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Friday, February 01, 2008

Give Me That Old Time Liberalism

7:22 PM

It is frightening but amazing what living on the other side of the world--in both distance and culture--can reveal about home to an American who understands the privilege of being one. In my case, it is from Beijing, China--the Capital of an authoritarian state far, far removed from being anyone's model of good governance--where for the better part of a decade now, I've watched and shuddered at what America became at-large in the 21st Century world.

It is with joy then that I pine for a better turn of the electoral screw in the presidential election that will finally end the criminal misrule of what was unquestionably the worst American administration in a century or more. We will do this huge thing well less than a year from now. But who will fill the Black Hole of leadership that was Bush & Cheney? Surprisingly, it's still too early to venture a responsible call. But below I offer some attributes I believe imperative that we find in her or him, a timely exercise with the looming 'national primary' and the unseemly rancor of the primary races:

He will speak like Democrats used to. She will speak the words we need to hear from a fellow citizen leading the still greatest experiment in Freedom the world has yet known. He will remind us that we love freedom so much we will gladly pay the price of an open society rather than accept the slavery of a closed one in exchange for some dubious promise of safety. That is not America. She will tell us that the lesson of 9/11 was not how vulnerable we are. America has always been vulnerable to those who will use our freedoms to strike at us. But how often has it happened? Rarer than hen's teeth.

He will say that the lesson of 9/11 was and is how a great and open nation of people living free have the proven durability of our constitutional system to shake off everything from a great Civil War, two world wars to end all wars, assassinations of presidents and citizen leaders, even the stealing of a national election, yet still the ship of state will right itself and remain the envy of all people dreaming to live free.

With a clear and ringing voice she will have us remember that there was honor in never striking first. He will say there was greatness in climbing up from the bloodied ground and striking back with justice and the unwavering force of a nation united.

Those days can not come again, the dangerously rash first-blow was struck, but the principles can; we simply need the return of leaders who actually believe in America and Americans, all of us. We need leaders with the clarity of an informed world vision; we do not need leaders who vent and flail about in personal rage and messianic revenge. We are America. We whipped Hitler and Tojo at the same time; we did it with indisputable right on our side. We did it with no brag or strut from the White House or the houses of state.

We did it after being attacked enforce in the ultimate sneak attack by a whole nation, a major nation with a military dwarfing our own; not by a gang of disparate zealots murderously out-of-time living in caves and huts and crowded one-bedroom walkup flats next to strip malls. You beat nations with armies; you bust criminal gangs with damn good cops, and a plan; there are excellent precedents for both notions.

So how can we let anyone continue to change us only because we are afraid of being hit again? When did we become the bloated silver-spoon pretender on the school playground who cries for sympathy, railing in self-pity and self-righteousness when sucker-punched by some loudmouth loser? Give us back our honor and our freedom to choose greatness over smallness. Give us back men and women who know that being an American means that we must live and act above lesser, malignant systems, even when it hurts and bleeds; especially then.

Give us leaders who wield the rule of law and rationality, not the rule of born-again believers of intolerance who revel in their dependency upon only their own kind. Give us men and women who are not afraid to be wrong and say so. Give us leaders who will talk to us and lead out front, not preach at us and hide in back.

Give us leaders with big ideas, not small ideology. Give us leaders who love words and books and art and all the things that lift up our eyes and minds to see and imagine what we can become, not only what we have been. America has always been about the future; a well-intentioned better one more often than not, albeit with many contradictions and moral aberrations we must never forget.

But mostly give us leaders who know that America is a state of mind, not a state of mine or yours, or us or them--then no one but the most base will feel the need to strike it down because it is not theirs. Yet when they do strike, give us leaders who will lead openly, honestly as we march back with deliberate pace, together, with might and right in our rifle clips, Humvees and stealth bombers.

Where are such men and women to be found today when we need them more than breath itself? Because to continuing breathing the air of fear and hatred, the air of isolation and incivility towards those whose language, race or culture is different, is not to live and breathe as Americans at all.

Clinton or Obama? Let us hope either or both of them can rise above their vote-gathering and be the leaders we need so badly. It surely won't come from the other party, which has all but conceded its right to govern the Republic for time unseen by its accumulations of crimes against it.

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