Reading notes

Wendell writes well and thoughtfully, as usual:

Facing this year’s presidential election, our people are bitterly divided. This division is perhaps as great a threat to our future as is the possibility of a second term for Mr. Bush. And so the paramount question for Sen. Kerry’s campaign is how to oppose Mr. Bush effectively without so exacerbating the country’s political differences as to reduce the possibility of effective government should Sen. Kerry win the election.

One answer, I believe, is to base the campaign solidly and clearly upon our traditional principles of politics and religion. … If the campaign is based soundly enough on principles, then it can be carried out, at least by Democrats, as a reasoned argument, and thus without sensationalizing personal and emotional differences. The further great advantage is that the Bush administration can be shown all too handily to be in violation of many of our country’s traditional political and religious principles. …

Along with all the rest of the world’s people, we have inherited ancient instructions for the stewardship and good husbandry of the earth, with clear warnings, now significantly verified, of the disasters that will (and already do) attend our failure. We have responded by continuing our elaborately rationalized destructions. But bad precedent is no excuse for bad behavior. The Bush attitude toward the natural (God-given) world is sacrilegious and wildly uneconomic.

The human norm, as established by Christ (and others), is love even for enemies, forgiveness, neighborliness, and peace. It is therefore troubling that members of the present administration, while making much of their commitment to Christ, are insisting on the normality of hatred, greed, revenge, and unremitting war. …

However obscured by a history that has fallen short, our religious principles are justice, mercy, peaceableness, and lovingkindness toward fellow humans and the gifts of nature; as our political principles are freedom confirmed in law, honesty, and public accountability. These are not the principles of a party. They are our free inheritance as human beings and as citizens living under the Constitution of the United States.

These observations inspire hope that our “better angels” will ultimately prevail. Yet still I find my heart heavy for those religious folk who continue hellbent in support of the Bush administration whose plans and goals embrace sin as sound policy. What end awaits these ones? Will pleading ignorance justify? In a world of free-flowing information, is ignorance a workable excuse? Maybe their repentance is closer at hand than I realize? Will God forgive as I cannot?

(I remind myself of Lyle Lovett’s humorous-yet-sobering God Will lyric. I really am working on forgiveness, but it’s slow going.)