Be The Change
January 25, 2009
President Obama may be wrong on Guantanamo Bay. He may be wrong on the so-called “Mexico City Policy” regarding abortion rights. He is dead right, however, on the need for a new era of responsibility.
Irresponsibility has been the coin of the American political realm for the past two decades. Irresponsibility has lead to extreme and excessive partisanship, the sort of partisanship that effectively crippled the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Irresponsibility has made us hate each other—and that hatred has polluted discourse in this country.
Irresponsibility has made it easier to be reckless in our language. Because of this irresponsibility, it was considered appropriate to spread false stories about a President being involved in suspicious deaths. After that, it was considered appropriate to accuse a President of stealing an election and deliberately lying about the necessity of going to war. Once that was tolerated, it was considered appropriate to suggest that a Presidential candidate was a closet Muslim who was not really born in the United States.
Irresponsibility. It’s the cancer that will consume us all—if we allow it.
A lack of responsibility is indeed a childish thing—and we had better put it away. Granted, it should have been put away years ago, but we had no motivation to do so. We should be filled with motivation now.
What should be the hallmark of an era of responsibility? It should be defined by a willingness to value reason over emotion, a desire to embrace fact over fiction. There’s nothing inherently wrong with ideology. However, when reality confronts ideology, the latter must bend to the will of the former.
We haven’t been willing to let that happen for a while in this country—and our collective decision to place ideology above reality occurred long before the previous President took office. This country’s in a hole right now because so many of us, for so many years, chose what was fantasy over what was firm.
In addition, if we’re serious about ushering in an era of responsibility, we must agree to denounce double standards wherever we see them. Double standards can be found on both political sides. Does anyone deny that if a straight Democrat behaved as the late Congressman Gerry Studds did years ago, he would have been drummed out of the Democrat Party? Does anyone deny that if a white Democrat acted in the irresponsible way Al Sharpton has for years, he too would have been asked to leave that party?
Similarly, can we acknowledge that the same Republicans who now praise a President who failed to secure the country’s borders in the wake of a terrorist attack would excoriate and pillory a Democrat President who had done the same? Can we acknowledge that the same Republicans who defend an outgoing GOP President with woeful approval ratings as a fundamentally decent person would mock and ridicule Democrats who tried to make similar arguments about an unpopular departing Democrat Commander-in-Chief?
Our new President is calling upon us not to set down our beliefs, but to set down our political bigotries. He is asking us to see beyond Democrat and Republican, to see beyond red and blue, to look at our political differences as merely opposite routes to the same common location. Instead of sitting back and rooting for him to fail (or rooting for him to vanquish what little political opposition he currently has), why not take him up on this challenge?
Before the War on Terror began, we were engaged in a modern-day civil war, with words as weapons and keyboards as bases. This war has continued for far too long, and has incurred numerous symbolic casualties. Maybe neither side can win this war. Yet it’s possible to have peace with honor, no?
I’d like to make my own pledge to the President. I pledge to reject stupidity and dishonesty wherever it is found, to denounce as intolerable the obnoxiousness of the blind left and the blind right. I pledge to question and challenge political storylines and talking points. I pledge to demand excellence and rationality from the influencers of our political discourse, especially those influencers who happen to share my personal political vision. I pledge to fight the dumbing-down of discussion and the substitution of slogans and potshots for reason and wisdom. I pledge to change my mind if and when the facts change. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
