Conscience and Compromise: Sermon by The Reverend David Weissbard, December 4, 2016
Preacher: Reverend David Weissbard
Conscience and Compromise
David R. Weissbard
First Universalist Society
Central Square NY
December 4, 2016
[the Children’s Story was Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes”]
The Reading
“I Hate Losing When We Win”
Jim Hightower
[The] “New Democrats” are an embarrassment to the party of Jefferson and Jackson, Roosevelt and Truman, JFK & LBJ. Instead of standing proudly on the egalitarian principles of the party and fighting passionately for America’s working-class majority, they cling to the moneyed elite and feebly attempt to govern as a bunch of Casper Milquetoasts skittering toward some mythical political “vital center” where they think they’ll be safe. On all things they seek to portray themselves as moderates, apparently believing that folks down at the Chat and Chew Café will see this as some big political plus: “Hey, Earline, I’m all pumped up about the Democrats being so moderate toward the global scumbags and scavengers who’re hauling every last one of our good jobs off to the Sultanate of Southeast Shish Kebob, aren’t you?” People want moderates about like a hungry family wants a lecture on diet. . . .
[In a piece called “Daddy’s Philosophy,” Hightower wrote:]
Have heart . for a change is coming. It’s coming because it must, just as it has had to come periodically in our history when economic elites have set themselves too far above the rest of us. “The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind,” proclaimed the preamble to the 1892 platform of the People’s Party, rallying the Populist movement to a historic reshaping of America’s political landscape. “We have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two great political parties for power and plunder,” the platform raged,. “while grievous wrongs have been inflicted upon the suffering people. We charge that the controlling influences dominating both these parties have permitted the existing dreadful conditions to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them. Neither do they now promise us any substantial reform. . . . They propose to sacrifice our homes, lives, and children on the altar of mammon; to destroy the multitude in order to secure corruption funds from the millionaires.”
No need to appoint a drafting committee to put forward the particulars of today’s populist manifesto – just [email] this one across the country.
The Sermon
[church and state]
I believe in the separation of church and state – it was part of the genius of the founders of this nation. The point of the principle is to keep religious establishments from dominating government and compelling agreement with their dogmas, AND, I would insist, it also functions to keep the religious institutions from being controlled by secular authorities: that is to say, it frees religious institutions to serve as critics of the political establishment. There are limits, which include respect for other religions, but I believe the Roman Catholic church, for example, should be free to advocate for its pro-life position, just as we should be free to advocate for pro-choice. Much of the positive change that has taken place in our society has been based in the religious communities. The principles which we articulate as Unitarian Universalists are not just Sunday ideas. They relate to the real world and I believe we have an obligation to stand for them when we have consensus. This morning’s sermon comes from that belief.
[adolescence]
Adolescents can be a delight. Psychologists tell us that the adolescent years are marked by a high level of idealism. [I’m not sure that is as true today as it used to be – I’m afraid they’ve been paying too much attention to our actions instead of our words.] We have drilled our children with the ideals of our nation and religions, hopefully teaching them right from wrong, teaching them that all are created equal, teaching them that ours is a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Their naivete has been charming and has sometimes been the source of hope for us all.
Adolescents can drive you crazy. Their naive idealism can make us feel guilty, and we do not like to feel guilty. We often break down and tell them to “Grow up.” Growing up, in our culture, too often means coming to understand that ideals are fine and good in church on Sunday, but they have little place in the workaday world of adults. To be mature means to learn to compromise. On the one hand we have the ideals we think we would like to see practiced; on the other hand we have the real world. In the real world, “Good guys finish last.” If you really want five bedrooms, an SUV (or two), a large screen tv with a satellite hookup – the truly fine things in life, some would say you need to learn to put ideals in their place – church.
What happened to the “flower children” of the sixties who warned us never to trust anyone over 30? They aged and, by their former standards, “sold out.” The pressure of the society-at-large proved insurmountable. It seems as if the ones who remained pure are either being maintained on drugs – prescription or otherwise – or they are living on the irrelevant fringe of society.
[hypocrisy and antihypocrisy]
It is easy to be overly simplistic about this. In her fascinating little book on Hypocrisy and Integrity, Ruth Grant pointed out that:
It is a fairly straightforward matter to condemn . . . hypocrisy. But is hypocrisy always such a bad thing? Consideration of the antihypocrite as the alternative certainly gives one reason to wonder. The antihypocrite is also a classic type. Inflexible in his righteousness and unwilling to countenance any moral lapse, he scarcely recognizes the necessity for compromise. Too often the costs of his efforts to sustain his own purity are borne by others, and hence he ought not to be trusted . . .
It is possible, after all, to be too good. This intuition feeds our suspicion of antihypocrites who appear in the form of political ideologues and religious zealots. The intuition is supported by psychologists who see moral rigidity as indicative of a personality imbalance, usually as evidence of an overweening superego.
Grant went on to suggest that:
Hypocrisy and antihypocrisy, cynicism and sanctimonious righteousness are not the only possibilities. The alternative we seek is integrity, keeping in mind that integrity may take a variety of forms. The person of integrity is one who can be trusted to do the right thing, even at some cost to himself. “Doing the right thing” may require compromise; some compromises are certainly possible without compromising oneself.
[compromise: the up-side]
The fundamental argument of Grant’s book is that compromise is essential in the political process because politics force us to deal with conflicting perspectives and claims. Martin Benjamin, in a similar book, Splitting the Difference: Compromise and Integrity in Ethics and Politics, made the same point.
Although history books may honor a politician like Henry Clay as “the great compromiser,” our moral exemplars are usually men and women who have been steadfast in resisting pressures or temptations to compromise. Socrates, Sir Thomas More, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the like are admired not only for the nature of their convictions but also for their refusal to compromise them.
Benjamin asserted:
Even if we disagree with one or more of a person’s basic principles, we often think more of her if she conscientiously tries to act in accord with them than if she is too willing to compromise them. Indeed, if she is always prepared to compromise, we may question whether she has any principles at all.
We used to think it was naive to think we would be well served by any politician who was unwilling to compromise. Not only would such a person be unelectable, and not only would such a person be unproductive if elected, but such a candidate would probably turn out to be a tyrant, unable to see that he or she did not have all the answers in every situation.
Benjamin insisted:
A political system of government is one that, first, acknowledges interpersonal and group conflict as an ineliminable feature of social life, and second, regards negotiation, compromise, and conciliation as preferable to force or violence as a means of ameliorating such conflict.
Benjamin had a wonderful line that we dare not ignore:
Requiring the impossible of our politicians – – that they retain the highest degree of ideological or philosophical purity while fulfilling their political roles- is to create a vacuum in our politics that cheerfully will be filled by the incompetent and the unscrupulous.
[times have changed]
Actually, times have changed. My sermon, to this point, is taken from the only one I ever wished I could take back. It is from sixteen years ago and it was delivered before the Gore/Bush election. I went on to suggest that while there were differences between them, those differences were less than the differences between them and Ralph Nader. According to the internet, I was in 78% agreement with Gore, 14% agreement with Bush, but 91% in agreement with Ralph Nader. In that sermon I expressed the dilemma I felt. Should I be practical or should I vote my conscience? I ultimately voted for Gore, but Bush won and proved worse than I had imagined he would be. The “compassionate conservative” proved to be less compassio9nate and more conservative than I anticipated There are people who have never forgiven Ralph Nader, the green party candidate for robbing Gore of his victory, but I have never agreed with them. I believe Gore ran a terrible campaign and the election should never have been close enough for Nader’s support to matter. And, of course, it was the Republican majority of the Supreme Court and not the voters who ultimately decided the election anyhow.
What no one could have anticipated back then was the rise of the Tea Party and the emergence of politicians to whom compromise was a truly dirty word – an unthinkable practice. Yes they could get elected, and they were. I still cannot imagine a meeting on the night of a Presidential Inauguration at which the opposition party declares it commitment to defeat anything and everything the new president supports. It was decided that even bills proposed by Republicans must be defeated if the President supported them. I believe that qualifies as treason, but that’s how it’s been for the last eight years. And the candidate who has been stonewalled has, in spite of the rhetoric, not been all that liberal. The wealth which has been increased has almost all been in the pockets of the 1%. The stock market has hit historic highs. The pharmaceutical and insurance industries have done very well under the so-called Obamacare. This is not socialism. We continue to wreak havoc in Middle Eastern countries in the name of regime change. That “hopey-changey thing” did not pan out as promised, and it was not only the stonewalling by the Republican congress – there has been no real struggle from the left.
[the 2016 campaign]
We have just been through an incredible presidential campaign, the like of which I hope is never repeated. Two candidates who were both heavily unpopular, fought against each other. We know that all the “experts” were clear who was going to win, and all of them ended up with egg on their faces.
The President-elect claims to have won in a landslide. That is simply not true, just as so much of what he has said is not true. In fact, his anticipated 56.88 percent of the vote of the electoral college ranks 46th out of the result of 58 presidential elections. Hardly a landslide. The more than 2.5 million popular vote his opponent received is a record for an unsuccessful candidate. [The illegal voters are a figment of his imagination.]
There are all kinds of excuses offered for the outcome: misogyny, fear of foreigners, intervention by the FBI Director, the votes that went to a third party candidate, antipathy toward the candidate’s family name, oh, there’s a long list. My belief is more fundamental than that. Actually, it goes back, coincidentally, to the candidate’s spouse and how the Democratic Party has been transformed .
[Arkansas]
To understand this, it might be instructive to look closer at an example of political compromise.
In 1979, the People of Arkansas elected a brilliant, charismatic young Liberal Democrat to be their governor. He made it clear that he was committed to liberal principles and he would not sell the people out for the sake of the big corporations that had had what he saw as excessive political influence in his state. The corporative leaders tried to warn him, but he would not listen. He was driven from office in a humiliating reelection defeat in 1981. He learned about compromise the hard way, going from corporation to corporation, hat in hand. He painfully accumulated what some called political wisdom. The corporations could see potential – the boy was just naive. Having learned his lesson, he was reelected in 1983 as a “New Democrat,” which is to say, a Democrat who looked and acted a lot like a Republican.
Jim Hightower commented on how it feels to lose when you thought you’d won. Hightower is not a naive idealist. He says, in a piece he called “Advice”:
Now don’t be clucking your tongue and lecturing on how politics is the “art of compromise.” Sure it is – compromise is essential to democracy and all that. But one doesn’t come out of the chute compromising: ride that bucking, twisting bull for all you are worth first! Reach your compromises honestly, after you’ve given it your best shot.
It was in the earliest days of Bill Clinton’s first term as POTUS that the nature of the Presidency to come became clear. The brevity of his advocacy of acceptance of homosexuals in the military, and his quick betrayal of Lani Guinier, who had the potential of being an exceptional Attorney General, set the tone for the substance of the Clinton Presidency right off the bat. There never was much “there” there. While some point to the Republican Congress as the cause of Clinton’s failure to deliver, I am among those who believe the truth is that Bill Clinton, as President, was so committed to compromise, had learned his lesson so well, had so thoroughly sold his soul, that he was afraid to offer leadership, to fight for his former principles. And the Democratic Party followed suit to the point where it no longer stood for its former principles. The people who had supported it felt betrayed
I have not sought a pure idealist for President of the United States. I respect the political process and I know it demands an ability to compromise. I believe, however, that the ability to compromise requires that one have a commitment that serves as a base.
[candidates?]
Jim Hightower’s book, If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates, was published in 2000, but it certainly applied this year. In it he said:
Even before the voting starts, the election is over. OK, still up for grabs is which personality will get to sit in the big chair with the Presidential Seal on it, and which party will have a congressional majority. But already decided is the basic issue of whom government will serve, with the status quo assured on middle-class job loss, trade scams, environmental gradualism, mergers, corporate welfare, biotech insanity, campaign-finance corruption, and the other policies that most effect Americans at the kitchen-table level . ..
. . . The candidates’ views on all kitchen-table issues have been pre-tailored to get the money –a tailoring that lacks much subtlety, essentially coming down to this obsequious pledge:”I [name of candidate] will put your financial interests above all others, I will do nothing without clearing it with you first.” It’s a pledge that’s also expressed more colloquially as “You da Man!”
The famous words of Henry Ford keep haunting me: “People can have the Model T in any color – so long as it’s black.” We can have any President we want, so long as he [or she] is more committed to the Dow Jones average than to social justice.
Orwell’s 1984 has always troubled me because while it is easy to see how the people in his novel were manipulated, it is not so easy to know when it is happening to you.
[Norman Thomas: throwaway votes?]
Miss Lulu Charles was one of my high school history teachers. I thought she was pretty conservative, but in retrospect, I wonder. I remember her stressing the impact of the socialist Norman Thomas, a third party candidate for President, on the platforms of the Democratic Party. I remember our having to list Thomas’ central planks and then checking to see how many of them ultimately became policy. Oh, Democrats were warned that a vote for Thomas was a vote for various Republicans over the years – 1928, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944, 1948 – but Thomas kept on keeping on. And it made a difference in the long run! Many of his radical ideas became policy
Participation of Americans in the electoral process continues to decline. Many analysts believe it is because, while there are differences in platforms, people increasingly believe that their vote does not really change the outcome in any substantive way.
What does a vote mean? Does it mean, “This is a candidate whom I believe will make a significant difference in the political spectrum,” or is it, “I will choose A as the lesser evil?” At what point is it appropriate to stand up for the values in which you believe, and at what point does compromise become the rational choice?
How radical would it be to decide which candidate actually represents what you believe, and then make your vote a vote of conscience rather than expedience?
I have become a Facebook friend with my wife, Karen’s, first husband, Peter Byrne, a brilliant investigative journalist who is about to receive a major national award for science writing. Peter was on my case throughout the campaign, insisting that I should vote my conscience and not vote for Secretary Clinton.
[whose fault?]
I confess I never felt comfortable with Secretary Clinton as a candidate for president. It had almost nothing to do with emails, certainly not Benghazi, nor her health or gender. It had to do with her penchant for secrecy, her support for a hawkish foreign policy which further destabilized the Middle East, her list of foreign policy advisers was almost all villains from the Bush era, her support of the military dictatorship in Honduras, her close alliance with Wall Street, and her role in trade treaties. Indeed, she did end up verbally supporting many of the policies advocated by Bernie Sanders, who I believe would have been a far more successful candidate, but that seemed like expediency, not principle. Mrs. Clinton never attracted the massive crowds Sanders did, which rivaled Trump’s. The enthusiasm for Sanders was non-transferable. While her election was accepted by many as inevitable, it obviously was not. Lots of Democrats stayed home because their support of her was, at best, lukewarm.
I believe that the election of Mr. Trump, which I begrudgingly assume will survive the recounts, was partly due to many things which I find abhorrent, but I believe that many good people voted for him because he did appear to represent a rejection of the status quo. He was the ultimate outsider and Secretary Clinton represented the unpalatable status quo. The wealth of the white men he has thus far proposed for his cabinet exceeds anything in American history. He is not proposing to clear out the swamp as he promised: he is institutionalizing it. The end of the campaign has not seen his attachment to the truth increase. He continues to deny having said things that are readily visible on videotape. His claims about his election landslide reinforce the belief that he is not attached to reality. His previously unheardof disinterest in security briefings is, to say the least, troubling: he seems not to want to know what he does not know. His ignorance of the Constitution and disregard of law is frightening. [He seems to know as little of the Constitution as of the Bible.] But, as far as we know, he is going to be the president for the next four years. [I do have this fantasy that he will pull a Sarah Palen and decide to resign, but I can’t imagine his ego permitting it. I have grave doubt that he wanted to win, but that’s beside the point: he apparently did.
[what now?]
Actually, the purpose of this sermon is to ask the question, “What now?”
I hear some Democrats advocating that we do to President Trump what the Republicans did to President Obama: disrespect him and do everything possible to block anything he tries to accomplish. I cannot support that view. If it was wrong when they did it, and I believe it was, then it would be equally wrong for us to do it. I believe, in the words of Walt Kelly, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Nothing good can come out of our blaming ignorance or a “basket of deplorables” for Clinton’s loss. I am not suggesting they were not a factor. We have seen the video of the Nazi salute and the “Hail Trump” that came from a neo-Nazi gathering in Washington. There have been a reported 837 reported hate events since the election and contrary to what some would have us believe, 23 of them were aimed to Trump supporters. 23! There are deplorables out there and they need to be confronted, but not everyone who voted for “the Donald” is a deplorable. We need to discern the difference.
My sermon about the rise of Adolph Hitler last month was not without basis. Yes, we have a constitution and a long tradition that would make it hard for a dictator to take control – certainly harder than it was in Germany – but what about the president-elect’s talk of taking away the citizenship of those who use the flag to express dissent in spite of the ruling by the Supreme Court, including Antonin Scalia, that flag burning is protected speech? What about the announcement that prosecution of Clinton would not be pursued, and then, when her supporters endorsed re-examination of the voting in some swing states, the President-elect’s seeming hedging about how maybe others in his cabinet could pursue prosecution? What about his comments on limiting the freedom of the press to criticize the president? We could, indeed, have a rocky time ahead of us. It is in trying times that our principles become most important. What do we really stand for?
[four essential posts]
The Rev. Phillip Lund, a congregational life consultant working for the MidAmerica Region of the Unitarian Universalist Association, was a ministerial intern at the Rockford Church. Phil specializes in “Congregation-based Spiritual Direction.” This week, Phil actually did research which contributed significantly to answering the question I was asking. He posted a four-part blog for religious progressives on responding to the election
[https://uurevphil.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/4-essential-posts-for-religious-progressives-part-one/]
In the first he cited the writing of Rabbi Eric Yoffie who declares that “Now is Liberal Religion’s Moment.” The rabbi declares, “America is in peril and we must take the lead in saving it, preaching a message of justice and compassion.” He urges us to:
“take on” politicians who “peddle divisive anti-Muslim bigotry;
insist on access to healthcare for all;
provide support to immigrants;, and
strengthen the ritual and liturgical elements of our congregation’s religious life.”
Phil’s second blog centers on Jim Wallis, the Evangelical Christian minister who is socially progressive as editor of Sojourner’s Magazine. Wallis provided a lists of ten commitments to the readers of Sojourners:
We will go deeper in faith.
We will lift up truth.
We will reject White Nationalism.
We will love our neighbors by protecting them from hate speech and attacks.
We will welcome the stranger, as our Scriptures instruct.
We will expose and oppose racial profiling in policing.
We will defend religious liberty.
We will work to end the misogyny that enables rape culture.
We will protest with our best values.
We will listen.
Phil suggests that we might modify that lists into a UU context, such as:
. . . rather than “We will welcome the stranger, as our Scriptures instruct,” we might say, “We will welcome you no matter who you are, whom you love, or where you are on your journey.”
Or rather than “We will go deeper into faith,” we might say, “We will grapple with the big questions and learn how to live our values each day.”
Phil’s third blog in the series centered on a list of “20 Lessons from the 20th Century on How to Survive in Trump’s America” developed by Yale history professor Timothy Snyder. [I do not expect that you will remember all twenty lessons – just listen to the flow. You can get the list either from this congregation’s website, or, better, directly from Phil Lund’s blog]
1.. Do not obey in advance.
Defend an institution.
Recall professional ethics.
When listening to politicians, distinguish certain words.
Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.
Be kind to our language.
Stand out.
Believe in truth.
Investigate.
Practice corporeal politics.
Make eye contact and small talk.
Take responsibility for the face of the world.
Hinder the one-party state.
Give regularly to good causes, if you can.
Establish a private life.
Learn from others in other countries.
Watch out for the paramilitaries.
Be reflective if you must be armed.
Be as courageous as you can.
Be a patriot.
Practicing “corporeal politics” in Snyder’s eyes means “Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them. Phil says, “It’s what we do. Show up!”
Phil’s fourth blog quotes The Rev. Jacqui Lewis, minister of Riverside Church in New York City who stresses the importance of having “real, loving, care-frontational [care-frontational, not confrontational] table talks with people who voted differently from you. She offered four questions to guide those conversations:
Why did you vote the way you voted?
What were you hoping your vote would accomplish?
How are you feeling right now?
Is there anything we can do together?
The central point here is that, if we claim to respect the worth and dignity of every person, as we do, we need to look for the commonality between us and those who voted differently. We may not ultimately agree, but we need to understand each other better if we have any hope of improving the world. Respectful conversation is a start. It requires listening – really listening to one another.
I found time contemplating Phil’s “essential posts” to be very helpful and encourage you to do the same.
[the Emporer]
It was not just a coincidence that I chose Anderson’s story of the “Emperor’s New Clothes” for the children. It, in fact, summarizes what I believe we need to be willing to do in this challenging time. I believe that story points to our most central responsibility as citizens: to be willing to stand up and speak the truth as we see it. We will not always be right, but there are times when we need to take the risk of speaking out and declaring, “The Emperor is bare!” It does not need to be abrasively confrontational or rooted in our conviction [or the fantasy] of our intellectual or moral superiority. But we must be willing not to fall into “going along to get along.” Integrity and respect for others ultimately means being willing to risk honesty. And part of our function as a religious community is being willing to support one another in the taking of that risk.