Spiritual Common Sense

In 1972, a deranged man, named Laszlo Toth, dashed past the guards in St. Peter’s Basilica, vaulted a marble balustrade and attacked Michelangelo’s Pieta.  He struck the Madonna with a hammer twelve times before he could be stopped.  When he was done, over 100 fragments of the Renaissance masterpiece littered the floor of the chapel.

That happened a week before my twenty-seventh birthday.  I will be 74 at the end of this month, but I still remember it vividly. 

I had traveled through Europe with friends the year before.  We took turns prioritizing each day’s activities.  Whenever possible my choices involved visiting Michelangelo, long near the top of my panoply of heroes.  We saw his David, Moses, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, and, of course, The Pieta.  

“It is a miracle that a rock, which before was without form,” Giorgio Vasari wrote, “can take on such perfection that even nature sometimes struggles to create in the flesh.”  

Vasari was right.  It was awesome.

Michelangelo carved the Pieta from a single block of Carrara marble.  Such was his genius that he said he could see the sculpture imprisoned within the marble.  All he had to do was release it by chipping away the unnecessary pieces. 

I have remembered Toth’s attack through the years not only because I admire Michelangelo but also because it placed the cycle of creation and destruction in a context I had never considered before and have never since been able to forget.  

It was shocking to realize that one of the great masterpieces of the world – two-year’s work for a once-in-forever genius – could be destroyed in matter of moments by any mindless cretin so inclined.

Through the years that thought has stayed with me and morphed into a broader understanding of the nature of things.  I have come to understand how much easier it is to break than build, to take things apart than to put things together, to divide than unite.   As Toth first cemented into my consciousness, it’s easier to destroy than create.

Worse. It is not only is it easier.  It is inevitable. 

As the poet, W. B. Yeats, wrote, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” 

Physics calls it entropy – a decline into disorder.  According to the second law of thermodynamics entropy always increases with time.

The implications for our lives and the future of our country are inescapable.  Progress is not inevitable.  The barbarians are always at the gate. What was dearly won can easily be lost. 

The Renaissance of Michelangelo built on the traditions of ancient Greece, but there were decades of darkness before and after as the Renaissance devolved into the Age of the Inquisition.  

The five hundreds years since the Renaissance have not produced another Michelangelo or DaVinci, but they did produce a Washington and a Jefferson.  The essential elements of Ancient Greece and the Renaissance found fertile ground in this new land, fueling the thinking of our founding fathers – the closest thing to Renaissance Men the world has seen since that time.

This cycle of rebirth and regeneration is known as Negentropy.   Negentropy is the reverse entropy.   It means bringing into order – organization, structure and function – the opposite of randomness or chaos.

One example of negentropy is the Solar System.  Another example is life, which fundamentally is the ability to make something out of nothing.

As I consider what I can remember of my past, the world that was and the world that is, it’s hard not to believe that I have seen the best of America, a gift of our founding fathers fulfilled by the “greatest generation.”   

I am profoundly grateful for the life I have been given, but I fear for the future.  I can’t honestly say I believe my generation will be leaving the world a better place than we found it.  Many of us have tried.  Too many have not.

Too many have fallen to the temptations Ghandi identified as the seven deadly sins:  Wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principle.

Selfishness has over-ruled selflessness.  Indifference, ignorance and arrogance prevail.  Authorities and institutions are broadly questioned – particularly when that suits our personal point of view or convenience – and we have produced a new breed of human beings – fact-resistant homo sapiens, locked in to the silos of their beliefs, impenetrable to reason.  

The dissipation of our society is inescapable and it is likely to get worse before it gets better – if it ever does.  Ultimately, and always, it is up to us.  It’s our country.  It’s our world.  The future of our children is at stake.

As is so often the case, the answer is to respond with love.  Where there is love, there is always hope, there will always be life.

I have seen the best and worst of America.  I have lived the American Dream and grown up with a deep appreciation for the gift it is to be an American. 

My grandparents were among the 30 million people who immigrated to the United States during the first quarter of the last century.  My father was a coal miner with a sixth-grade education.

When I was thirteen, my Father told me he was dying.  He said he had been to the doctor for the annual physical required by his company, expecting nothing and feeling fine only to find out he had black lung.  The doctors told him he might have five years to live.

I remember it vividly even now, the pain I felt as the entire landscape of my father’s life suddenly came into view:  a man raised outdoors with a love of nature, forced underground away from the light by the depression, the immediate demands of feeding a family postponing then eliminating any hope he had of getting an education.  I remember pondering the ironic tragedy of a man who had never smoked so much as one cigarette in his life acquiring emphysema – a disease most commonly associated with heavy smokers.

“I’m telling you this not because I want to scare you,” he said, “but because you know how important education is to me.  It looks like I’m not going to be here to help you.  I want you to promise me that somehow you will find a way to do what I couldn’t do and finish your education.”

There was no choice, of course, no possible response other than, “I will.”  And so I made that solemn commitment with fear and trepidation, not knowing how I would be able to do what no one in my family had ever done before.

Through the grace of God and the abundant opportunities provided by this country, I was able to keep my promise.  I won a scholarship to George Washington University.  The day I graduated from high school I left the small mining community in southeastern Utah where I was raised for Washington, D.C. and never returned.

Instead, I began working at the United States Senate while I went to college and law school.  After school and a brief stint in the Army, I returned to the Senate where I became involved in Congressional Oversight.  For 15 years as an investigator, chief investigator, counsel, director of oversight, and, ultimately, staff director of a congressional committee, I turned over rocks for the Senate looking for the scum of the earth.

I found people posing as doctors who had never gone to medical school, dentists who drilled holes in healthy teeth to create cavities they could fill at public expense, nursing home owners who abused people they were supposed to care for, clinical laboratories who performed “sink tests” – literally pouring the medical samples they gathered down the drain or flushing them down the toilet to spare the expense of testing them properly –  and a host of other creative criminals. 

An activist by nature, I posed as a Medicaid patient for a year, visiting clinics across the country to test the quality of medical care provided to the poor.  I went undercover and carried a wire in a joint investigation with the U. S. Attorney in New York, chased crooks and corrupt politicians in Chicago, and danced with the Mafia more times than I care to recall. 

Along the way, I was taken for a ride by a wise-guy with a gun in a shoulder holster and threatened by high-priced lawyers.  I was offered bribes and “soft” company, had my home burglarized, my phone tapped, and my car torched. 

Nevertheless, I took pleasure in shining the light on the vultures that feed at public expense and take advantage of the taxpayer, the poor and disabled.  To this day, I still get some satisfaction in knowing that over the years we recovered millions of dollars, saved billions of dollars, and helped put a lot of bad guys out of business and in jail. 

But despite our success, I found myself getting increasingly sad and cynical.  The problems we “solved” kept recurring.  The scope of the crimes we were investigating kept growing.  The Hill was becoming increasingly partisan and dysfunctional.  I couldn’t help feeling we were winning a lot of battles but losing the war. 

Finally, I came to the conclusion that the “top down” remedies I had pursued in Congress did not work.  Long-term change, the only kind that can be sustained, always comes from the bottom up.  Such is the nature of a democracy.

With this in mind, I did a l80.  I decided to look for the best instead of the worst and began what I have since referred to as a magnificent odyssey, searching for the heart of America.  Taking a lead from Albert Schweitzer, who observed, “Example isn’t the best way to teach, it is the only way,” I began looking for people who represent the best of our society, the best instincts of man, and the best part of our selves. 

The people I write about in my books and blog emerged from this process.  If you follow my blog, you will note they come from all walks of life and all ages, representing a cross section of the richness and diversity of America.  While each of these individuals is remarkable in their own right, what is most remarkable is the collective testimony they offer to the enduring vitality of America’s core values.

Ever since September 11, 2001 and the war on terrorism, increasing attention has been focused on our values.  But these events only extend a need that has long been evident. 

Twelve years earlier in his farewell address, President Ronald Reagan expressed this concern in “the great tradition of warnings in Presidential farewells.”  At a time when he could have addressed many other issues, President Reagan chose to focus on the need for “an informed patriotism” in our country.

“Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America,” President Reagan said.  “We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American.  And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions.”

President Bill Clinton echoed Reagan’s concern.  “Beyond all else, our country is a set of convictions,” Clinton said in one of his last speeches before leaving office.  “We hold these truths to be self evident:  that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Our whole history can be seen first as an effort to preserve these rights and then as an effort to make them real in the lives of all of our citizens.”

President George W. Bush, Clinton’s successor in office, eloquently expressed the same beliefs in his Inaugural address, reminding us “America has been united across generations by grand and enduring ideals.”

The genius of America is that the core values that make our country great are the same values that define our success as individuals.  That is why America is always a work in progress.  America is becoming.  America is a promise.  America is an ideal to cherish and a dream to pursue.

What are these enduring ideals? 

What are America’s core values? 

What makes us successful as individuals and as a nation?

More than a decade ago, I wrote The Heart of America:  Ten Core Values that Make Our Country Great to try to answer these questions.  It was published by HCI, publisher of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.  It has just been reprinted by Amazon and is available in paperback or e-reader.

I went to church yesterday.

Normally…no big deal.  Nothing to write home about.

But this was something different.

I belong to one of Annapolis’ mega churches.  It’s a contemporary church with contemporary music.  It began in l987 with 25 people and has grown to include two campuses in Maryland – one in Annapolis and another on the Eastern Shore – with sister churches on five continents.

The membership is predominately white, middle-class, and middle aged.  Several thousand people attend one of the four services every weekend.

The church I attended yesterday was founded in l803 on land purchased by seven former slaves.  It is a couple of blocks from where we live, the oldest African American church in Annapolis, and one of the oldest in the state.  The congregation is small, old, and almost entirely black.

I went to the 11:00 AM service – the only service – and joined the 75 to 80 people there.   I came in with my head full of nonsense from the morning news:  Is Elizabeth Warren really a Native American?  Did she claim to be one for political purposes?   What’s up with the Governor, Attorney General, and Majority Leader in Virginia?  Is there anyone in Virginia politics who didn’t think it fun or funny to wear black face while in college?  How much does it all matter?

As the service began, I felt some peace and an immediate kinship.  I was struck by the spirit of the congregation and the warmth of the people.  That combination in the context of my morning musings forced a conclusion that has escaped me for a while.

I am African American.

…So are you.

I’m not running for office, so bear with me.

Years ago at Jane Goodall’s invitation, I participated in the National Geographic’s Genographic Project.  It was designed to use DNA analysis and cutting-edge technology to answer fundamental questions about where we originated and how our ancestors came to populate the Earth.

This study of genetic diversity allowed scientists to reconstruct a family tree of the human population.  There were a lot of interesting findings, but the largest was this compelling truth:  In a very real sense, everyone alive today is African.

In my case, the results show my ancestral trail began in North Africa.  About 60,000 years ago, those who were to be my direct ancestors moved north to the Mediterranean.  In the early 1900s, about a hundred years ago, one of them, my grandfather, arrived at Ellis Island from Greece.

As I sat there and considered the import of this information, I realized that the things that seemed to separate me from the rest of the congregation were distinctions without a difference.  The truth is we were separated only by generations, the distance and the direction from where we began to where were we are.

Theologians have long said that if we believe there is one God, if we believe He is the Father of us all, then no child of God can be said to be outside the pale of human kinship and no individual can be considered less human, fundamentally different, or apart.

Science now offers its confirmation.  In the words of Craig Venter, a pioneer of DNA sequencing and a leader of the National Geographic’s study, “The concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis.

Words of hate produce acts of hate.

Robert Bowers spewed hatred on social media for years before turning his rants into reality, storming into the Tree of Life Congregation Synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing eleven people and injuring seven more.  It was the largest and deadliest attack on American Jews in our nation’s history.

“I just wanted to kill Jews,” Bowers said.

In the aftermath, perhaps the most chilling observation came from one of his neighbors who said he was surprised because Bowers seemed like just a “normal guy.”

One of Cesar Sayoc’s employers went further.  He said Sayoc was “a nice guy”; yet his hated was clearly visible, posted on the van he lived in and the t-shirts he wore.

Sayoc sent pipe bombs to 14 people, frequently the target of hate speech, and threatened others on Facebook.  In the process, this “nice guy” earned the distinction of being the first person to ever attempt to assassinate two Presidents.

These events did not occur in a vacuum.  They are part of stream of events and the tenor of our times.  The daily news is full of vitriol.  Civility is lost.  In broadcast media – and too often in our personal lives – people don’t talk to each other any more. They talk at each other and over each other, discharging their opinions with as much velocity as possible.

Every day it’s something else. We are presented with disaster after disaster.  We cannot fully comprehend one before being presented with another.

Was it only last week that all we could talk about was Jamal Khashoggi?  Whatever happened to that?

Where are the children taken from their mothers at the border?   Were they ever re-united?

Is North Korea destroying its nuclear bombs or quietly building more?  Who knows?  Who do you believe?

It’s a symptom of the schism in our society.  The lines are drawn.  Instead of a wall on the border, walls have been built between us.  We could not be further apart.

“Diabolic” comes from a word meaning “to divide.”  Diabolic forces separate us from each other and God.  In our lives they find expression in ego, anger, pride, radical religions, nationalism, racism, envy, ignorance, and greed.  These are the forces of darkness.  They divide and conquer.

By contrast, “heaven” means “harmony.”  If demonic forces divide, love unites.

To date, the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the genius of America comes from Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic study, On Democracy in America.  His observations of the character of our society have stood the test of time and become the reference point for all subsequent analysis.

Asked to sum up his findings, de Tocqueville said, “America is great because America is good; America will cease to be great when it is no longer good.”

For de Tocqueville, religion was the “point of departure” for the entire American experience.  “It must never be forgotten that religion gave birth to Anglo-American society,” he said.  “In the United States, religion is therefore mingled with all the habits of the nation and all the feelings of patriotism, whence it derives a peculiar force.”

At about the same time, John Adams, our second President, made a similar observation.  “Our constitution was designed only for a moral and religious people,” Adam said. “It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”

How long will it take for us to learn what we have long been told and know in our hearts to be true?

My friend, Tim Love, sent me a reminder this morning, prompting this post. “Only God can reveal truth,” Tim said.  “God tells us this time and time again. God is love.”

The great and enduring challenge of humanity is to get beyond the superficial elements that divide us.  The only thing that separates us from God and each other is the belief that we are separate.

Hell is the alternative.

The word “hell” comes from the old English.  Literally, it means “to separate” or “to build a wall around.” To be “helled” was to be shut off.

There are days when it feels like that’s where we are. We have to decide if that is where we want to be.

“There is a new America every morning,” Adlai Stevenson said, “and that new America is the sum of many small changes.”

Every day, I am repeatedly reminded of this fact. This is not the country I grew up in.

I grew up in a time of hope and promise.   Flush with the allies’ victory in World War II, America was coming into its own.  We knew who we were, what we stood for, and who stood with us.

My youth was in an America where we knew our neighbors and didn’t see the need to lock our doors.  Strangers were welcome and everyone came together for the Fourth of July.  You were either in the parade or watching it…And sometimes both.

Walter Cronkite was the most trusted man in America.  He and his colleagues on ABC and NBC, the only other channels, told us the evening news.  They let the facts speak for themselves.  There were no pundits sitting next to them, spinning the events and trying to tell us what to believe.

There were political disagreements to be sure, but they stopped at the water’s edge.  We were united when it came to world affairs; confident in our allies and the institutions designed to protect the world order we had helped create.

The political parties were well defined.  You belonged to one party or the other, but there was broad agreement about where we were going as a society.  The only real question was how to get there.  The disagreements were about tactics not goals, the means not the end.

For the first half of my life, Republicans were closely aligned with the cause of civil rights.  They took their history seriously and the relished the responsibility that came with carrying Lincoln’s mantle.

In 1960, the year of Kennedy and Nixon, the Republican’s platform declared: This nation was created to give expression, validity and purpose to our spiritual heritage — the supreme worth of the individual.  In such a nation — a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal — racial discrimination has no place.

Meanwhile, Democrats struggled with their party’s internal contradictions on this issue and fought to find a unifying identity.  When Kennedy failed to submit a promised civil rights bill, three Republican Senators introduced one of their own.  They challenged Kennedy and forced him to deliver on his promise.

The promised legislation became The Civil Rights Act of 1964.  It is worth noting, it passed the House with support of only 61 percent of House Democrats.  Eighty percent of the Republicans supported it.

But that would soon change.  Passage of the Civil Rights Act fundamentally altered both parties.

When he signed the Civil Rights Act, Lyndon Johnson told his aide, Bill Moyers, “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.”

He was right.

Two months after passage of the Civil Rights Act, a key Democratic foe of civil rights, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, switched his party affiliation and began working to remake the Republican Party so that it could appeal to Southern white voters.  Thurmond – and the segregationists who followed him – developed the “Southern strategy” that transformed Republican politics.

Democrats reacted by becoming the party of everyone else.  To this day they claim there is room for everyone under their ‘big tent’, but a party that stands for everything too often stands for nothing.

It is beyond strange that time has somehow converted the Democrats into the more conservative party – dedicated to conserving social security, Medicare and other social advances over the last five decades – while the Republicans are behaving like the radical party bent on dismantling long-standing institutions of government and social reforms revolving around health care, poverty, women’s rights, and gender equality.

A democracy is, in Lincoln’s words, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  By and large, that no longer exists.

Our society is increasingly becoming a plutocracy – a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.  These are people with no fixed political persuasion.  They are opportunists who will support whoever supports them. Their singular motivation is the desire to preserve and increase their wealth.

Small wonder politicians as far apart as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump found common ground in railing against Wall Street in 2016.  Speaking to totally different constituencies, they both struck a responsive chord when they said the system is “rigged.”

This is the new America – fractious, hyper-partisan, increasingly isolationist, and self-serving.   It is an America where families often can’t talk together, neighbors don’t trust each other, strangers aren’t welcome, and fear prevails.

America has changed.  The one certainty is that it will change again.  The only uncertainty is degree and direction.

America is always a work in progress.  America is becoming.  America is a promise.  America is an ideal to cherish and a dream to pursue.

America began with a claim of responsibility and recognition – the declaration: “We the people.”  Every day, we must decide what we want America to be and act accordingly.

Nearly half of those eligible to vote in 2016 – over a hundred million people – didn’t vote.  As we approach the mid-term elections, we must be mindful that those who don’t vote let those who do decide for them.