Frontline Lessons Brought Home: Others, Selfs and Manners
This is another post that's taken, even required, some thought and our focus is on the
fundamental question we left on the table at the end of the last post (Reflections & Remembrances: Memorial Day, D-Day, Today). What lessons can we take from the sacrifices of the veterans and how can we bring it into our lives, private and public ? People join the service for many reasons but a major one is in service of our core ideals: government of, by and for the people. Without exception that we know of veterans endure what they endure for the sake of their brothers, and now, sisters. Major Dick Winter, the real life hero of Band of Brothers, tells the story that he wasn't a hero himself but he served with a company of them. They all say the real heroes are the ones left behind. A Hero is someone who sacrifices themselves, in whatever form, for the betterment of us all. Ultimately they are motivated by COMPASSION, the ability to see the other as themselves. We argued that for those of us not there the best we can imagine is from movies and TV but in some ways an even better source are the works of the artists who were there, as this drawing from the Navy's Combat Art Collection shows. If that's not the most profound love of one's fellow man on the faces of these Marines, watching their fallen comrade to see if the plasma will save him, we have no clue as to human nature.
Hero's Virtues and Ordinary Lives
One of my favorite artists is Norman Rockwell, even if it's customary to sneer at him more often than not these days, because of the bedrock virtues of ordinary life. A favorite Rockwell painting (to the best of my recollection) is the umpire glowering down at the tiny batter arguing with him about a call, "You're OUT ! Now PLAY BALL !!". Unfortunately we couldn't find that one and have substituted another that still speaks to the same message. I'm sure we've all been there, done that or seen it. But, especially when Rockwell drew them the chances that the umps had in fact been veterans of one sort or another were pretty good, in fact so good as to be likely. My dad flew C-47s in combat, my math teacher P-51s and the science teacher was a ball turret gunner on a B-17 while both another teacher and a family friend had lost arms as infantrymen. Some of the prices were daily reminders for us then. Yet here is the man, who may have been to hell and back, arguing - if not calmly then civilly - about a call according the book of rules everybody had agreed to play by. Rami Khouri, the editor of the Beirut Daily Star lived in this country and become a baseball nut. He tells the story during a Rose interview about one of the reasons he loves the game. It's because it didn't matter who you were, the rules were the rules and no matter who your father was you were out if the ump said so. That respect for playing by the rules of the game and the voluntary support of a civil society is at the root of our society. In fact we argue, and have argued (Peace, Stability and Prosperity: the Nature of Good Government), that it is the root of the long-term stability and success of all prosperous societies.
Welcome to Notre Dame
Which brings us to our core question - how do we take the willingness to serve others into our normal lives and especially the public sphere ? Slighly over a month ago Pres. Obama gave the commencement address at Notre Dame. The invitation and actual event provoked outrage, debate and critiscism among a wide range of commentators. We can applaud his courage for stepping into the lion's den, but then that's his job just as on another day it was the job of the Rangers to go up the cliffs of Pont du Hoc. Better that we applaud the courage of Notre Dame for inviting him, even though they clearly had disagreements. Most of the commentariat recognized a (typical ?) great speech but didn't pay much attention to the substance of the arguments. As for the demonstrators and objectors, well....we suspect they are so trapped in their own viewpoints that the issue didn't even come up. Shall we consider what he actually said ?
Every one of you should be proud of what you have achieved at this institution. One hundred and sixty three classes of Notre Dame graduates have sat where you are today. Some were here during years that simply rolled into the next without much notice or fanfare - periods of relative peace and prosperity that required little by way of sacrifice or struggle. You, however, are not getting off that easy. Your class has come of age at a moment of great consequence for our nation and the world - a rare inflection point in history where the size and scope of the challenges before us require that we remake our world to renew its promise; that we align our deepest values and commitments to the demands of a new age. It is a privilege and a responsibility afforded to few generations - and a task that you are now called to fulfill.This is the generation that must find a path back to prosperity and decide how we respond to a global economy that left millions behind even before this crisis hit - an economy where greed and short-term thinking were too often rewarded at the expense of fairness, and diligence, and an honest day's work.... we must find a way to reconcile our ever-shrinking world with its ever-growing diversity - diversity of thought, of culture, and of belief. In short, we must find a way to live together as one human family.
Unfortunately, finding that common ground - recognizing that our fates are tied up, as Dr. King said, in a "single garment of destiny" - is not easy. Part of the problem, of course, lies in the imperfections of man - our selfishness, our pride, our stubbornness, our acquisitiveness, our insecurities, our egos; all the cruelties large and small that those of us in the Christian tradition understand to be rooted in original sin. We too often seek advantage over others. We cling to outworn prejudice and fear those who are unfamiliar. Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism; in which the world is necessarily a zero-sum game. The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice. And so, for all our technology and scientific advances, we see around the globe violence and want and strife that would seem sadly familiar to those in ancient times.
I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that - when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do - that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground. That's when we begin to say, "Maybe we won't agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions. So let's work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term. Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women." Understand - I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. No matter how much we may want to fudge it - indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory - the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature. Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words.
Whatever your personal position on the specific issue the OTHER question on the table is do you respect your fellow citizens enough to grant them the right to their own opinions, to respect the necessity for free and open debate as each side tries to persuade the other and respect the foundations of our civil society that those veterans spent so much to sustain ? Or are some issues so over-ridingly important that being right and winning, forcing compliance with your views is so critical, that you are willing to win at any cost ? We remind you of the other side of coin of Rami Khouri's story, coming as he does from a society torn to pieces by sectarian strife for decades.
Freedom Is Not Free
Another of my favorite Rockwell series if his paintings on the "Four Freedoms", which he did as a reaction to an FDR speech which were later turned into posters during WW2. Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom From Fear and Freedom From Want are not just slogans or nice sentiments. They are both some of our loftiest goals and the bedrock on which we've built this society. Let me quote from a recent e-mail exchange of mine:
Two small hopes and a big one though. I hope it's more than a sentiment, or just a sentiment. We're all "moved", or at least give lip service to their sacrifices. I think it's because we all recognize it's for us all and not self-serving. The same way we applaud the righteous who risked their lives to stand for decency and help the Jews during the Holocaust. They act for the best that is in us.
My big hope is that we can all learn, in some small way, to learn that sacrifice for the other is not limited just to war but that we each can and do do it in small and large ways in every day of our lives.
And contrawise when we act out of narrow interests, hate or anger we do so for the worst of us. Especially when it's not just in the heat of the moment but a sustained or deliberate act of damage.
The answer to how we best honor the veterans sacrifices is not in laying flowers on their graves nor in applauding them as they walk by in the airport or during the Memorial Day parades. It lies in conducting our own lives according the values of honor, integrity and self-sacrifice that they showed in theirs.
Last fall, literally, Western Civilization almost collapsed. Two men were primarily responsible for saving it - Hank Paulsen and Ben Bernanke. If they had failed to arrest the collapse of the credit markets, restore order and get things moving again our chances of having a Great Depression again were near certainty. Given the scope and magnitudes of the potential breakdowns the downsides were so much worse that the GD might have looked like a walk in the park. Yet despite being under enormous pressures 24 X 7, dealing with unprecendented events that nobody had faced in years, if ever, they managed to right the ship and save us all from disaster. And their rewards have been an almost un-ending stream of critiscisms from all points of the compass. There behavior in the crisis was truly heroic. There is nothing so difficult as keeping you head in a crisis, especially when everyone around you is loosing theirs. To do it day after day under a drumbeat of one damm thing after another is extraordinary. To do when the answers aren't clear yet you must remain calm, collected and decisive is more extraordinary. As Gen. Peter Pace pointed out in his commencement address to the cadets of VMI it often takes more moral courage to support an unpopular position, let alone carry it, in the meeting room than it does to command in combat. It's all to easy to give in to the common wisdom, even when you know it'll lead to disaster. To conduct yourself in such a manner subject to so much critiscism is more difficult yet. When that critisicsm is both ignorant and largely motivated by narrow self-interest the challenges are beyond my imagination. Yet day after day during the crisis, and as I write, these guys were civil, calm, intelligent and right. As the President pointed out at Notre Dame, and many times before and since, we face challenging and difficult times that call for new solutions. They do NOT call for the continued search for partisan advantage. To act in that way, seeking a scapegoat to sacrifice to the political gods, is a violation of everything that we should have learned from the veterans.
That calm face preparing to respond to yet another ill-informed, vituperative and critical attack, masquerading as a question, is the Chairmen listening as he is accused of perjury by the ranking Republican and ex-chairmen of the committee.You can listen to some of these attacks starting around minute 40 and continuing on and on.
In my book we don't deserve such public servants, do everything we can to drive them away, and we can only wonder that they do serve. Truly heroic in every sense of the word IOHO !
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