allow me to set the context in which I offer this.
It is Dec 16. That makes it the anniversary of several things —
in 1770 the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven in Bonn — I am spending much of the day listening to favorite works (currently the 7th Symphony)
in 1773 of the Boston Tea Party
in 1965 of my friend Mary Beth Tinker and others of protesting the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands with the Peace sign on them — this action led to the notable Supreme Court case, Tinker v Des Moines, which established that students have First Amendment rights in schools.
I have been rereading some old pieces I have written, here and elsewhere.
And in the process encountered this piece, written in response to watching part of a Rachel Maddow show.
What I offer below the fold is what I offered below the fold then — some thoughts on morality in politics.
I offer them again because now, more than 6 ½ years later, I find they are still relevant. And perhaps also to remind myself that my efforts here have some meaning and value.
Make of them what you will.
Peace.
It is not moral that people read Scripture selectively to justify their greed and selfishness and ignore words from Jesus that in many Bibles appear in red, for example, that what you do to these the least of my brethren you do also unto me.
It is not moral to scorn and belittle others who may be different than you are in race, religion, politics, income, "beauty" or any other dimension, especially if you claim to be a Christian, when Jesus asked how you could claim to love God whom you could not see when you hate your brother who is visible before you.
It is not moral to judge others by a standard you are unwilling to apply to yourself.
It is not moral to deceive people to obtain their votes, to distract them from truth.
It is not moral to lie a nation into war.
It is not moral to treat another human being as less than you because of race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, income or any other category.
It is not moral to willingly or even deliberately bankrupt a company in order to gain more profits for yourself, while the people who worked in that company and the communities in which they live are devastated.
It is not moral to claim to be "moral" and to criticize your opponents who may have honest disagreements as "immoral."
It is not moral to seek political power by dividing the people, causing them to turn on others rather than seeking to bring us together for common purpose - we are and must be one nation, one people.
It is not moral to be willing to destroy the economies of other nations in order to enrich people in ours, because it is not moral to say that Americans are more worthy than people in other nations who may have little or no choice in the form and leadership of their nations.
I do not consider myself a Christian. Yet from my years in Christianity as well as those in Judaism I am well aware of the cautions of great figures of both religions against those who would claim to be moral yet whose actions contradicted those claims. Since most who make moral claims in their political advocacy claim to be Christians perhaps they should remember the story about Jesus telling the crowd that one who was himself without sin should cast the first stone, then no one threw anything. For those who might be willing to be hostile to those not born in this country, who look different, who may have entered illegally, the commands of the Hebrew God to the Jewish people not to be harsh towards the sojourners in their land because they themselves had been sojourners in the land of Egypt.
One need not have a religious basis to be moral. One can perhaps take the command to physicians from the Hippocratic oath to First Do No Harm. The Golden Rule exists in many forms, from that of Hillel not to do unto others as you would not want done unto you. The idea of reciprocity exists in many cultures. We can also read it as a categorical imperative as posited by Kant, that our actions should be such that we are willing to see them universally applied.
It saddens me that many who claim a mantle of moral superiority in their political pronouncements and actions seem so lacking in true morality.
At least for me, true morality requires one to recognize the full humanity of every other human being, and to treat her or him accordingly.
Insofar as our politics fails to meet such a standard, it is to my mind immoral.