For certain individuals, setting a positive example may be interpreted as a sign of weakness. It seems that some people in this world prefer to embrace a different approach, one that involves using crude language, constantly lying, and refusing to take responsibility for their actions. They proudly display an intellectual prowess that is limited to expressing themselves in grievance filled rants on social media.
But why do they choose this path? Their actions seem to suggest that they believe appealing to people’s baser instincts is more effective than promoting noble ideals. They argue that this is what it means to be real, to be genuine.
I believe that the majority of us know better.
In fact, it’s crucial to recognize the importance of setting a good example. While modeling negative behavior may be tempting, it rarely leads to positive outcomes or inspires others to be their best selves. On the other hand, demonstrating honesty, integrity, and responsibility can have a profound impact on those around us.
By choosing to be authentic in a positive way, we encourage others to do the same. We inspire them to strive for excellence, to prioritize kindness and empathy, and to take ownership of their actions. In a world where negativity and cynicism can often dominate, being a source of inspiration and embodying noble values is more important than ever.
So, while some may believe that behaving in a less-than-exemplary manner is the path to success, I remain firm in my belief that setting a good example is a far more powerful and meaningful way to make a positive impact in the world.
We should aspire to be the ones who uplift and inspire others, rather than succumbing to the allure of base behavior. Let us be the people who choose nobility over negativity, and in doing so, create a better, more harmonious world for all.
I’ve been reflecting on American politics and our nation’s future in ways I never thought I would. These reflections, to be candid, haven’t been very optimistic. And they’ve caused some changes in some of my tastes and in my thinking. Whiskey, for example, a spirit I rarely touched is now the proof I find most convincing. On the thinking side, I’ve developed some serious concerns about the state of American democracy. I know I join many of you in this concern.
Could America be headed toward becoming an illiberal democracy? Could America be headed toward a big break up, another civil war? A part of me has always known this was possible. But having grown up with the faith of American exceptionalism in the air, the thought of America’s democracy falling apart was never something I seriously considered. Why? Because, well, we’re Americans! This may happen to other nations—to third world countries—but never here!
Or so I once believed.
And so I carried into middle-age this lingering belief that somehow America was ultimately different. We were somehow immune from being taken over by illiberalism, authoritarianism, or mass stupidity. Clearly this belief was a stubborn remnant of a youthful naiveté. It was a natural way of feeling, I guess, for a lot of us who’d grown up in the relative peace and prosperity of the 1970s and 1980s. Not that America didn’t face serious challenges then. We suffered through our share of the socio-economic-political challenges of the time. Things like the inglorious defeat and humiliating withdrawal from Vietnam, Watergate, stagflation, the Iran-Contra affair and so on and so forth. But there was never any serious threat to the continuation of America’s liberal democracy and its institutions. Not that I can recall or find with Google search.
The only thing during those times (1970s) that probably caused me to pause when considering the survival of American democracy, were those Duck and Cover drills we’d periodically do at Kempsville Elementary School. We’d all sit against the walls in the hallways and bury our heads in our arms. It was, we were told, “a tornado drill.” And I’m sure it partially was. But most of us kids knew it was really more about soviet missiles. As American school kids, we implicitly understood the biggest threat to American democracy was from those evil communists in Moscow, not from our fellow Americans.
Or so I once believed.
There will always be political division, that’s built right into human nature. But America’s current political divide is well above a safe operating norm. It’s not socially or personally healthy for any of us. And if you’re not paying attention to what’s going on that’s worse. Because all of us, regardless of your views or indifference, are in the water if this boats sinks. We should all, for the sake of our country, try to bridge the divide, seek common ground, bring the damn temperature down a bit, and try to heal the wounds…as best we can. That requires engagement folks. Of course politics is a difficult topic of conversation for lot of us, I realize. Talking politics can be uncomfortable with friends and family. It can absolutely challenge your sanity at times. Believe me, I know! And yet it’s important, as a nation, that the citizens of a democratic republic engage in political discourse.
Sometimes the most helpful thing, I’ve found, is to explain where you’re coming from politically. We all have a story to tell about our political beliefs. I will be telling my story in a forth coming post. Sometimes our story is simple, sometimes it’s not. For a lot of us (and certainly for me) it’s one of those relationships that’s best labeled as “complicated.” But talking politics, in a calm and thoughtful way, is the civic duty of every responsible citizen. We cannot live an honest life and care about our community or our country and not, in my view, talk about politics or culture…or religion for that matter. If we care, we must engage. We are social beings, and so the state of our society, our democracy, should be something that engages the interests of all citizens.
We like to curse “politics” and “politicians,” and no doubt some of the bastards deserve it. But the simple truth is we’re social beings, which means we’re political beings, and that means politics is always part of the equation. It’s just part of who we are; it’s part of how the world turns for humanity. So look in the mirror: politics and politicians are just reflections of us, of you, of me. As David Foster Wallace wrote: “Our leaders, our government is us, all of us, so if they’re venal and weak it’s because we are.”
The Founders of this country, especially Madison and Hamilton, were clear-eyed about our deeply flawed (i.e. pathetically self-interested) human nature was and so they helped design a Constitutional Republic that’s institutions provided checks and balances on power and ambition. Government power was purposely diffused. This process encouraged coalition building, another word for bipartisanship, among legislators as they try to reach a deal. In a liberal democracy, like the United States, where individual rights and the rule of law are sacred, this is a critical element in successful democratic self-governance.
The underlying ideal of liberal democracy is that differences are settled by laws, by process, by ballots not bullets, by elections not wars. The southern states broke faith with the ideal in 1861 and it cost the nation over 600,000 lives and the destruction of the southern economy and many southern cities. The underlying ideal, at its core, is the belief that after all the arguments and rhetoric and shouting and nonsense, in the end, we settle the contest by law, by process, by elections. There’s no appeal to the results of a free and fair election. The people have rendered their verdict…for now. Those who lost have the next election for an appeal to the voters.
The underlying ideal means if you want to enact a public policy or a change in public leadership you have to engage in the tough work of persuading the voters. That IS democracy in action. Intimidating and threatening election officials, lying about election results, enacting voter suppression laws, aren’t acts of people trying to persuade, but of those betraying the underlying ideal for their self-interested ideology, for raw power. These acts are anti-democratic and are meant to be so.
I’ve struggled with maintaining a positive attitude given incredible breach of faith in the underlying ideal by many on the political right these days. Nothing good can come of it for them, their constituents, or our democracy. And yet! I do believe there are enough people devoted—on all sides—to the underlying ideal that we’ll slowly work our way through these turbulent times, preserve our great democracy, and, I pray, our continued faith in the underlying ideal.
Bruce Catton has an excellent quote about politics and democracy that I think says it very well:
Politics works at a high price and operates at the lowest common denominator of what exists in the hearts of the people—which means the hearts of you and me. There is cowardice there, often enough, and meanness, and petty selfishness, and politics has to take them into account. Yet those same hearts contain courage and nobility and faith, and in the last analysis the good outweighs the bad. We live by politics. We do various hopelessly inefficient things, we waste enormous amounts of strength and energy, we compromise everything but the underlying ideal—but because at bottom there is an underlying devotion to that ideal, we keep on living.
Our politics are too much about the curse of pain and too little about the blessings of liberty.
There is so much in that short sentence to unpack. Our politics is filled with too many grievance mongers and selfish, dishonest applause seekers instead of people trying to solve real problems and improve the lives of our citizenry. The blessings of liberty are about a free people coming together, working together, through their natural disagreements, finding compromise, and finding solutions through the democratic process. History reminds us that oligarchy, autocracy, chaos, and civil strife are the rule and democracy, peace, and the blessings of Liberty the exception.
What we need right now is more humility, grace, intelligence, and compassion and less of the dark, greedy, selfish, tribal hatreds from the curse-of-pain crowd that are always seeking attention and stoking fear. In this brief moment of history we have the blessings of Liberty and self governance and a way of life only dreamed of by millions of souls who came long before us across the great span of human history.
He liked to say that he was in morals, not politics. From this the logical deduction was that people who opposed him, numerous though they undoubtedly were, must be willfully wrong. . . .
Yet angry words were about the only kind anyone cared about to use these days. Men seemed tired of the reasoning process. Instead of trying to convert one’s opponents it was simpler just to denounce them, no matter what unmeasured denunciation might lead to. . . . Men saw what they feared and hated, concentrated on its wide empty plains, and as they stared they were losing the ability to see virtue in compromise and conciliation. The man on the other side, whatever one’s vantage point, was beginning to look ominously alien. . . .
A philippic, as he had promised. No single vote had been changed by it; the Senate would decide, at last, precisely as it would have done if he had kept quiet. But he had not been trying to persuade. No one was, these days; a political leader addressed his own following, not the opposition. Summer had been trying to inflame, to arouse, to confirm the hatreds and angers that already existed. In the North there were men who from his words would draw a new enmity toward the South; in the South there were men who would see in this speaker and what he had said a final embodiment of the compelling reasons why it was good to think seriously about secession.
These excerpts are from Catton’s book, This Hallowed Ground. Though he is describing something that happened 165 years ago, it feels eerily contemporary.
In the opening pages of his book, a section aptly subtitled “Sowing the Wind,” Catton is describing the mood of the U.S. Senate (and the nation really) as Senator Charles Sumner prepared and delivered a speech on the Senate floor denouncing slavery and calling for the territory of Kansas to be admitted to the Union as a free state.
A few days later, on the Senate floor, as a result of that speech, Sumner was attacked and almost beat to death with a cane by Preston Brooks, a senator from South Carolina, and a strong advocate for slavery and states’ rights.
It was May, 1856. The nation was just 5 years from the opening shots of a bloody civil war.
Jeff Wills 