That's the real difference between them and us. We're logos, they are mythos. We believe in social justice; they believe in Jesus. We believe in economic fairness; they believe in the Invisible Hand. We want to convince them; they want to burn us at the stake. And I must ask my fellow lefties, as a brother-in-arms who wishes them well: If you were an impartial observer, which side would you bet on?
Personally, I'd bet on the mythos people every time. We ourselves have had our best moments as mythos people--we never bettered the moment in which Rev. King thundered out his Sermon on the Reflecting Pool. President Clinton said a few years ago that politics shouldn't be about who is good or bad, but about who's right and who is wrong. He erred.
So where are the holy warriors of the left? Where are our fervid fundamentalists? We need them. The other side has them by the score. Where is our Dr. King? Where is our candidate of easy religiosity who will throw the Sermon on the Mount into the opposition's teeth?
I should confess at this point that I am a nonbeliever, myself. With Lord Russell, I am convinced that religion at best is harmless, and at worst does immeasurable harm. I believe that schools and legislatures ought to begin each day with the singing of "Imagine." And frankly, I believe that Karl Marx was correct in his analogy.
But I am not so foolish as to think such beliefs have any chance of finding a political home in this country. If even William O. Douglas can descant on how religious a people we are, and upon how our institutions presuppose the existence of God, then I am whistling past the churchyard. If we want things to go our way, we need the right preacher.
We haven't found one. Not since Martin Luther King.
Oh, there were the Berrigans (if you're old enough, like me, to remember them). Most notably, there might have been Bill Clinton. That man knows his Bible and he knows how to use it. He just never did.
And on the other side?
Look over the horizon, and see their massed Crucifix banners and hear their hymns and shouts of glory. Everything they say or do is deeply rooted in some sort of mystic mumbo-jumbo. Their horrific Invisible Hand--the mystic image of their faith in the moral goodness of the self-correcting free market--is an idol, a bloodthirsty totem that demands, and gets, its human sacrifice in the form of the dead and the sick--people by the thousands who would rather sacrifice their sons to the whims of an insurance company than commit the blasphemy of supporting a Public Option. (God was not so cruel. He let Abraham off the hook.)
Against that sort of mythos, what are our charts and our graphs and our statistics?
Against such religious fervor, what is mere argument?
In short, how can we ever hope to win, except by a greater mythos still?
*
We did have it, once. Dr. King had it. Against that force, the forces of evil crumbled. No wonder we all secretly treasure that shining moment in our hearts. It is a wish, really, that we could have such a prophet again.
I don't pray. I think it is a silly gesture, myself.
But after all, even a nonbeliever can have faith.