The Barbarians and Vandals of the Pen and Broad Brush Are About

Divisiveness has long come from within the culture while attributed to external forces. This is a principle of the “war on terror.” Create “the other” and then demonize them, disguising what should be a cause of celebration, our diversity, as a threat. We are sadly reminded of this ugly practice again in recent weeks at levels high and low.

—Why has this trouble broken out just now,
and panic? (Faces have gone so solemn.)
Why are the streets, the squares emptying so fast,
and all the people brooding as they turn back home?

Because night has come and the barbarians have not.
And a few people have come back from the outskirts,
and said no more barbarians exist.

So now what will become of us, without barbarians.
Those men were one sort of resolution.

C.P. Cavafy, Waiting for the Barbarians

As Cavafy suggests, the barbarians are already in our midst, casting acidic aspersions on persons and peoples. Patrick Buchanan offers a prime example with his vile arguments that, in a nation founded on the separation of church and state and on the rule of law, the proportion of Supreme Court Justices from one faith community or another should be a factor in the nomination or selection of a candidate. And Buchanan whips the brew with a racist whisk to boot. In a recent blog posting, he says:

If Kagan is confirmed, the Court will consist of three Jews and six Catholics (who represent not quite a fourth of the country), but not a single Protestant, though Protestants remain half the nation and our founding faith.

CNN pundit Roland Martin slammed “Kagan’s record on diversity as one that a ”˜white Republican U.S. president’ would be criticized for.” This is an excerpt from the Washington Post about the rising anger in a black community, which voted 24-1 for Obama, that one of their own was once again passed over for the Supreme Court.

Not since Thurgood Marshall, 43 years ago, has a Democratic president chosen an African-American. The lone sitting black justice is Clarence Thomas, nominated by George H. W. Bush. And Thomas was made to run a gauntlet by Senate liberals.

And if the Supreme Court nomination gives our native barbarians a platform, the streets again host vandals. Rabbi Michael Lerner’s home was recently defaced with graffiti that reeks of fascist eras in other lands. Rabbi Lerner’s pen serves the passions for peace and democratic principles in often unsettling terms for many. He is a persistent gadfly urging generosity, compassion, and responsibility. To be met with threat, violence, bigotry, hatred is not simply unbecoming, it is simply wrong.

We can call these acts anti-Semitism and they are that evil in exhibition, but they are so ignorant and dismissive of basic liberties and principles that we should also label them barbarism and vandalism, wrong in their own right whomever they besmirch.

One response would be to reenter the public arena, rather than retreat. Our individual and collective interests in civil society would be well served by gathering in Washington, D.C. in June at the national conference being organized by Rabbi Michael Lerner’s communities of Tikkun and Network of Spiritual Progressives. http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/article.php/2010conferences

The Fellowship of Reconciliation is a sponsoring organization of the conference. Join me June 11-14 for a civil discussion of how to recover respect and progress in the world through compassion and generosity, rather than sow seeds of hatred and reap destruction of the earth through war and occupation. http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/article.php/2010conferences