This week, just like last week, I’m struck by the importance of the choices we’ll make at the ballot box this Tuesday. Thought I’d share a consideration pertaining to political decision-making that’s been banging around inside of me for a while. Please be patient as I try to articulate something that’s subtle, but I think important. Thanks for reading.
Last week’s SMC described how my hometown boy Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech propelled him onto the national stage. Pretty soon, the rail-splitter turned politician showed that he could wield language the same way he swung an axe—with precision, and power. Fortunately for a nation only four score and seven years old, he utilized that tool to mend a split nation, and to prune the rot of slavery from it.
His short tenure in national leadership showed that great leaders aren’t only measured by legislative achievements, or executive orders, as important as those things are. Great leaders are remembered for words that elevate—words that bind people together in a cause worthy of the dignity of their humanity. FDR staunched a nation’s wounded hope when he told my grandparents’ generation that, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Across the ocean from Grandma and Grandpa, Winston Churchill’s speeches held up a mirror in which wartime England could see her own courage reflected back to her. The CBS wartime correspondent Edward R. Murrow said that Churchill’s greatest achievement was the “weaponization of the English language.”
Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who lived through the Holocaust and World War II, knew something about the power of words. The oft quoted phrase, “Words create worlds,” is attributed to him. Unfortunately, Heschel, who grew up in 1930s Warsaw Poland, also knew, firsthand, the power of words to destroy worlds.
A Political Observation from a Relational Counselor
As a counselor I’ve seen, firsthand, that words create worlds. A couple reaches out for relationship help for any number of your run-of-the-mill reasons. That list would be familiar to any couples’ counselor: physical intimacy, equitable distribution of chores, parenting styles, differing economic approaches, and more. A skilled counselor will look beyond the specific content issue to find the process issue that’s getting in the way. To put it in a nutshell, if a couple doesn’t know the process of how to speak to one another with kindness, patience, and magnanimity, the content issues aren’t likely to get solved or stay solved for very long.
On this, the weekend before Election Tuesday, I’m reflecting on the process issue that’s on this year’s ballot. If I’m looking for a candidate who safeguards the dignity of each human person, especially the vulnerable, experience tells me that I’d better be selecting a candidate who deploys words that elevate and dignify. If that standard seems too lofty, how’s about Elie Wiesel’s more humble admonition, “Never to allow anyone to be humiliated in your presence.” A politician who deploys words that regularly humiliate, will inevitably destroy the bonds that hold the community that holds the values that you care about. In the last analysis, destroying a village to save a village never works.
Check your experience. The deepest part of you wants to feed on Beauty, Truth, Goodness, and Love. According to Thomas Aquinas, that’s because these signifiers are all synonyms for God who pulses at the core of your being. And just like the God these names represent, they are not divisible. A thing is True because it’s Beautiful, and it’s Beautiful because it’s True.
An Election Consideration
A humble consideration two days before our elections: “Does the candidate on your ballot use language that evidences Beauty or Truth? Does your candidate deploy words in a life-giving way, or in a destructive way? Never underestimate the power of words. Words set a course for actions. Those actions form habits. Habits determine character in an individual, they form culture in a group. Character is destiny for an individual. Culture is destiny for a group. Can the culture created by your candidates’ words support the values you hold dear?
What do we do if Love doesn’t win?