Growing up, I felt caught between two political forces. My parents, although working class people, were staunch Republicans. As a child, I remember my mother snarling when President Truman came on the radio. I also remember her saying, when I was older, that FDR didn’t really die of a stroke in Warm Springs, Georgia.
“He killed himself because he knew what a mess he had made of things,” she proclaimed!
In high school I was impressed by William Buckley’s book, Up From Liberalism (1959). I found his conservatism very logical and rational and I wrote him a letter (when I was sixteen) suggesting that he use simpler language in his books so his ideas could reach a wider audience. His sister wrote me a nice thank you note.
Meanwhile, my educational experience in my midwestern Catholic ghetto was sending me a different message beginning in high school. A bevy of young priest-teachers were excited about social justice and the growing efforts of the Catholic church to “open a few windows” and let some fresh air in—according to Pope John XXII when he announced the Second Vatican Council in 1959.
These teachers were unimpressed with my Republican leanings, and one priest told me so, in no uncertain terms, in an American History class during my sophomore year in college.
Actually, by that time, I was already rejecting my mother’s political views. She voted for Goldwater in 1964 and was very upset when I told her that I did not. It was my first election and by then, political liberalism appeared to be the best option for the person I wanted to be.
The tension between rationalism and compassion, if you will, had pushed me, without my full realization at the time, into the middle of the political spectrum, which to me at age 20, seemed to be found right in the center of the Democratic Party, the home of compassionate liberalism. At that point I was (and still am–sorta) searching for Truth, with a capital T, even though I no longer expect to find it.
Nevertheless, I then also had the notion that Truth, like virtue, was likely found in the middle, not in the extremes. This might be a legacy of my early years in a conservative Catholic family. When I learned the Latin phrase Virus stat in medio (virtue stands in the middle) in high school, the idea never really left me—and it carried with it, at some deep level, the idea that balance and moderation were necessary for success in life.
So now, what am I to do as an aging and paradoxically romantic-rationalist in 2020, in a world turned upside down by climate crisis, Covid-19, racism and Corruption?
It is becoming clear that neither Truth (Ultimate or Divine) or truth (relative) lie in the middle any longer, if the middle has more to do with morality than with what we call the norm.
It is time for us to bite the bullet, take the bull by the horns, and fish or cut bait, to cite just a few clichés.
Rationalism (the way things are in a perfect world) and compassion (a virtue we need in our imperfect one), not to mention the very idea of a democratic republic in the USA, can no longer be taken for granted at this time in our history. As a professional historian and longtime teacher of a course in “World Civilizations,” I have studied and examined the fall of many societies, civilizations, and empires. People, we are on the verge of such a collapse in our country today.
There are still, however, a few steps we can take to save ourselves and our country. First, we must get rid of the current Trump administration, and do so decisively in November. Second, we need to support the new administration in restructuring our economic, social, and political life in a way that combines common sense and compassion for all those in our diverse nation.
And finally (or along with the above) it sure would help if we could rediscover the moral compass that we seemed to have mislaid—due to no one and everyone’s fault—about sixty or so years ago.