FEASTING WITH PANTHERS: So I spent this past weekend in New Haven. I was spending time with my college debating society, for their annual banquet (hence the title of this post). I have a few things to say about the weekend, but, on the car ride back home, I realized that most of those things circle around a central theme.

I spent a weekend with people who, for the most part, think the world is a very hard place, and if you find something good you should fight like hell to protect it. These are people who know that the world is broken and that we are broken. Something has gone wrong. (“Something fell.”) We are left with the aching love of the good that proves we knew wholeness once, but have never seen it in this life. It’s startling how often this came up: in discussions of what we can learn from the success of faith-based organizations in helping people who have seriously wrecked their lives; in discussions of children’s literature (in this vein, I can’t recommend The Last Unicorn highly enough–a beautiful book); really all over the place. This world is a very hard place to be. Everyone you love will get hurt badly. No one here gets out alive. Evil is worse than suffering, and therefore, you will have to choose suffering sometimes. Make the best of it, because no one can do it for you. There’s beauty and there’s joy, astonishing friendship and the always shockingly strong passion for children; but all our happiness is as fragile as our skin.

I’m pretty sure this attitude or stance underlies most of my politics. I don’t think it’s necessarily dispositive as far as political philosophy. There are some claims it definitely rules out (hi, I’m here to cut off the Enlightenment for nonpayment of its electricity bills), but on many of the important political questions people who share this deep-rooted understanding will disagree. The two most obvious examples for me are same-sex marriage (I do think Jonathan Rauch believes in some variant of the liberalism of fear, which I deeply respect, even though I think ultimately he’s a lot less conservative than he thinks he is–and yes, I just used “liberal” and “conservative” to refer to different shadows of the same edifice, welcome to America) and the war in Iraq (I think Jim Henley might actually have a darker view of human nature than I do, which is impressive).

A few more scattered notes from the weekend:

* I was reminded yet again that all friendships and institutions rely on a base of almost incessant patience and forgiveness. I only hope I will have the opportunity to repay all the patience and mercy that has been paid out to me.

* Nothing is as inspiring as seeing undergraduates go through that incredible personal transformation that our debating society makes possible. Every year I forget that it happens, and so every year I’m surprised again. It’s not growing up–it’s not just progress–it’s a phoenixlike descent into ashes and rebirth in fire.

* I like the song “One Night in Bangkok” a lot more than I thought I did. And I promise this is related to the rest of this post!

Hearts full of youth! Hearts full of truth!

Six parts gin to one part vermouth!

–Tom Lehrer, “Bright College Days”