues set their expectations too high, and expecting people to do the right thing is naive.
The weakness of their argument is found in their unwillingness to believe that corruption can be defeated.
In the movie, "The Missing," Tommy Lee Jones tells Cate Blanchett to give up on her efforts to find her kidnapped daughter. He tells her if she continues to pursue the child’s kidnappers she will lose her remaining child and that she should accept the reality that saving one daughter is better than losing both. Cate Blanchett said, *"I don’t know how to give up on her."
Maybe that is what is wrong with purists like me: we don’t know how to quit fighting for what we believe in. I don’t know how to be partially humane, or how to accept the destruction of half of our ecology, or how to half-allow corrupt bankers to steal a neighbor’s home, or how to be semi-friends with a sociopath.
Compare Dave Talley’s story (from the Arizona Republic) to this item posted in the L.A. Times yesterday about the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California.
In documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Ana, the trustee and the creditors concluded that the church paid at least three insiders for what appeared to be redundant duties. They also question the six-figure housing allowance paid to Chief Financial Officer Fred Southard, which allowed him to largely avoid federal income taxes, according to tax documents filed in court.
The Crystal Cathedral filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month, citing the bad economy and a 24% drop in donations in 2009 for its financial problems. More than 550 creditors are owed between $50 million and $100 million, according to the initial filing.
A church spokesman did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday after a new round of documents were filed in court.
According to court documents, Southard received $132,019 out of his total $144,261 compensation in the form of a housing allowance last year. About $15 in federal income taxes were withheld in 2009, a W-2 tax form filed in court shows.
This article illustrates that a sense of right and wrong isn’t necessarily born within the confines of a church. Some of the most vile people in the world fill a church pew every Sunday. And a sense of decency does not belong to the Republican Party and it certainly isn’t something I would trust to a pragmatist. Knowing right from wrong exists only within the hearts of human beings.
A reluctance to stand up for ideals is a new concept for the Democratic Party. We have always been the champions of the poor and the downtrodden. But that conviction is changing. Many of our members are corporatists and opportunists who no longer act in the best interest of their constituents. When Bill Clinton crawled into bed with corrupt business leaders and gave us NAFTA, he set in motion many of the policies that led to long-term unemployment and the downfall of the middle class. George W. Bush pushed those policies to sociopathic levels, and now, G.W.'s policies have become a defining feature of the Obama administration.
The corruption of our nation is so overwhelming that it is destroying the Democratic Party from within. We can't afford to compromise. There will be no one left to fight corruption if the progressives fail.
We need more fighters like Rachel Maddow and Nancy Pelosi, not more pragmatists like Evan Byah. The cancer destroying our nation can’t be cured with half-measures.
And calling someone a purist is simply another way of spinning the truth to make decent people look bad.
Real suffering starts the minute you have eliminated everyone with a conscience.
* I’m sorry if that piece of dialogue was not entirely accurate. I quoted the line from memory.