Some Voices From America

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Some quotes to note, all of which happened in one week:

“Barack Obama is the worst president in history.”

(Ben Quayle, son of the former vice president; another politician willing to say anything some people want to hear in order to get elected, and claiming history for validation while his words demonstrate he has no idea about history. President Warren Harding, anyone?)

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“I want to be able to say what’s on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful.”

(Laura Schlessinger, radio commentator, electing to quit her show the end of this year after she used the word “nigger” 11 times during a recent call. It would appear that she was able to say exactly what she wanted, no matter how distasteful. So why is she complaining? Perhaps because free speech does not mean freedom from accountability to others for what we say?)

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“Islam is a religion of hatred, it’s a religion of war.”

(Franklin Graham, evangelist; a preacher who has obviously never read the Qur’an and has selective memory about history’s Christian warriors and conquerors, and then – incomprehensibly to many of us – he complains because he was not invited to a Pentagon-sponsored military interfaith prayer service.)

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“Nazis don’t have a right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington.”

(Newt Gingrich, a presidential-wanna-be who is also willing to say whatever his constituency wants to hear, regarding the proposed Muslim community center nearby the 9-11 Twin Towers site; no, Newt, the Nazi analogy works only if al-Qaeda was trying to put up a sign of some kind, not Muslims; for everyday Germans to build a memorial to Jewish holocaust victims could potentially be appropriate and healing indeed.)

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“Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here…”

(Michael Bloomburg, Mayor of New York City, on the proposal to build the Muslim center and the ensuing outcry that has arisen.)

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“I prefer blueberry.”

(Senator Carl Levin, good-naturedly responding to a woman who hit him in the face with an apple pie over a disagreement on foreign policy; is this how some think we should now conduct our political disagreements?)

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“These are very tough times for America with many of our people hurting, there is no doubt about it. But we will dig our way out of it once again, just as we always have – IF people would just stop yelling at each other for 30 minutes.”

(Garrison Keillor, Prairie Home Companion host, at a recent concert.)

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So much anger, so much hatred in our public conversation today. Yet still some voices of calm reason striving to be heard. Regardless of our philosophical differences, whose voices should we be listening to these days? The voices of anger, division and self-serving interests? Or the voices of inclusion, good will towards others, and the serving of the pubic interests?

In the election upcoming this fall, perhaps we should have less concerns about what a particular politician says, or claims to think, or his/her governmental / economic philosophies. Perhaps instead we might spend more time thinking about what we believe inside ourselves – about our own character and beliefs, about fairness towards all, about listening and speaking respectfully to our differences. Negative speech inevitably leads to negative outcomes. In the difficult times in which we now live, we need to speak and act towards positive outcomes, appealing not to the worst in us, but to the best in us. Positively.