I used to think that the United States was basically indestructible, that our constitution, the uncommon common sense of our people, a bountiful land, and a respect for our history and traditions could see us through any crisis.
Does that still hold true?
I believe these truths are immutable. But there is one very important additional truth that, when removed from the equation, causes the entire edifice to come crashing down in rack and ruin, a testament to the folly and failure of our politics and politicians.
I am talking about faith: Faith in government, faith in our leaders, faith in our institutions, and most of all, faith in ourselves and our talent for self government – the ability for us to decide what is best for our country and our families.
It is the faith of our fathers, and their fathers before them, and their fathers and grandfathers who bequeathed us a nation based on this simple, uncomplicated faith. Without it, there is no trust. And faith, like trust, once lost is a hard commodity to regain
I recall on 9/11, there was a time that it was unclear the extent of the attack, especially after the Pentagon was hit. I am not over dramatizing when I say that I believe everyone in America wondered who was next? What else could happen? The absolute worst scenarios went through my mind as I’m sure it did for most of you. And I remember thinking for just a second or two, “Is this the end of America?” But I immediately dismissed such a preposterous notion. America was a rock, a force of nature. You couldn’t destroy it. Knock a few buildings down, sure. But the almost childlike belief in our ability to overcome anything and emerge triumphant was a powerful tonic that worked its magic on the American psyche and gave us the will to pull together for the good of all.
In that crisis, we had faith to spare. Forgotten was the recent election and its gut rending divisiveness as we came together as one people in the face of tragedy and crisis. It was inspiring. It was elevating.
It was an illusion.
In truth, our unity after 9/11 was a mirage, a temporary respite from the culture wars, the political wars, the ideological wars – the war for the soul of America. The natural equilibrium of political combat to the death reasserted itself within a matter of weeks and any sense of togetherness we felt was extinguished in a flood of partisan poison. And you can draw a straight line from the post 9/11 falling out to our current crisis where what ails us as a nation has only been exacerbated by war and crisis.
I blame Bush. And the Democrats. And the liberals. And the conservatives. And I blame us for enabling the catastrophe, where it becomes easy to lose faith, trust, and even hope – hope that there was a way through this morass of hate and distrust so that we could emerge on a far distant shore, free of the infection that has sickened the body politic of America to the point that now, we teeter on the edge of a precipice, looking down into the blackness of an unknowable, unknowing future.
The internet is at fault. So is talk radio. So is the liberal/conservative/lazy media. So is the consolidation of information sources. So am I.
Am I taking the easy out? A typical Moran “a pox on both your houses” screed? Examine your consciences and you tell me where it’s all Bush’s fault or all the Democrats fault. Or where conservatives or liberals are blameless. Or even where one party or another is “more” at fault – as if you can place catastrophe on a scale and weigh it out, carefully loading one side or the other with rancor, bitterness, lies, exaggerations, political gamesmanship, and cynicism thus hoping to determine the “real” culprit of our current predicament.
That kind of stupidity is silly and self defeating. And it only reveals that those who try it are part of the problem, not the solution.
We are not in an economic crisis. We are in a crisis of faith. We have lost what has been handed down to us, generation after generation going all the way back to the founding, passing on the secret of America’s uniqueness, its “exceptionalism,” as if it were a holy relic of the Catholic church lovingly preserved and cared for by parishioners for all time.
We – all of us – have failed to do the things necessary to maintain this faith. We have been careless and stupid in choosing our leaders. We have been lax in holding them accountable. We have not paid attention to what they were doing – here or abroad – and we have failed to demand that the government lift the veil of secrecy on too many enterprises. We have failed to hold ourselves accountable for our actions. We have failed to take responsibility for our own mistakes. We have abandoned self reliance, family and community values, respect for our political opponents, and the American idea that neighbor helping neighbor is far preferable to asking government to do it for us.
High ideals and standards to live up to, yes. And our forefathers were not always successful themselves in adhering to principle and acting for the greater good. But the difference between them and us is that they had faith that the wisdom and basic common decency of the American people would emerge and carry us through times of crisis relatively unscathed and still one nation. They counted on a rough unity of the people – that we all had basically the same idea of what America was and where it should be going. How to get there was the basis of our political battles – and believe me, they were as rough and tumble as any of the political donnybrooks we have had in recent memory.
It is not our politics that divides us. Nor does ideology tear us apart. These are but symptoms of the disease that afflicts us. Our problem is that we have lost faith in the idea that we can dream common dreams – American dreams – and give ourselves a common point of reference where we all agree what, at bottom, America is and where it should be going.
With this loss of faith has come an overpowering fear that prevents us from trusting others and ourselves. With no trust in one another – in our intentions or good will – we lose faith in our ability to solve our problems together and we get what we saw yesterday on Capitol Hill; a complete and utter failure of our leadership to deal with the crisis at hand, preferring to score cheap political points at the expense of the other rather than work together to avoid a probable calamity.
There was a point in the Cuban Missile Crisis (as dramatized in the movie Thirteen Days, based on Robert Kennedy’s book of the same name) where the Commander in Chief of the Strategic Air Command, General Curtis LeMay looks at President Kennedy and says, “You’re in a helluva fix, Mr. President.” Kennedy turned to the World War II hero and said, “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re in it with me.”
Each side is pointing at the other and, in effect, telling them they are in one helluva fix and then explaining why one side or the other is the real culprit at fault in this mess and it is up to them to deal with the crisis. Not enough Republicans supported the bailout or Pelosi was too partisan, or the Democrats wanted to embarrass McCain or the Republicans just don’t care and wish to see a catastrophe just as long as the free market triumphs.
None of it is true. The real issue is trust and the impossibility of achieving it because we have all lost faith in each other and ourselves. And the scary part is, no one in America knows how to fix what’s broken and bring us back to sanity.
9:09 am
Sure wish you were syndicated Rick. More people need to see your point of view.
9:44 am
Not only do we need to have faith in our nation and its basic laws (Constitution/Bill of Rights), we need to have the gumption to stand up for those basics – sometimes at some risk to our own comfort. In addition, we have to have faith in our own selves and exercise enormous amounts of self-reliance. As an example, right now a dear friend is having some economic issues (not as a result of this current nonsense) and lacks the funds to refill her heating oil tank for the coming winter. She is attacking the problem in a couple of ways – number one, I had to cut down a pretty substantial oak tree in my back yard – she has now gotten the tree cut up and is aging it so that she has ample firewood to get her through at least the first couple months (or longer) of the winter. In addition, she is accepting overtime at work to a very great extent. I had offered to lend her the money and she refused my loan on the grounds that she’d still be behind the 8-ball and that’s not her intent. THAT is what this country is about. Not the nonsense being peddled by San Fran Nan, the Botox queen!
11:12 am
Only a fool thinks anything lasts forever.
And we are where we are because of Republicans.
Thank you for so perfectly illustrating my point. I couldn’t have hired someone to say it better.
It’s ignoramuses like you who are the problem – not the solution.
ed.
11:13 am
In my opinion, it is the loss of personal responsiblity/integrity that is tearing us apart. Handle your business. And ‘your’ includes you and yours… meaning your family. It is not the government’s job to take care of your ailing parents. And most parents (should be ALL) are responsible enough to have a plan in place so as not to be a burden to their children.
Secondly… the entitlement programs are ridiculous. Lord Tytler said it best when speaking of the fall of the Athenian Republic: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.”
Maybe our time is up. (Scary, scary thought)
11:24 am
“Thank you for so perfectly illustrating my point. I couldn’t have hired someone to say it better.
It’s ignoramuses like you who are the problem – not the solution.”
Yeah, yeah. The bottom line is your party has had the run of the government for the past eight years. Even with the Democrats in control of Congress, they’ve let George Bush walk all over them. Conservatism has had its chance, and its failed. What’s worse, you haven’t learned a single lesson from it.
Take some responsibility.
11:37 am
Nice piece, and very true. Just when I thought I might mellow my stance, I read the comments here. Why reach out to shake hands when the probable outcome is to have it taken off?
11:41 am
Someone really has to explain to me the wisdom behind the concept of not identifying who in our government is at fault for our current situation. Is that not the best place to start if you’re trying to solve a problem? All this ‘let’s not blame anybody’ nonsense seems to be coming from the people that are most to blame.
And you wonder how it’s come to this?
Ok, fair question. I have read enough over the past several days to convince me that it, in fact, IS everyone’s fault hence the reason for this post. The Democrats make a good case to blame Bush and a certain attitude that “Greed is good” that prevails on Wall Street. The Republicans make a good case that it was Clinton era policies (with an assist from current Democrats who looked the other way when the GOP wanted to reform Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae). And any fool can see that hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions of Americans – stupidly took on more debt than they could possibly handle and have walked away from their obligations. This doesn’t include all the rest of us who, as I make clear above, have defaulted on our responsibility as citizens in a democracy.
You want partisan satisfaction, not an answer to the crisis. If you can’t see the fault of all sides in this then you are nothing but a hack with limited intelliigence and a shallow understanding of what has happened to America.
ed.
11:44 am
If it comforts you to feel “everyone” is to blame then knock yourself out. However, since I used to be a “radical revolutionary” I know first hand who creates, enables and inflames the divisions because it is there where revolution/change is born. It was a rude awakening to finally realize what I was truly a part of, but realizing it changed me forever. While it is not the democrat party as a whole, most revolutionaries do come from under the “Big Tent”
The revolutionaries are seriously committed and writing like this only encourages “lovers of the founding principles” to bring a knife to a cannon fight. Drip, drip, drip…
11:45 am
“Nice piece, and very true. Just when I thought I might mellow my stance, I read the comments here. Why reach out to shake hands when the probable outcome is to have it taken off?”
It’s really easy to come out willing to shake hands three months before the President you’ve so enthusiastically and unquestioningly followed loyally for two terms is about to leave office. You guys didn’t want to shake hands for 8 years, and now you’re going to get all indignant if a liberal leaves you hanging?
12:09 pm
I can’t disagree with you more, Rick. There was an opportunity after 9/11 to bring the country together, and it was squandered by President Bush. No one else had both the bully pulpit and the ability to execute unilateral decisions. I haven’t forgotten the President saying that he was a uniter, not a divider. That was a lie. We desperately needed a uniter to lead the country after the attack… but what we had was an Executive that pushed through his (and Cheney’s) personal wish list, leaving the country even more polarized than before.
12:16 pm
I think another factor of this is the endless railing “against Washington”. The derision of “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” This endless drumbeat has the peculiar result that public polls show that Congress is held in complete disregard, but incumbents are getting re-elected 95% of the time. It is just not honest to run “against Washington”... it works, but it is the rallying cry of hypocrites- no wonder they sell out as soon as they get there.
The folks in the White House, the Senate, and the House are not from Washington… they all come from where you live.
12:33 pm
Rick:
Good Post. There is more than enough blame to go around and not enough taking responsibility on either side. partisan Hacks will continue to deride your view but they cannot take one side and maintain even a semblance of sanity in their argument.
Did bush squander the country coming together after 911? Yes.
Did the Democrats help this falling apart? Yes.
Are the Republicans blameless for the sins of the past 8 years? No.
Are the Democrats blameless for the sins of the past 8 years? No.
So when you put all of that together, you come up with the basis of your posting and the beginnings of the question we all need to ask. What will it take to get us out of the funk we are in?
Notice I did not ask who.
12:41 pm
There is a cynical part of me that says that “it’s all of our fault” is just political-ese for “it is totally 100% my party’s fault.” However, I completely agree with much of your excellent article, especially the bit about accountability and transparency.
I see a silver lining in this economic crisis. I don’t get the sense that most Americans (me included) really understand the nature of the crisis or the solution, and not even the economists really know whether the bailout will work or not, but people seem to be taking a critical look at governmental spending in a way that they haven’t in years. Four years ago Bush would have rammed this through with little dissent. Now people from both sides of the political spectrum are taking a closer look at where the money is going and what it will cost us down the road. I hope this mindset continues to play a role in the future.
12:51 pm
“Did bush squander the country coming together after 911? Yes.
Did the Democrats help this falling apart? Yes.
Are the Republicans blameless for the sins of the past 8 years? No.
Are the Democrats blameless for the sins of the past 8 years? No.”
Trying to pretend that there’s any sort of parity between what the Democrats have done and what the Republicans have done is what’s insane, buddy.
How did the Democrats ‘help this falling apart?’
1:01 pm
Here is my take on this: in any situation like this there are ignorant mf who are just in love with the sound of their own words, being hardcore liberals, conservatives etc. People who have a pathological hatred of the other side. However, there are always people willing to come together too and if you believe in America you have to trust that people like that ill prevail. I give you two examples from my personal life. I volunteer in a church-related organization educating less fortunate Americans. Now we have people who are very liberal and very conservative but we leave this at the door and enjoy working for our common cause. Why should I hate my fellow volunteers just because they have a different opinion. Secondly, I used to live in downtown Detroit so you can imagine I was the guy sticking out (white). There are a lot of naysayers when it comes to improving race relations (and that is from all sides) but you will ALWAYS find likeminded people who want to move forward (and they can be both liberal and conservative). You just have to block the loonies out and get to work.
So I strongly urge all of us to leave petty nonsense aside for while (like I have said many times who cares about Hussein, Miss Alaska) and be willing to COMPROMISE for the sake of the country.
1:05 pm
It all started out as a good idea, back when Carter formed the Community Reinvestment Act, to bring diversity into mortgages to help the poor get homes. Clinton piled on to this, forcing banks to up their % diversity, and lowering the qualification standards and the capital requirements to back the risky loans. Then the sharks ar Freddie and Fannie smelled blood in the water, and gorged themselves on these high risk loans, and resold them as securities. Virtually unregulated as a quasi gov’t org, they had no stockholders or board to answer to, and set their own bailout packages. When the gig was up, when housing values started falling, they have their own bailout million$ to walk away with.
Both Dems and Conservatives ignored this pork trough, since so many of their own were feeding at it over at Freddie/Fannie. It’s the Gov’t Enron, but who, if anyone, will go to jail over it? No one, it will be covered up.
This decades long pork barrel is well known in Washington, so they have to blame it on something else, thats whats going on now. A panic to find a witch to blame this on. The wolves have been in the chicken house for a long time, and now they are arguing about who ate all the chickens. And the wolves will decide how to keep this from happening again?
The wolves want $700B to buy more chickens, and get back to business as usual.
1:23 pm
@Levi
If you can forgive the CRA, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, Sarbanes-Oxley, and the vague charters of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, and feel like you are fairly placing the lion’s share of the blame on the Bush administration or a Republican Congress, then you are seriously lacking objectivity.
1:43 pm
Levi,
What’s your favorite flavor of kool-aid?
1:48 pm
I think this issue reveals who the real political hacks are. It’s obvious with only a little study that all parties involved in this have some culpability. I’m a conservative and I am more upset with Republicans than Democrats regarding this issue. I think Republicans and Democrats are equally responsible but I expect this sort of social engineering from Democrats.
1:57 pm
That stuff’s been around for decades, Chris.
This is 30 years of Republican deregulation coming back to bite us, or is this maybe the ‘trickle down’ part of your backwards economic theories?
1:58 pm
“Levi,
What’s your favorite flavor of kool-aid?”
Say something?
1:58 pm
Bald Ninja,
I wholeheartedly agree with you. My initial reaction was not to bail out ‘Wall Street’. However, I also don’t want to harm our economy even further and I for one don’t have the knowledge to predict what is going to happen either way.
2:09 pm
[...] fact that partisan bickering and Washington rancor is now the norm. Some have called it a loss of faith (a great article with which I wholeheartedly agree), others blame it on a loss of politcal [...]
2:30 pm
Rick,
I think it is a myth that the partisanship we are seeing is something new. What’s new, since 1940, is the adoption of the idea of America media as objective and American government as genteel.
It worked for a short while. The media got subverted and only now is that truth becoming (slowly) apparent to the general public. The rancor in our government is also becoming obvious.
I see all of this as a return to the naken partisanship of the media and the government that we had for our entire national history from 1789-1940. We survived just fine back then, and as soon as the American public discards the myth of media objectivity, we’ll be fine now, too.
Don’t forget that in May of 1856 Senator Preston Brooks attacked Senator Charles Schumner on the floor of the Senate with his cane over a contentious speech on slavery. That’s an extreme example, I know. I have enjoyed the civility that we (apparently) had in our government and media, but this year has revealed deception and partisanship at such high levels that it’s clear the sixty year experiment with objectivity in the media, and civility in government, is over, and has actually been over for a while.
Since it has been fake for decades now: Good riddance to it.
2:38 pm
Levi,
30 years of Republican deregulation?
It was ‘regulation’ pushed by both parties that strongly encouraged loaning institutions to give out loans ignoring such antiquated criteria such as the ability to pay it back (all in the name of social justice and equality).
George Bush and John McCain tried to get more oversight on Freddi and Fannie. Democrats turned a blind (but well funded) eye away from not only the corruption of those heading these companies but also ignored warnings from Alan Greenspan. Certainly most Republicans also ignored these warnings but to pretend that ‘The Republicans did this’ just doesn’t hold up.
2:41 pm
Here’s a thought – let’s vote ALL the s.o.b.s out of office entirely. Look at it this way – we have a pack of incompetent dopes now – how much worse could a new bunch be? And we might get lucky!
Seriously, we need to be far less passive when it comes to our elected representatives. For one thing, we need to constantly remind them (because even the best of them is rather dumb) that THEY work for US - and that they serve at OUR pleasure. Being a member of Congress is NOT a career choice. It’s a temporary period of public service. Got that you indolent slugs – TEMPORARY. Then you go back and get a real job just like the rest of us.
And about those LAVISH pensions and health care benefits y’all have voted for yourselves. We need to have a serious chat fellas and gals about that nonsense as well! Since when do the EMPLOYEES tell the EMPLOYER what health benefits they must have? I don’t think so.
Finally, serving 6 or 8 years in the House or Senate is not sufficient to justify the enormous pension to which you have entitled yourselves for the balance of your lifetimes. Time to revamp that little program as well. Just a smidge too much greed y’all.
Let’s go out and hunt us down a new pack of semi-literate dimwits to serve us in Congress folks. And let’s try to get some who are not flaming psychopaths like John Murtha and Nancy Pelosi while we’re at it.
2:52 pm
@Levi
“That stuff’s been around for decades, Chris.”
And you don’t think it took decades for the severity of this problem to develop? And in point of fact, of the acts listed, only the CRA has been around for “decades”. Things worked decently enough until Clinton decided to put the CRA on steroids by requiring language in the GLBA which literally forced banks to make loans to minorities regardless of their creditworthiness.
“This is 30 years of Republican deregulation coming back to bite us, or is this maybe the ‘trickle down’ part of your backwards economic theories?”
Well, being a Democrat, I wouldn’t know…
3:11 pm
We have been here before. I was just a small child in the 70’s but I remember quite well the doom and gloom and the America is over crowd, it scared me. Of course everyone will say it was never this bad, this situation is worse than the last. Guess what, they are all bad and we are still here.
Only the most mypoic, uneducated, and ignorant partisan hack would believe that this was one party or one person’s fault. The information is there, the timelines are there, the people are there. It was a failure by them and us to look at the past to learn from there lessons and use them to guide us through the future.
Look at what we have right now, this is our best and brightest, Pelosi shooting off her suck on the House floor, House Repubs willing to flush the country because their feelings got hurt, Reid looking like a frightened dog pissing on itself, I could go on and on, but what is the point? They represent us; our laziness, our apathy, our American Idol approach to politics. So, we get what we deserve.
But in the end, none of this is about them, it is about us, the American people. It is not about our faith in them, the politicians. It is about faith in oursleves, something we have not had in a very long time.
CT
3:15 pm
CT,
I like your comments. Hopefully this ‘crisis’ will push us all to demand more of our representatives.
3:24 pm
“George Bush and John McCain tried to get more oversight on Freddi and Fannie. Democrats turned a blind (but well funded) eye away from not only the corruption of those heading these companies but also ignored warnings from Alan Greenspan. Certainly most Republicans also ignored these warnings but to pretend that ‘The Republicans did this’ just doesn’t hold up.”
Yes, and it’s too bad George Bush and John McCain weren’t in any position to do anything about it, right? They only had control of both houses of Congress and the executive branch, what’s a maverick to do?
3:37 pm
“And you don’t think it took decades for the severity of this problem to develop? And in point of fact, of the acts listed, only the CRA has been around for “decades”. Things worked decently enough until Clinton decided to put the CRA on steroids by requiring language in the GLBA which literally forced banks to make loans to minorities regardless of their creditworthiness.”
If you want to believe that this was a time bomb and that it’s some marvelous coincidence that it’s exploding after 8 years of George Bush’s administration, well whatever. Bush has been dismantling the government since he got into office.
4:12 pm
The political conversation these days is immeasurably worse than when I was a girl. And I was involved in politics as early as the first Dwight D. Eisenhower campaign when I was 10 years old because my parents were ardent supporters of his. In those days, the kind of opening remark that John McCain made during Friday’s debate was not unusual – you will recall that he requested good wishes for Senator Kennedy who is in the hospital? It was gracious and classy and the kind of thing that was routine back when I was a girl and a teen and a young, very involved political junkie. This climate of virulent and vicious hatred is new and quite a bit more than troubling.
One example – the constant references to President Bush as “Hitler” – which has always clearly shown me that those making that reference are idiots who don’t know squat about history. I was alive and quite sentient when the camps were liberated. I know what someone named Hitler can and did do. Some of my Catholic relatives died in those camps too.
Another example. The constant bleating about violations of free speech by the left, whilst they energetically try to limit MY free speech – as they are doing in Missouri and Kansas and heaven knows where else.
There is contentious and civilized debate and then there is just plain ugliness – and ugliness is what’s on view right now. Not pretty and most un-American.
5:57 pm
“And you don’t think it took decades for the severity of this problem to develop? And in point of fact, of the acts listed, only the CRA has been around for “decades”. Things worked decently enough until Clinton decided to put the CRA on steroids by requiring language in the GLBA which literally forced banks to make loans to minorities regardless of their creditworthiness.”
You are right Chris, it is about the GLBA, but it also about the Financial Modernization Act, the American Dream Downpayment Act, the Zero Downpayment Act. All of this was faulty thinking by both sides, the CRA expansions forced onto us so Phil Gramm could compromise with Clinton to get the FMA passed was the venue that banks saw to get the Sub Prime loans to people. The combination of these two bills started the Sub Prime Bubble. It would have evnetually burst as they always do, but the ADDA and the ZDA sped up the process and gave us the Sub Prime Bust. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Phil Gramm, Bush, every Senator and Representative occupying Congress in 03-04, Wall Street, and person with their hand out looking for something free are guilty of this debacle. It is about time you people pull your collective heads out of your asses and realze, this is not just one person or one group, it is essentially all of us.
You want to know what the really sad part about this is? We had already gone through a sub prime bust in the 70’s. If you aren’t lazy and would like to get informed, look up HUD and section 235’s. This isn’t some conspiracy theory bull-shit either, start your fact check with the Heritage Institute and go from there. The Feds had the blueprint on how to avoid this and what to about it. But no one bothered to look, they were more interested in makng money, advancing political causes, or getting something for nothing. This is the new America people,love it!
Happy hunting, I’m out!
CT
7:03 pm
[...] from, or who wrote it, but it’s well worth reading ….. no matter what you’re political bent. Right Wing Nut House ? FAITH OF OUR FATHERS ______________ John Ontario 32 – Aria Free, is the heart, that lives not, in fear. Full, is [...]
7:11 pm
Thank you for the thoughtful writing, Rick. I do think that Americans can pull together once again despite the severe liberal/conservative dogfight that has dominated our politics in recent decades. As a liberal and former Democrat, we need to step up and say our efforts to help the poor and downtrodden, while noble in intent, has lead to destructive excesses of many kinds. Including pushing financial institutions into making loans to people who are barely capable of being renters, adding fuel to the fire burning on Wall Street right now. We did it. We were wrong. I’ll say it, but I am nobody. Who among our leadership will step up in a statesman’s role and take ownership of our serious errors in thought and action?
Conservatives (fiscal conservatives) have deregulated everything they possibly could to advance the ideal of a free, unfettered market driving the financial wagon. Yes, some Democrats helped, but regulation by government is a liberal ideal, while deregulation is the spiritual son of the right. Your slogans: “Government is incompetent.” “Drown government in the bathtub.” “Government is not the solution, it is the problem.”
These prevaling attitudes have been extremely destructive to our nation, just as destructive as the excesses of the nanny state from the left. Who will apologize for the excesses of the right? Who will admit some conservative ideas just don’t work and have severely damaged our nation? Rick, your idea (and ideal) of an American spirit overcoming our great national divide is noble. But without both sides overtly owning their errors AND CHANGING BEHAVIOR AND ATTITUDES, it cannot happen.
But we as a nation have done brave and noble things before. America liberated Europe and much of Asia in the last century from tyranny most horrible. We created an environment and took actions that encouraged the collapse of the scourge of communism (thank you, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and many other conservative voices). We ripped ourselves apart to provide civil rights to minorities, for which we owe thanks to Martin Luther King, Thurgood Marshall, and Lyndon Johnson, with a myriad of other liberal voices of the day. And while primarily liberal, some brave conservatives such as William Knowland, Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois, Charles Halleck of Indiana, William McCulloch of Ohio, Robert Griffin of Michigan, Robert Taft Jr. of Ohio, Clarence Brown of Ohio, Roman Hruska of Nebraska worked at their own risk as well to make civil rights the real law of the land.
Please, politicians. One more time. Own your mistakes. Apologize. And do the right thing for the country and not for ideology or re-election. We will be with you.
7:54 pm
Very interesting post, Rick. Try not to sign off entirely though! I think the internet, news, commentary, etc, has probably gotten to all of us lately. It’s a little hard to feel like you live in a unified country during election season. As intellectuals, it can be a little overwhelming because our temptation is to try to analyze everything and understand it. But sometimes it’s ok to take a step back and know that we don’t have all the answers…
But it’s true: very big challenges lay ahead for our country. One that won’t easily be solved by appearing on Oprah, or by writing a memoir, or giving a speech on 7 channels on live television, or by doing any other self-preoccupied introspection that America so loves to do. We are still a young country and must find our identity. And that’s something no politician can give us. It’s something we have to find in ourselves and in our local communities—not in the political articles of pundits, or in the words of some Washington speech writer on a teleprompter. America isn’t the cynical TV reporter or shady Washington deals. America is us—our friends, our family, our communities. That’s what we need to have faith in. The rest will fall into place. (Well, after scandal after scandal and the Dow dropping). Sigh.
It also couldn’t hurt having faith in our cats (Hi, snowball!).
10:06 pm
I know you don’t believe it, but the biggest loss of faith is that of God. Our founders, while not necessarily Christian, understood the nature of man, hence, the great experiment in republican government. It has been a rudimentary attempt to subject man’s innate sinful nature to a greater good…never happens…sin always wins unless the timeless, personal, Creator changes a man’s heart. This experiment was cast in a time when man’s belief in a personal Creator was much greater than today. We’re just much more adrift, removed from Him, which is where we are.
10:26 pm
Let me second Mark Borzillo’s post. More important than the founders was that this was the common thread that drew the original settlers here at a time when they were risking their lives for religious freedom, which in most cases meant to them a more orthodox Christianity than what they were leaving.
Rick one question though—in spreading the blame you point a finger at Wall Street “greed.” What do you mean by this? Once mortgage backed securities were put on the market, they were bought up because of implicit government backing, AAA Moody rating, and a people seeing what they (mistakingly) regarded as both a quality investment with a good return. Does greed mean that when you find what looks like a good investment you should step back and pick a less attractive investment? I just don’t get this shorthand on greed.
10:51 pm
My friend Rick
We don’t often agree, but we do more often than I like to admit, but when we do agree it’s on the fundementals. Great post!
12:51 am
Faith in America is alive and well. During Hurricane Ike I took a heavy hit on the home front but one neighbor loaned me a chainsaw, another helped cut up the fallen trees, gangs of my son’s 16 year old friends hauled the debris to the street, and in a couple days after storm the whole block had a chicken dinner at the neighbor’s across the street. All were happy and content despite the damage. Within a week, the city had contractors haul the debris away and the power company had the lights back on in two weeks.
I have faith in myself.
I have faith in my family.
I have faith in my neighbors.
I have faith in next generation.
I have faith in my city.
I have faith in my power company.
I have faith in my state.
I have faith in my national guard and armed forces.
I have faith in my God.
I have faith in you my friend.
Do you really believe that if you were threatened that we would not come to your aid?
The faith and trust you fear lost is only resting just below the transient turmoil of politics, fads and trends. Crisis will only wash away the mud and muck to reveal the bedrock of this country. This is the true lesson of 9/11 like Pearl Harbor before it. After 9/11 the pettiness only returned after we were confident that President Bush had that crisis well in hand. Did it not?
I believe faith and trust come from individual not from the state. In Washington, the most important document is not the damn bailout bill, rather it begins:
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, ...”
We have faith and trust in US!
4:25 am
Your lack of love for McCain is palpable.
Describe ‘victory’ for us. Be the first…
6:12 am
[...] from, or who wrote it, but it’s well worth reading ….. no matter what you’re political bent. Right Wing Nut House ? FAITH OF OUR FATHERS From the comments to the above article: Lord Tytler said it best when speaking of the fall of [...]
8:56 am
What happened to you Rick? Moral equivocation is not an argument. The right is right, and the left is wrong. How’s that for faith? Just who are you now? Under the guise of thoughfulness, you’ve gone soft.
10:59 am
Upon further reflection I really don’t get this post. Wasn’t “faith of our fathers” dead the moment John Adams refused to show up at Jefferson’s inauguration? As for me, I never had faith in the fathers of eugenics which was so popular among our fathers in the 1930’s. I never had faith our fathers who supported the New Deal, or wanted to pack the Supreme Court, or gave us the Great Society.
My point is that there is no umbrella faith (and I hate using this word since faith is an inept word for the mundane) for which we should embrace all those who came before us. This country has always been in a fight with itself, and THAT, more than a big group hug is what made us great.
Sheesh…and I thought I was a cynic.
ed.
11:40 am
Rick,
A cynic is someone who believes that all people are motivated by selfishness. What part of my post do you regard as cynical? The fight between Hamilton and Jefferson-Madison is a fight to embrace—not shun because it’s combative. I mean for Pete’s sake, would we be better off if Hamilton sat back and said “you know, were both wrong…let’s talk about those things on which we agree!”
You say we have lost [something?] handed down to us, which we should preserve as if it were a relic of the Catholic Church “lovingly preserved and cared for by parishioners of all time.” As a student of early Christian history, I’ve learned that we have something called the Nicene Creed preserved for over 1600 years because fights and disunity within the church were brought to a point of crisis. Those fights resulted in an understanding that we did not have before that crisis. What we call orthodoxy was born out of heresy, and it resulted in a great understanding for the faithful.
This is cynicism?
12:36 pm
In any political debate Liberals and Conservatives have the same mind set. That is they only want to know how the other side is wrong and filled with morons and liars. Forget debating an issue on it’s merits or need, just drink the kool aid and star ranting about the other side. Take the loan fiasco. Getting lower income people access to loans was not in an of itself a bad idea, home owners with roots in a community take more of an interest in that community than mobile renters. Yes things got out of control, but it was not some sinister plot by either side. Rational people will say, “This is the goal, this is what went wrong and here is the fix.” The kool aid crowd can only scream and play the blame game. It’s when the blame game gets out of control you have a problem. Demagogs like Hitler blamed Jews, Mao blamed Capitalist Roaders, they know finding someone to vilify is the road to power. I have come to the conclusion that about 80% of the population falls into either of the kool aid camps, only about 20% wants to talk about a subject on it’s own merits. The Vietnam war radicalized the left and right, and I did see the younger generation getting tired of, or just ignoring, the constant petty frothing. Now that we have a war and a financial crisis I don’t know if another generation yet again become radicalized, if so we slip ever closer to Weimar Germany.
2:04 pm
Great post.
I think what needs to happen is that America needs to intermingle again. Soon everyone of us will be brothers and sisters in misery. 9/11 was a dramatic shattering of that illusion of security and faith, but it was quickly rebuilt for the Iraq War, as almost everyone was swept up in the excitement of fighting a just, moral war against a deserving enemy. But so much of it was political theater as Bush and many, many Democrats in Congress told us to eat all the bread and watch all the circuses we wanted while many fine young men and women were cut down randomly and haphazardly.
I think this economic crisis will wake America up.
4:55 pm
Conservatism Today – Around the Blogosphere in 90 Minutes…
It’s been awhile since I’ve taken a day to look through my entire blogroll, seing what all my friends are up to, but that’s what I’m doing for the 90 minutes or so. I will update this with links to…...
10:18 pm
I wish I could believe your sincerity. I do believe your words. They are exactly right. I wish more people understood this.
Tomorrow is another day, however and politics is now what it has become. People will bash opponents in government and on this blog for being idiots, traitors or worse. Once trust (or at least rapport) is breached, it is lost. Who is to blame? In the end it becomes irrelevant and the results disasterous.
Bashing someone for being an idiot hurt your feelings, asshole? Calling me a liar is not the way to win friends and influence people on this site, sonny. The difference between calling someone like you an idiot and calling them a traitor is several orders of magnitude. I do not call liberals traitors on this site – or unpatriotic. In fact, I have defended the patriotism of the left and tried to explain it (it is vastly different than the patriotism on the right as many have pointed out).
The left’s problem – as Obama demonstrates on a regular basis – is that any criticism at all cannot be tolerated. It is to be shouted down, or intimidated, or dismissed as “racist” or fascist or some other ridiculous notion. I will happily, gleefully, continue to call liberals – and conservatives – who deserve it idiots, boobs, nincompoops, and any other name that fits. To equate that with questioning your patriotism is bizarre and reveals something of a guilty conscience, methinks.
ed.
3:43 pm
You write what I want to write and what I think. This is exactly spot on. We are in a helluv a mess.
1:33 am
8:22 a.m.
sometime after 10:18 p.m.
It must be tomorrow already.
Anyway, I never said you called anyone a traitor. I reread my post and think I worded it correctly. I trust you occasionally watched tv or listened to the radio once in a while? Correct me if I am wrong but isn’t part of the reason for your post about the political discourse that has allowed words like this to be thrown around like candy?
Your original post was brilliant. I will leave it at that.
Yours,
“Sonny”