At heart, though I was born in Illinois, and spent only seven years there, I will always be a West Virginian. After hundreds of years of ancestors living and dying in western Virginia, I called it home decades after I had lived longer in New York or California.
But I know this truth, there was much that was great, good, and noble about the Empire State, whose history I tried to teach seventh graders for several years, and who gave me all my undergraduate and graduate education. I will never (quite) be a New Yorker, but I hope to God I learned some New York values.
Ted Cruz said he was opposed to New York values. What does he mean?
When I think of New York values, I see my great and good teacher Professor Al Geier pressing me to think harder, to do better, and to love my community. Nobody is more a product of New York than this man who is so civilized, so gentle, and decent.
Is he referring to the love for books I gained from teachers like Brian Larkin in my upstate New York school? New York has always supported education, including giving free bussing to private Christian schools. My wife could attend our small Christian school, because New York values were expansive and not bigoted. When some protested that “Catholics” would get money for their schools (Rum, Romanism, and Rebellions!), New York values said that a religious minority had a right to educate her children as they saw fit. They could receive valuable aid for the secular portions of their task.
New York values were that religious minorities should be left alone and helped in any noble work they were doing.
Is he talking about the liberal and thoughtful education I gained at the University of Rochester? Is he talking about the way leaders like Susan B. Anthony helped pioneer education for women there and votes for women in other parts of New York? I attended a small Bible school, with excellent academic programs, where there was a bust of a suffragette in one the lecture halls. The revivals that swept upstate New York , revivals that my Bible college prayed to see again, were also revivals of religious activism.
When we went to the city to work with Mennonite workers or did prolife work on the streets, we were following New York values.
New York values are that religion and public service go together.
Is Ted Cruz rejecting, the tolerance and willingness to educate me that I found in the government, Christian, and private schools of New York. I was a Reagan Republican in a graduate philosophy program. I was a very conservative Christian. My professors turned out, at that stage of my life, to be more consistently moral and more caring than I was. They did not weaken my faith, but they taught me the dialectic and how to listen. I learned that every human being created in God’s image has something of value, something to share.
New York values said that I could hold my views fiercely, but must be willing to defend them in a free exchange of ideas.
When I got to spend any time in the great City of New York, I was hit by beauty. Wherever I go in the world, I find beauty, but nothing foreign to what I saw as a young man in New York City. I love New York City. For those who think it “godless,” New York City is to me a place of endless churches. I slept on the floor (briefly!) and saw the life of men and women who gave their whole existence to helping the poor. I have had the honor of talking to faculty and students at The King’s College . . . as good a group of academics and Christians as I have met. They are reading great books, dreaming great dreams, in the heart of a great city. It was in New York City that my Bible college taught me that most of the church is brown, black, and speaks languages other than English.
It was so glorious it still makes me shout.
New York values said that God was real and we could enjoy all the culture and the art of the world living in peace with our neighbors.
New York values are Covenant Life and Pastor George. New York values are the late Bob Wegman, whose car I got to wash in college, who started the greatest grocery store on Earth, but would not put a friend out of business as long as he lived.
New York values are learning that liberals have good ideas. They are not wrong about everything. New York was a state Ronald Reagan could carry, but Ted Cruz seems disinterested in visiting for anything other than New York money.
If Ted Cruz cannot see the great and the good in every region, every state in this Union, then he is unfit to lead the party Lincoln created to save the union for sectionalism. If Ted Cruz cannot see the wholesome side of even his enemies, then he is unfit to follow the martyred James Garfield, war hero and academic, who learned to love even his enemies. If Ted Cruz cannot love the state of Theodore Roosevelt, genius and friend of the working person, then he can never unite all the wings of our party. If Ted Cruz cannot see that Hollywood shaped Reagan as much as Tampico, Illinois, that even in great liberal bastions there are great and good truths to learn, then he can never be a great communicator.
Donald Trump was right to point to the courage we saw at 9/11, but that is only the start. New Yorkers died with my fellow West Virginians to save the Union. New Yorkers helped craft the Constitution. New York was Hamilton’s state. New Yorkers fought and died in all wars. They have given us great scientists, generals, scholars, activists, and millions of simple, decent folk.
New York is Bedford Falls.
Instead, he will have chosen the pathway of little demagogues and petty men. Senator Cruz is better than this, smarter than this. I have voted for Senator Cruz, but nobody should give him a vote in the upcoming primary if he must belittle and demonize to win.
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