“Heroes, Heroines, Saints, & Exemplars”
Preacher: Reverend David Weissbard
“Heroes, Heroines, Saints, & Exemplars”
David R. Weissbard
First Universalist Society
Central Square, NY
October 2, 2016
The READING
“HARRISON BERGERON”
by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213 th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel’s cheeks, but she’d forgotten for the moment what they were about.
On the television screen were ballerinas.
A buzzer sounded in George’s head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.
“That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did,” said Hazel.
“Huh” said George.
“That dance-it was nice,” said Hazel.
“Yup, ” said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren’t really very good-no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. But he didn’t get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts .
George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.
Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask George what the latest sound had been. “Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer, ” said George .
“I’d think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds,” said Hazel a little envious. “All the things they think up.”
“Um, ” said George.
“Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?” said Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. “If I was Diana Moon Glampers,” said Hazel, “I’d have chimes on Sunday- just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion . ”
“I could think, if it was just chimes,” said George.
“Well-maybe make ’em real loud,” said Hazel. “I think I’d make a good Handicapper General.”
“Good as anybody else,” said George.
“Who knows better then I do what normal is?” said Hazel.
“Right,” said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that.
“Boy!” said Hazel, “that was a doozy, wasn’t it?”
It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling, and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples.
“All of a sudden you look so tired,” said Hazel. “Why don’t you stretch out on the sofa, so’s you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch.” She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag, which was padlocked around George’s neck. “Go on and rest the bag for a little while,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re not equal to me for a while . ”
George weighed the bag with his hands. “I don’t mind it,” he said. “I don’t notice it any more. It’s just a part of me.”
“You been so tired lately-kind of wore out,” said Hazel. “If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few.”
“Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out,” said George. “I don’t call that a bargain.”
“If you could just take a few out when you came home from work,” said Hazel. “I mean-you don’t compete with anybody around here. You just set around.”
“If I tried to get away with it,” said George, “then other people ‘ d get away with it-and pretty soon we’d be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”
“I’d hate it,” said Hazel.
“There you are,” said George. The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?”
If Hazel hadn’t been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn’t have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.
“Reckon it’d fall all apart,” said Hazel.
“What would?” said George blankly.
“Society,” said Hazel uncertainly. “Wasn’t that what you just said?
“Who knows?” said George.
The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn’t clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, “Ladies and Gentlemen.” He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.
“That’s all right-” Hazel said of the announcer, “he tried. That’s the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard.”
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred pound men.
And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. “Excuse me-” she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive .
“Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen,” she said in a grackle squawk, “has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous.”
A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen-upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall. The rest of Harrison’s appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever born heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.
Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds .
And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.
“If you see this boy, ” said the ballerina, “do not – I repeat, do not – try to reason with him.”
There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.
Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.
George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have – for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. “My God-” said George, “that must be Harrison!”
The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.
When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.
Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood – in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.
“I am the Emperor!” cried Harrison. “Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!” He stamped his foot and the studio shook.
“Even as I stand here” he bellowed, “crippled, hobbled, sickened – I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become ! ”
Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds. Harrison’s scrap-iron handicaps crashed to the floor. Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.
He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder. “I shall now select my Empress!” he said, looking down on the cowering people. “Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!” A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.
Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all he removed her mask. She was blindingly beautiful.
“Now-” said Harrison, taking her hand, “shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!” he commanded. The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. “Play your best,” he told them, “and I’ll make you barons and dukes and earls.”
The music began. It was normal at first-cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs. The music began again and was much improved.
Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while-listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it. They shifted their weights to their toes.
Harrison placed his big hands on the girls tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers. And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang! Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well. They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun. They leaped like deer on the moon.
The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it. It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling. They kissed it. And then, neutraling gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time .
It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor. Diana Moon Clampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.
It was then that the Bergerons’ television tube burned out.
Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer. George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. “You been crying” he said to Hazel.
“Yup, ” she said.
“What about?” he said.
“I forget,” she said. “Something real sad on television.”
“What was it?” he said.
“It’s all kind of mixed up in my mind,” said Hazel.
“Forget sad things,” said George.
“I always do,” said Hazel.
“That’s my girl,” said George. He winced. There was the sound of a riveting gun in his head.
“Gee – I could tell that one was a doozy, ” said Hazel.
“You can say that again,” said George.
“Gee -” said Hazel, “I could tell that one was a doozy.”
THE SERMON
[origins of this sermon]
This sermon originated in a conversation about the standards we apply to our heroes when the name of a school named for George Washington was being changed because his slave-holding was considered sufficient grounds to deny him honor. What is the nature of our time that we do this? One party to the discussion suggested that it is to common people and everyday courage that we should turn for our heroes. It was clear that this was sermon fodder.
Last Sunday, I was invited to preach to my former congregation in Rockford, Illinois. I got to remembering the time during the Clinton presidency when I was asked to be on a radio talk show to discuss the controversy over the allegation of the President’s sexual misbehavior, which is, of course, being raised again all these decades later. The host had taken the position in a newspaper column, that the nations of the world were looking down on America because of our President’s immorality. All the evidence I saw was that most of the world couldn’t figure out what it is we were so worked up about. There is a kind of Puritanical moralism in this country that is unbecoming to us. It is, of course, inconsistently applied as the candidate who is raising it today hardly has a record of purity.
Anyhow, I suggested to the host at the outset that I was troubled with his setting himself up as a judge of the President’s personal morality and cited Jesus’ urging that we “Judge not that we be not judged.” Since his concern was that the President, as a public figure, influenced others, I asked if it was not true that he, as a public figure should also be scrutinized so we could better evaluate the position from which he was judging the President. I then suggested I had something relevant to offer and whipped out a phony 40 page document which had a cover saying “Investigation into the Sexual Activities of Christopher Bowman” and suggested that this was where we needed to begin. For a moment there, I thought we might lose him. He turned very red and then pale. [What I knew was that he was secretly gay and he didn’t know if I knew, but his audience certainly didn’t, and I had no intention of going there, but he didn’t know that.]
While my approach was light, my intent was serious. I felt manipulated into joining a lynch mob by people whose standards and whose own behavior might not be above reproach in the public’s eye. I did not see the relevance to our legitimate expectations of the President of most of what was being discussed?
The host asked me, “Don’t you want the President to be like a father you can look up to?” My response was, “No, I really don’t want him to be my father – that is not in my job description for him. He has enough to do.” Now, I must confess, I do have some standards for Presidential behavior, some expectation of honesty within certain parameters. But Bill Clinton had not violated them sufficiently to entirely discredit him in my eyes.
[Harrison Bergeron]
I used Kurt Vonnegut’s story of Harrison Bergeron as a place of departure for this sermon because it points to one of the inherent problems of heroes in a democracy. There is a sense in which “heroes” are problematic to democracy. Stressing, as it does, in theory, the common person, democracy is uncomfortable with those who stand out, who take charge, who excel. They both attract us, and make us feel uncomfortable. “Who are they to feel they are better than we?” – or, more accurately, “Who are they who make us feel as if we are not as good as them?” And so, in Vonnegut’s fertile mind, it was carried to the logical extreme of the future America where the government worked to keep anyone from feeling inferior – those who excelled were subject to leveling at the hands of the Handicapper General, Diana Moon Glampers. No one was to be better than anyone else in any way. It was forbidden! The attractive were made to appear ugly; the graceful carried weights to make them clumsy; the intelligent wore radios broadcasting sound effects to disable their thought processes.
We want heroes and heroines, people to look up to, to inspire us, but we also are driven by a need to tear them down from the pedestal upon which we put them. “Who are they to stand up there?” It is an understatement to say that we are ambivalent about heroes and heroines.
[the exceptional as anti-democratic]
This is not just envy. It is true that the exceptional person does represent a theoretical threat to democracy. If that person is more knowledgeable than I, what right have I to an equal role in the decision making? Her or his talent suggests that she or he should lead and I should just follow. There is a tendency for us to want to be lead by those who represent our parents whom, at one time, we thought to be all knowing and able to “take care of us.” This desire to be “taken care of” is democracy’s greatest threat – it comes from inside not outside. It is in us. There is a part of most of us that wants to be dependent – that wants a Daddy or Mommy so we can stop worrying and go back to innocent playing. This is more evident in some people than in others: some people are truly hungry for authorities to whom to turn it all over. They don’t want to think, they don’t want to worry, they don’t want to decide, they don’t want to act.
There is a sense in which the potential Kennedy dynasty was a threat to democracy. If we had had Jack for 8 years, Bobbie for 8, Ted for 8, we could, as some analysts at the time suggested, have transformed ourselves into a monarchy. Caroline or Jack, Jr. might have been next. Crash went that dream – or nightmare. The two Bushes and the potential second Clinton demonstrate the problem. Wise critics have always warned that the greatest threat to our nation lies in our desire to hand over our authority, not in its being seized.
And yet, since time immemorial, we have had our heroes. People’s lives have been enriched, spiced up, by people – real and mythical – who inspired them by their excellence, who could do things that common people could not. The truth is that the everyday, the mundane, is not inspiring. It is the extra-ordinary, not the ordinary, that attracts our attention and gets our juices flowing.
[stardate 45297.3]
When I turned to the internet for research on this sermon, I found many references to Stardate 45297.3 and the captain’s log of the starship Enterpise. Those of you who were Star Trek Next Generation fans may recall the episode in which the Enterprise was investigating a missing research ship, the Vico, and in its wreckage Data, the android, found a survivor – a boy named Timothy. Timothy was traumatized and seemed not to be telling the true story of what happened. Counselor Troi urged Data to befriend him, since the boy seemed impressed with him. “His world is gone, Data,” she said. ” You’re going to have to help him build a new one.” The boy decided, in an act of hero worship, that he too was an android and began mimicking Data. Later, when Troi asked the boy how he felt, he responded:
“I am functioning within established parameters.”
“Established parameters? You sound like Data.”
“I am an android”
“I see. Well, let’s go for a walk, shall we?”
“That would be acceptable.”
The boy found the emotionless quality of androids to be a way of setting aside and escaping the nightmare he had been through. Ultimately, Data pointed out that androids were compelled to tell the truth, and Timothy revealed that he had touched the control panel of his ship at the moment it blew up, and he believed he destroyed it. Data analyzed what was known and discovered that the Enterprise was on the verge of self destructing by reacting to a gravitational tidal wave by raising its shields, just as the Vico had. Timothy was not responsible. When he realized that, he was able to reaffirm his humanity and view Data as a friend, rather than as a role-model.
It was a rich episode, as were many, because it pointed to the usefulness of heroes as a way occasionally getting out of ourselves – but also the danger of getting trapped by trying to emulate someone who is not us. We’ll come back to that.
[theories of history]
Moving to the larger scale, there are two conflicting theories of history. One looks at the extra-ordinary people as the key to understanding what has happened in the past – it has been known, of course, as “the Great Man theory.” Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Luther, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt – these and others are, by some historians, seen as the causes of what transpired during their eras. Other, more “democratic” historians, seek to dethrone the “great ones” and see all events as the culmination of socio-economic forces, to which the great ones are just incidental. While it appears a cop-out, the truth does lie somewhere between the two. Great people are as much the products of their times as the causes of them, but without them, the outcomes might have been quite different.
[Heroes not Saints]
It seems as if one of our problems today is our confusion of heroes and heroines with saints. They are not the same. Saints are supposed to be people of purity and divine inspiration – manifestations of the holy in our midst. Saints do not have even alleged sex with interns – they do not, for the most part, have sex at all. They are focused on “higher things.” Actually, even saints are not exempt from criticism. An Indian friend who is a member of the Canton congregation is very clear about the clay feet of Mother Teresa, who has now been declared a saint. He has also removed Gandhi from his pantheon.
Historically, purity was not demanded of heroes. In a Reith Lecture on the British Radio 3, Marina Warner pointed out:
Mythical heroes such as Oedipus, Jason and Orestes serve as tragic warnings; their pride, their knowing and unknowing crimes, the matricides and infanticides, self-blindings and suicides, all the strife and horror they undergo and perpetrate, did not make them exemplary, but cautionary. They provoked terror and pity, not emulation. The tragedies they inspired offered their heroes as objects of debate, not models. No one, having seen Oedipus at Colonus, would feel he wanted to be Oedipus in the way that watching a spaghetti Western excites hero worship for Clint Eastwood.
We have been through an historical process during which our heroes have been purified and deified – we have upgraded the job description. We will no longer accept a hero or heroine with a tragic flaw – we seek perfection. It is not therefore surprising that we have a shortage of people we can install on our pedestals. Not only have we increased our expectations, but we have also increased our base of information on the candidates.
[the “valet” in us]
Gertrude Himmelfarb, in an article “Of Heroes, Villains, and Valets” in Commentary Magazine, cited the dictum, “No man is a hero to his valet,” and its amplified version from Hegel, “No man is a hero to his valet, not because the former is no hero, but because the latter is a valet.” Hegel asked:
What schoolmaster has not demonstrated that Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar were driven by such passions [for conquest and fame] and were, consequently immoral? From which it immediately follows that he, the schoolmaster, is a better man than they because he has no such passions, and proves it by the fact that he has not conquered Asia nor vanquished Darius and Porus, but enjoys life and allows others to enjoy it also.
Hegel went on to observe:
Historical personages fare badly in historical literature when served by such psychological valets. These attendants degrade them to their own level, or rather a few degrees below the level of their own morality, these exquisite discerners of spirit.
Himmelfarb shows the change in biographies and biographers when it was decided that the thing to do was reveal all the flaws, all the secrets, all the dirt, like a valet writing a tell-all account of his palace experiences.
There is virtually no historical figure on whom there is not some dirt, none who pass the muster of perfection. And given today’s media, there never will be again.
[Oh, what we did not know!]
It is incredible to realize that most Americans didn’t know at the time that Franklin Roosevelt was disabled. There was an unspoken agreement not to photograph him in any way which would reveal that truth, and there was recently a controversy between the government and the disabled community over how he would be depicted in his monument in Washington. Was his disability still to be hidden as if it were shameful or made him less heroic?
It is incredible also to realize the agreement by the press corps not to reveal what so many knew about John Kennedy’s athletic and compulsive sex life – no wonder he had back trouble.
These can be viewed as conspiracies of silence – people at the top deciding what the public did not need to know, what should be withheld – but did we need to know? Are we better for knowing that George Washington had false teeth? Was Kennedy significantly less admirable because of his sexual compulsion?
It is clear that we can never go back to the innocence of the past – given the news cycle and the nature of the business. Unless we do end up with a dictatorship in the future, the muck-rakers will be with us from now on, raking their muck as long as there is a market for it, and there will be a market as long as people envy those who stand out above the crowd.
[we need to grow up]
The thesis of this sermon can be stated simply: we need to grow up. While I believe that we do benefit from the inspiration of heroic figures, I believe that it serves us badly to worship them – the process warps both them and us.
Over the last seven years, I have spoken to you of some members of my pantheon of Heroes: Job, Jesus, Darwin, Dr. King, Paul Robeson, Mr. Rogers, Eleanor Roosevelt, Howard Zinn. I have never suggested any of them were perfect. In reviewing that list, I realized I have not yet shared with you my feelings about Thomas Jefferson. There are some real problems with the things that Thomas Jefferson actually believed, even though still feel a sense of reverence I still feel when I go to the Jefferson Memorial. His greatness lay not in his being perfect, but in what he had accomplished even given his flaws. The same is true of Lincoln: flawed, but nonetheless great.
There was a member who left the Rockford church in disgust many years ago when I criticized Bill Cosby for what I deemed his irresponsible bragging, in his book about Fatherhood, about using a board to beat his son. I loved Cosby’s comedy and affirmed him for what he was, but I suggested that we not permit him to use his celebrity status to pass himself off as something which he obviously was not. The woman in question idolized him and found my attitude unacceptable. One can only imagine what she would say today given what more we’ve learned about Cosby.
[being brought up UU]
I suspect that the problem– or the good news, depending on how you look at it – is that I was brought up a Unitarian Universalist. I was taught to respect people for what they believed and what they accomplished, but not to expect perfection of them or myself.
We had a needy man as the last Dean of our Theological School. He frequently utilized the findings of the psychological tests we had to take to get into the seminary, as a way of tearing students down and building himself up. I still remember the day he invited me into his office to look over the results of my exam. “Well, Mr. Weissbard,” he said, “it says here that you do not respect authority.” “I don’t think that’s accurate, Dean” I responded. “I respect people who earn my respect, but never automatically because of their position.” He never, ever, abused me in the ways in which I saw him abuse those students whom he thought he could impress.
I would not want to live in a world in which everyone was the same. People who excel should be recognized for their excellence. People who have qualities of leadership should be respected for those qualities, but never should we assume flawlessness in them – leaders need to be watched, considered, not worshiped. I do not want to confuse the President of the United States with my father – there would be something weird and unhealthy going on if I did.
It is good to celebrate the people in the past who made significant contributions to our lives in some way. Understanding the past and its contributions helps us put the present and future in context. We ought not to expect the great ones in the past to have reflected in their time everything we have learned since. Yes, Washington and Jefferson held slaves – it is not their slave holding we celebrate – that was not the sum total of their lives. It would be awful if we were to be remembered only for what the future views as our failings. But it is also instructive for us to realize that they did have flaws – they were not supernatural beings, nor do I wish them to have been such.
[choosing the heroic]
In an article he wrote for the Utne Reader magazine several years ago, UU Minister Ted Tollefson suggested three exercises to help us pick our heroes.
First he said to draw a time line with markings every five years of our lives, on which we should enter the name of a hero or heroine for each period and list three qualities each stood for, and look at commonalities in those lists, which suggest what kind of person we aspire to being. Then we should make a list of enemies, presumably for each period, and list the qualities in them that made our blood boil, and look for the commonalities in those, which should reveal our shadow selves – the parts of ourselves we fear. Finally, he suggested making a collage of our heroes, leaving room for their tragic flaws and holy vices, and hang it opposite a large mirror.
[exemplars]
I have heroes, but I would prefer to use the term “exemplars,” which seems to me to connote something more human – people who have demonstrated excellence in their lives. In addition to the more famous ones I mentioned before, my father was one for me, although he was not without his human flaws. My maternal grandfather was another: I consider him to be one of the most upright and principled men I have ever known.
I hope we will teach our children to focus on the best that people have within them, to be on the watch for excellence to celebrate, and not to be distracted by less important details which may be none of our concern.
We need and can learn from people who seem larger than life, but we need to be careful of the pedestals on which we put them, lest we set them up to be knocked off.