When I was young, my politics were defined by my family. When I was a teen and in college and in law school, I thought about my politics a great deal. Including the politics of law and constitutional law, ours being a constitutional democracy. As I think back, though, my politics have always been defined by those who I have been close to. Perhaps there is a better way to put it.
I have friends and family with a diverse range of views on a whole set of subjects, from religion, to politics, to economics. I have always found it important in my life, since maybe 17, to support the views in some way of those people to whom I am closest, or to not cross those views. For I think politics is in much of it what it is is not so much about how we treat one another day to day -- which is most important
-- but how we control one another and who is in control.
There are of course limits to this view. I have finally realized that many people are just plain crazy. Nuts. And that includes a whole lot of people with more power than they should have. Yet I still believe in the collective wisdom of democracy most of the time and I think the only civilizing force has been our willingness, every last person's, to submit to the idea that each of us is equal. The Supreme Court has across the top of its facade the phrase "Equal Justice for All". What a grand ideal. What a wonderful way to think of the world. That it is our basic humanity that gives us the rights that we have in society.
Then comes the question of war and order and violence. Robert Cover, a professor who died tragically at 41, wrote a foreward to the Harvard Law Review in the early 1980s in which he tried to separate the idea of law from its coerciveness, the violence that stands behind it. Just as we might try to seperate the idea of law from the idea of morality. And, making a leap, the question is is war a necessary incident of civilized societies? There is the marginal question: is this particular war necessary? Should people die, as they always do, when war begins. And the question of whether pacificism truly makes any sense.
Because are we to be pacificists in the face of grave injustices? cruel and depraved tyranny? immorality and genocidal murder? and who dies to right the wrongs?
My brother and my two best friends have very different world views. Yet I love them each. And I suspect my daughter will have, much to my chagrin, a very different world view from me. Yet I love her as life itself. I work hard only to support her.
This has always been the struggle of my life. To separate the person from their politics or religion and view the inner goodness of the person, and on that basis give my love to the person. That I suppose is a political statement as well. I think that most defines my politics. It is the basic humanity in each of us, if it is there, of course, and it always isn't, that is worthy, and worth pursuing, and it is the translation of that into everyday lives that would make everyone, in the words of Louie Armstrong, able to get along just a little bit better.
The difficulty in life, what wears you down from the time you are idealistic and young, to when you have other needs to care for, is that others -- not all -- but many others face moral choices and cave at the crucial moment. This is what I think of when I think of those times, from Ulysses:
null
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
I miss my friends and family. They are much of my politics, in which there is a tension, like there is in almost all parts of lives, which we choose to ignore to move on day-to-day. But striving, seeking, finding, and not yielding.
I have friends and family with a diverse range of views on a whole set of subjects, from religion, to politics, to economics. I have always found it important in my life, since maybe 17, to support the views in some way of those people to whom I am closest, or to not cross those views. For I think politics is in much of it what it is is not so much about how we treat one another day to day -- which is most important
-- but how we control one another and who is in control. There are of course limits to this view. I have finally realized that many people are just plain crazy. Nuts. And that includes a whole lot of people with more power than they should have. Yet I still believe in the collective wisdom of democracy most of the time and I think the only civilizing force has been our willingness, every last person's, to submit to the idea that each of us is equal. The Supreme Court has across the top of its facade the phrase "Equal Justice for All". What a grand ideal. What a wonderful way to think of the world. That it is our basic humanity that gives us the rights that we have in society.
Then comes the question of war and order and violence. Robert Cover, a professor who died tragically at 41, wrote a foreward to the Harvard Law Review in the early 1980s in which he tried to separate the idea of law from its coerciveness, the violence that stands behind it. Just as we might try to seperate the idea of law from the idea of morality. And, making a leap, the question is is war a necessary incident of civilized societies? There is the marginal question: is this particular war necessary? Should people die, as they always do, when war begins. And the question of whether pacificism truly makes any sense.
Because are we to be pacificists in the face of grave injustices? cruel and depraved tyranny? immorality and genocidal murder? and who dies to right the wrongs?
My brother and my two best friends have very different world views. Yet I love them each. And I suspect my daughter will have, much to my chagrin, a very different world view from me. Yet I love her as life itself. I work hard only to support her.
This has always been the struggle of my life. To separate the person from their politics or religion and view the inner goodness of the person, and on that basis give my love to the person. That I suppose is a political statement as well. I think that most defines my politics. It is the basic humanity in each of us, if it is there, of course, and it always isn't, that is worthy, and worth pursuing, and it is the translation of that into everyday lives that would make everyone, in the words of Louie Armstrong, able to get along just a little bit better.
The difficulty in life, what wears you down from the time you are idealistic and young, to when you have other needs to care for, is that others -- not all -- but many others face moral choices and cave at the crucial moment. This is what I think of when I think of those times, from Ulysses:
null
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
I miss my friends and family. They are much of my politics, in which there is a tension, like there is in almost all parts of lives, which we choose to ignore to move on day-to-day. But striving, seeking, finding, and not yielding.