The High-Minded Fence Straddle

President Obama, at Notre Dame Sunday, made this observation: "The soldier and the lawyer may both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm." In one sense, he implies here the genius of the American Republic in its ability to reach compromise across widely divergent constituencies. On issues that yield to honorable compromise, this is certainly a hopeful truth about our system. Unfortunately, absolute truths don't yield to compromise and our debate, as a culture, has moved out of the arena of happy compromise and into the righteous frenzy of raging absolutes.

You simply can't imagine a calming, coalition-building sentence beginning with the words "..A Rosa Parks and a Governor Wallace may both love this country.." or "..An abolitionist and a slave-holder may both love this country.." or "..a totalitarian socialist and a free-market capitalist may both love this country.." or "..a German American with Nazi sympathies and a Brooklyn Rabbi may both love this country.."

Some issues simply cannot be solved by high-minded rhetoric and an appeal to "all get along."

With the exception of the Civil War, America's Judeo-Christian consensus meant that most of the time we debated things that yielded to debate, things like the timing of Montana Statehood, the proper route for the Union Pacific Railroad, the advisability of the gold standard. When, however, as a nation we have run up against absolute truth, we get into that territory that begs the question: "I don't care if you're a lawyer or a soldier; which one of you is telling the truth?" We either decide, as a nation, the character of the unvarnished truth, and settle the matter--or we live with the soul-sickness of abiding pure evil. We don't pretend that Rosa Parks should walk to the back of the bus, just because a politician implies that we should all settle down.

Some things simply are not up for a vote. The Constitution, for example, says, explicitly, the right of the people to keep and bear arms "shall not be infringed." If you don't believe that, really, you are putting Rosa at the back of the bus and implying that absolute truths should be brought back before the policy wonks for more discussion. In a very real sense, if you question the absolute truths that have sustained the republic--the truths that have taken us to war, and to the streets--you are not really an American. Real leaders unify the people around the justice of eternal truths; they don't ask the sheep to keep feeding the wolves with their own flesh, and hope the jackals will lose their appetite if we all pretend how much we love each other.

There is nothing "high minded" about asking pro-life and pro-abortion Americans to have a "respectful" difference of opinion on the matter--unless you believe that goodness should quietly abide, accommodate, and absorb evil. Americans, according to recent polls, are beginning to see the truth of the matter--and that begins by acknowledging something coalition builders find distasteful: leadership means you encourage people to change their minds when they are wrong.