Well, the Iowa caucuses are done and here in Massachusetts we’re getting the media spillover from all the hubbub in New Hampshire that will continue for the next four days.
I’ve been a passive supporter of Senator Clinton, and continue to think of the generally very good field of Democratic candidates she’s the one who probably could serve us best in the upcoming next very dangerous years. At the same time I listened to Senator Obama’s valedictory following his impressive win in Iowa and find it hard not to think of John Kennedy and the dream of Camelot. Even as I grow older and sometimes more cynical, I still long for that nation of hope, for that path of our better angels. And hearing this young man’s vision so beautifully articulated, somehow against all odds, I think, maybe, maybe this time…
More to the point, or the point I’m thinking of right now is something that Kennedy’s close associate Arthur Schlessinger wrote and was quoted in Forrest Church’s very good little book The American Creed: A Biography of the Declaration of Independence.
When we talk of the American democratic faith, we must understand it in its true dimensions. it is not an impervious, final, and complacent orthodoxy, intolerant of deviation and dissent, fulfilled in flag salutes, oaths of allegiance, and hands over the heart. It is an ever-evolving philosophy, fulfilling its ideals through debate, self-criticism, protest, disrespect, and irreverence, a tradition in which all have rights of heterodoxy and opportunities for self-assertion. The Creed has been the means by which Americans have haltingly but persistently narrowed the gap between performance and principle. It is what all Americans should learn, because it is what binds all Americans together.
For me what is most interesting is how this paragraph could with only a little modification be speaking of liberal religion as a spiritual method. I feel it also needs a constant call for self-reflection to be truly spiritual. The greatest authority to be challenged, after all, appears always to be the ego…
But that said, not a bad summary statement, a creed if you will for a creedless faith…
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