We heard plenty of contradictions, distortions and untruths at the Republican candidates’ Tea Party debate, but we heard shockingly little compassion — and almost no acknowledgement that political and economic policy choices have a moral dimension.
So writes the inimitable Eugene Robinson in
this Washington Post op ed, appearing in tomorrow's dead tree edition - and as a side note, the link to the debate is from Ron Paul's website - that is how it appears on the
Post website.
As with most Robinson columns, it is superbly written, and very much to the point.
One paragraph jumped out at me:
According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus told the Pharisees that God commands us to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” There is no asterisk making this obligation null and void if circumstances require its fulfillment via government.
This link is also interesting, and I suggest you follow it, since it provides Biblical material far more than merely from Matthew.
Allow me to offer a bit more from Robinson, and a few words of my own.
First, Robinson makes clear his disgust at the response of Ron Paul to the hypothetical offered by Wolf Blitzer about the young man who had chosen not to buy health insurance, calling it "The lowest point of the evening — and perhaps of the political season." He remarks of the shouts of "yeah" from the audience that
You’d think one of the other candidates might jump in with a word about Christian kindness. Not a peep.
Stop and consider that for a moment. Every candidate on that stage is a declared Christian, some especially touting their devoutness - Bachmann and Perry for example. One who has actually paid attention to the entire New Testament might well be shocked at the apparent callousness on display as the candidates sought to appeal to the Tea Party audience. I can remember thinking then, and being reminded as I read the just quoted words from Robinson, of sayings by Jefferson:
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
and the aphorism attributed in various forms to Edmund Burke (although he probably never said or wrote anything close):
All that is needed for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
To remain silence in the presence of evil is to acquiesce. The attitude displayed by Paul on this subject is to my mind evil. It placed ideology over humanity. It was for such misplacement that so many criticized the communism of the Soviet Union. As I recall, it was hatred of the atheism and communism that was the primary factor to bind the political right before the fall of the Eastern Bloc.
There is much more in this valuable column by Robinson.
The religious right wants to bloviate about morality. Thus I find one more paragraph by Robinson worth offering in its entirety. Let me offer it, and only then comment:
I believe the Republican candidates’ pinched, crabby view of government’s nature and role is immoral. I believe the fact that poverty has risen sharply over the past decade — as shown by new census data — while the richest Americans have seen their incomes soar is unacceptable. I believe that writing off whole classes of citizens — the long-term unemployed whose skills are becoming out of date, thousands of former offenders who have paid their debt to society, millions of low-income youth ill-served by inadequate schools — is unconscionable.
Let me repeat that first sentence: I believe the Republican candidates’ pinched, crabby view of government’s nature and role is immoral.
So do I.
Morality requires us to care about our fellow humans. During my days as a Christian, first in the Episcopal Church, then in the Orthodox Church (and during the latter period I also got a masters from a Catholic Seminary), I remember many teachers and preachers emphasizing one key point - that while we might hate the sin as we saw it we were still commanded - obligated - to love the sinner.
Somehow too many on the Right - political and religious - seem to want to read Christian scripture too selectively, ignoring those passages which should call into question their narrow perspectives, their "crabby view" as Robinson describes it.
It is not just selective reading of Christian scripture, it is paralleled by how the Hebrew scripture is approached, ignoring the condemnations of the Prophets for a lack of charity.
Let me make what I believe is an important point. From the standpoint of Christianity, caring for the poor and the dispossessed and the suffering of any kind should not be left to the government: it is the obligation of the Christian to treat "the least of these" as if they were treating the incarnate God that their faith says Jesus is. That does not mean that government should NOT take a responsibility. I am sure Robinson would welcome the loving care that true charity should be. But whether or not that occurs, or if it occurs it is sufficient, should not mean that the society as a whole, through the government, no longer has a responsibility.
I no longer consider myself a Christian. I remain influenced by much fairly profound Christian thought. I am reminded of lives lived in service to others precisely because of the Christian faith of those leading such lives - Dorothy Day immediately comes to mind, as in other fashions do Father Louis (commonly known under his lay name Thomas Merton), or Father Damian the leper of Molokai.
Regardless of what one believes, how one worships, one would hope that those who aspire to positions of leadership in our diverse society would demonstrate compassion for ALL person within our boundaries.
For some, lack of Christian faith is something that would disqualify a candidate from receiving their political support.
Frankly, I do not care what a person believes.
I do care about a person's actions.
Compassion should include action.
Too often lack of compassion serves as an excuse for inaction.
It is morally repugnant to me that someone would elevate their ideology - political, economic, or religious - over the reality of the human being before them.
I spent 14 years in the Orthodox (Eastern) Church. There I was regularly reminded that for all the veneration we gave to painted icons, the most important icon of God was the human being before us. After all, that was part of the point of the Incarnation, a point made by an early Church father, who put it something like this: God became man so that men could become gods. If that is too abstruse, then perhaps some Biblical text might be
From 1 John 4:
If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
Robinson ends his column by noting that when Perry defended the Texas legislation allowing children of undocumented aliens to have ins-state tuition at public colleges universities he was soundly attacked by the others:
The other candidates bashed him with anti-immigrant rhetoric until the evening’s only glimmer of moral responsibility was snuffed out.
the evening’s only glimmer of moral responsibility
It saddens me that the mixture of religion and politics has led to insensitivity and worse.
If we contemplate having as our national leader someone so lacking in compassion and moral responsibility as was demonstrated in that sorry event this past week, we may well wonder if the republic is not already lost.
If it is not yet, then we have a moral responsibility to speak out, to take action, to keep it from being lost.
For the sake of the children following behind us.
For the honor of those who went before, who died on battlefields and in labor demonstrations and in advocacy for civil rights for all.
Where is the compassion? And if there be none, what has happened to the soul of the people, the heart of the nation?
I truly wonder what we have already become, and fear what we might yet come.
The quotation is from