Remembering the Triangle Fire and the (Mixed) Legacy of the American Labor Movement

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. – Abraham Lincoln

This past Friday marked the 100th anniversary of the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, when 146 workers died in a blaze that was, until September 11, 2001, the deadliest workplace tragedy in the city’s history. Most of the victims were young Jewish and Italian women, many with no choice but to jump to almost certain death or remain trapped in a deadly inferno that was rapidly consuming the ninth floor of the building. It was later discovered that the factory’s managers had padlocked exits to all but one stairwell to prevent workers from leaving with leftover scraps of cloth. To compound matters, the door to the open stairwell swung inward, making it nearly impossible to open amidst the onrush of workers attempting to flee the quickly spreading fire. The factory building contained no automatic sprinklers and the one open stairwell was swiftly consumed by flames. A rickety fire escape, built to accommodate only a few people at a time, collapsed as panicked workers piled on. With no way out for the remaining workers, their only hope was to be rescued by the fire company, but the firefighter’s ladders only reached to the sixth floor, thirty feet below the igniting flames. Nearly fifty trapped seamstresses, mostly young teenage women, one as young as fourteen, leaped to their deaths, bodies accumulating on the sidewalk below, as a stunned and horrified crowd looked on from Washington Square.

When the cramped and unsafe working conditions endured by the garment workers were later exposed, a public outcry ensued and a credible workers’ rights movement was launched. In direct response to the Triangle fire, the New York State Legislature passed laws requiring automatic sprinklers in high-rise buildings, mandatory fire drills at large companies, and fire doors that swung out. Later reforms included a 54-hour workweek for women and child workers. The tragedy spurred the growth of American labor unions and influenced the passage of national laws outlawing child labor, further limiting the work week, and imposing minimum standards of workplace safety and more humane work environments.

A great irony of the Triangle fire is that, two years before the fire, the factory owners, themselves immigrants who became wealthy by employing new immigrants at low wages and long hours, successfully resisted a 13-week strike aimed at achieving union representation and safer working conditions. The fire and resulting deaths of 146 workers achieved what the strike could not.

One of the onlookers of the Triangle fire in 1911 was a young social worker named Frances Perkins. She and a friend were having tea in Greenwich Village when they heard the fire trucks and anguished screams of “don’t jump” from down the street. Perkins rushed outside and ran toward the commotion, where she witnessed flames and black smoke coming from the top floors of the Triangle factory. Young girls and women, some alone, some clutching hands, stood on window ledges with terrified looks in their eyes, as no good options existed. Perkins watched helplessly as many of the young girls and a few young men jumped to their deaths.

Twenty-two years later, Perkins became the first female cabinet member in U.S. history when she was appointed Secretary of Labor by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. During her twelve-year tenure, the Triangle fire’s victims embedded in her memory, Perkins worked to guarantee the rights of workers to organize, form unions, and collectively bargain. With the firm backing of President Roosevelt, she helped win passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which called for the “elimination of labor conditions detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standards of living necessary for health, efficiency, and well being of workers.” Perkins was instrumental as well in securing implementation of the Social Security Act, unemployment insurance, and the minimum wage.

Before the Triangle fire, and for virtually all of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century, the balance of power in this country steadily favored wealthy industrialists and the owners of capital. The government’s willingness to interfere with the operations of American businesses and impose humane working conditions was greatly influenced by the principle of laissez faire, which instructed that government take a hand's off approach to commerce and business. The growing political power of the corporate class, tied to vast concentrations of wealth of a small number of conglomerates, contrasted sharply with the pitiful working conditions of most American laborers, who toiled in coal mines and garment factories, plantations and steel mills. Businesses and corporations predictably resisted virtually every effort at reform, arguing that mandatory workplace health and safety protections, and laws allowing workers to organize, would result in economic calamity.

“Such complaints, of course, are with us still,” writes Harold Meyerson of The Washington Post. “We hear them from mine operators after fatal explosions, from bankers after they’ve crashed the economy, from energy moguls after their rig explodes or their plant starts leaking radiation. . . . A century after Triangle, greed encased with libertarianism remains a fixture of – and danger to – American life.” Often ignored by the anti-regulation crowd is the fact that workplace protections were necessary precisely because of unfettered corporate greed and neglect and, despite such laws, the American economy experienced its greatest prosperity in the decades following corporate and labor reforms.

A. Phillip Randolph said, “A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess." The rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively, to strike if necessary, helped shift the balance of power from the owners of capital to the laborers that made capital possible. "If capitalism is fair,” said Franklin Lloyd Wright, “then unionism must be. If men and women have a right to capitalize their ideas and the resources of their country, then that implies the right of men and women to capitalize their labor."

Although the rise of the American labor union helped, at least in some cases, to even the playing field between the large corporations and the workers on whose labor they profited, times have changed. Today, the word “union” is typically invoked in complaints about teachers resisting school reform or the excessive pension costs that are burdening state and local governments. “I pay for three police departments,” is a common complaint of township and borough mayors, “one active and two retired.” The growing power of certain labor unions in the 1950’s and 1960’s led to corruption and greed within labor’s own ranks. Many unions in the industrial northeast and Midwest demanded ever increasing wage and benefits packages, sometimes making near extortionate demands on their employers and ignoring the impact of ever increasing international competition. These unions often missed the big picture and eventually priced themselves out of a job, as manufacturers closed shop in the United States and took advantage of cheap labor overseas.

The protections afforded workers by occupational and safety laws, restrictions on child labor and excessive hours, and protections against discrimination and harassment, coupled with the wage increases unions won through the 1960’s, rendered the need for unions in some industries less compelling. Some powerful unions lost sight of their mission and seemed insufficiently grateful to a country that had enacted many progressive workplace protections. Government regulation of business and the enforcement of workplace rights is today a generally accepted part of the American economy, yet certain unions failed to acknowledge that the U.S. workforce was in a far different place at the end of the century than it had been when the Triangle fire shocked America’s conscious.

In the garment industry, for example, workers who were supposed to benefit from the wage and benefits packages negotiated by their unions found themselves with less work as jobs moved first to the south, where unions are less welcome, and eventually to India, China, and places with sweatshop-like conditions in factories that employ masses of people at low wages. Retail stores like Macy’s and Bloomingdales continually demanded steeper discounts and the ability to return goods they could not sell. Manufacturers in turn scrambled to reduce costs in piece work and outsourcing, as more and more U.S. jobs were lost. In 1975, 90% of all clothing sold in the United States was made in America. Today, the U.S. garment industry supplies only 5% of America’s clothing needs.

Increasing concentrations of wealth in the hands of a very few, along with international trade and globalization, have complicated and hampered the ability of the American workforce to maintain its standard of living. I have always been a strong proponent of free international trade, but when U.S. workers lose their jobs so that investment bankers can make millions of dollars on the backs of exploited laborers working in Triangle-like conditions in Thailand and other impoverished countries, I begin to lose my enthusiasm for tariff-free trade. We must open our eyes and insist upon more equal treatment of workers worldwide and, if necessary, impose tariffs and trade restrictions on countries and industries that fail to protect its workers in a manner required by modern decency and U.S. law.

I am fully aware of the labor movement’s failures. I recognize that certain unions became corrupt and undemocratic, some almost criminal and thug-like as extortionate contract demands wreaked havoc on businesses that were already struggling to compete in an increasingly global economy. In the fall of 1975, during a bitter and prolonged strike at The Washington Post Company, members of the pressmen’s union jumped the night foreman and pinned him to the floor with a screw driver at his throat, then severely beat him as other striking workers vandalized the pressroom, sliced the cushions of the press cylinders, ripped out electrical wiring, cut air hoses and sabotaged almost every piece of equipment before setting the presses on fire. Although twelve union members were eventually convicted of crimes of violence and The Post essentially broke the worst elements of the union, the damage was done.

A friend of mine, who owns a small trucking company in Ohio, once told me that his non-union drivers were threatened with violence by members of the Teamsters and, in retaliation for failing to unionize, found their tires slashed and, in a few instances, had pipe bombs set off in acts of intimidation. Such acts quickly dispel any romantic notions one may have of labor unions.

Nevertheless, it is easy to forget that a significant portion of U.S. prosperity from the end of World War II to the 1970’s was in part the result of union contracts and union advocacy. A strong labor movement contributed to a broad middle class with spending power and economic security that resulted in low unemployment and high wages. As Gerald Seib of The Wall Street Journal noted recently, for 48 straight months, between 1966 and 1970, the United States enjoyed an unemployment rate at or below four percent. Although unions were not wholly responsible for this prosperity, they helped maintain a fairer distribution of income and were, in the words of E.J. Dionne, Jr., “important co-authors of a social contract that made our country fairer, richer and more productive.”

Union excesses and short-sightedness notwithstanding, there would never have been a need for unions in the first place had businesses and corporations treated their workers more humanely and decently in the days before they were required to do so. In 1911, more than 100 workers died on the job each day. The Triangle fire was but a symptom of a much larger problem. Even today, despite all of the worker protections and all of the complaining of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups about the burdens of government regulation, industrial workplaces remain dangerous places. In 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4,340 workers died in workplace injuries. In 2010, 29 miners died in one day at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia, a non-union shop. The tragedies at the Triangle factory in 1911 and Upper Big Branch mine in 2010 spurred legislative investigations and calls to action. But in both cases, had workers had a stronger voice, a union, and the ability to insist on better and safer working conditions, both tragedies likely would have been prevented. In both cases, efforts by workers to organize, and their calls for safer work environments, were bitterly resisted by their employers.

So, while I have my problems with certain aspects of the American labor movement, as some unions are often their own worst enemy, I understand their importance and value to American economic life. In the words of Clarence Darrow, "With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men [and women] that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in men [and women] than any other association." I am not yet ready to give up on the American labor movement, and we must never forget what happened a century ago at the Triangle factory in New York.

Writer's Block, Japan, and Hopes for Our Children

The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.  

--William Goldman

Novelist Ernest Hemingway once said that the most frightening thing he had ever encountered was "a blank sheet of paper." Though I am no Hemingway, it provides me with some comfort to realize that even he had moments of doubt and uncertainty in the writing process. For me, there is always the concern that I have nothing worthwhile to say. Only when I acknowledge that I write for myself, to understand what I am thinking, to expand my thoughts, to feed my appetite for learning, can I put pen to paper. If others take something from my writing, discern a glint of understanding, if they are moved, angered or inspired, I will have achieved what I set out to do.

Writing is excruciatingly difficult at times, and there is nothing worse than staring at a blank computer screen uninspired. I am in good company. Tom Stoppard said that the hardest part to writing is “getting to the top of page one.” Stephen King has said that the "scariest moment is always just before you start [writing]. After that, things can only get better." Perhaps I am distracted lately, but even with everything there is going on in the world, from the battles in Wisconsin over public employee unions, to democratic uprisings in the Middle East, to the Supreme Court’s recent First Amendment decision upholding the right of mean-spirited people to protest at military funerals, I am at present uninterested in addressing what are admittedly important issues.

* * * *

For now, my thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the tragic earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan. The death toll now exceeds 10,000 and we can only pray that these days of tragedy will soon transform into months of recovery and healing. The destruction caused to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant 170 miles north of Tokyo, and the announcement by Japanese officials that they are preparing to distribute iodine, which helps protect the thyroid gland from radiation exposure, reinforces my decades-long concern with the safety of such plants. I have always worried that the brilliant and exquisite technology of nuclear power is ultimately overmatched by the natural forces of the earth. In addition, there remains the still unresolved issue of safely disposing of radioactive waste. A nuclear power accident can turn into a disaster of huge proportions in the blink of an eye. It is simply not worth the risks.

The situation in Japan is worsened still by the psychological stress the Japanese people are experiencing. Having once confronted directly the destructive forces of radiation sickness on a mass scale, the only country ever attacked with atomic weapons, Japan is a nation uniquely sensitive to the dangers of radiation. It is moments like these when national boundaries look less significant and our common humanity becomes paramount. In spite of everything that has occurred, the world cannot help but be impressed with the manner in which the Japanese people are dealing with it all, with their calm, cooperative spirit, their resilience in the face of monumental disaster. It is a reminder, as The Washington Post editorialized on Sunday, “of the fortitude and neighborliness for which Japanese society has long been known.”

* * * *

The Japanese earthquake hit just a few weeks after the slightly less destructive quake in New Zealand, where my daughter Jennifer is currently studying abroad. The New Zealand earthquake was in Christchurch, while Jen is studying at Victoria University in Wellington. But when news of the quake first came over the wires, my thoughts immediately turned to Jen’s well-being. The night of the Christchurch quake resulted in a phone call from Jen’s mom, another from my parents, and two more from my sister, each asking if I had heard from Jenny and was she okay. She was fine, of course, as Wellington is 200 miles from Christchurch, but when none of us could get through to her that night, I momentarily lacked perspective until her health and safety were confirmed. When Wellington was struck by an earthquake a week later, though nothing on the scale of the Christchurch quake, anxieties were once more heightened.

There is a difficult line to draw between allowing your children to experience life in all its dimensions, letting them take risks, and continuing to hover over them with a protective glare. As parents, we want only the best for our children. I do not mean the best material possessions; rather, the best experiences, good friendships, all the things that I believe contribute to a life of happiness. Health, safety, economic wellbeing, making lifelong friends who will stand by and support them when they’re down; someday as well, finding the right spouse or life partner, or being secure enough to not settle for the wrong one, all of these things are important. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” A sense of self-awareness and inner peace, to be content with who they are and secure in what they believe, is what I desire most for my children. But as a father, how do I bestow such wisdom when I have yet to figure it out myself?

Much of life is a search for meaning, a quest for answers to life’s most pressing questions. Tragedy and loss merely reinforce such thoughts. To understand one’s true self, confident enough to journey forth in the security of that knowledge, is no easy task. For all of humanity’s searching, I know of few people who possess a deep well of life wisdom. In this, I am reminded of the movie City Slickers, in which Mitch (played by Billy Crystal) and his two best friends venture west for a month-long cattle drive, hoping to renew their spirits and to find meaning and fulfillment in their lives. In one scene, Mitch finds himself alone with their guide, Curly, played by Jack Palance, a John Wayne-tough, true-to-life cowboy who has spent his entire life on the range, riding horses and conquering the American west. If anyone has mastered life, it is Curly.

"Do you know what the secret of life is? One thing. Just one thing,” Curly says in a deep, gravelly voice as he holds up his index finger. “You stick to that and everything else don't mean shit."

“Yeah, but what's that one thing?" asks Mitch, eagerly anticipating the wisdom of a sage.

Curly looks out over the barren land, then turns back to Mitch, "That's what you've got to figure out."

Contentment in life, happiness, wisdom; these are the things we must find for ourselves. We can hope that our children find happiness; we can teach them to value an ethical life, honesty and hard work; and we can provide them the tools and education to prepare for the long journey ahead. But in the end, we must understand that moments of true happiness are linked to nature, to finding time, to the transcendent power of the human spirit. Emotional well being does not arise from the next e-mail in a relentless life of work and toil.

Emerson said, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” Children today are overwhelmed with technology and information, much of it worthless and, worse, destructive to the human spirit. Eleven years into the 21st century, the cult of celebrity has remained America’s secret altar, with an emphasis on sex appeal, thin bodies, and fashionable styles. It is particularly difficult for young women, though how it affects the attitudes and sensitivities of young men is equally concerning. Add to that, the competition for grades and high SAT scores, increased economic anxieties and the uncertainties of the global marketplace, the prevalence of drugs, sex and narcissism that compete for the minds and affections of our children, and you have a full plate of worries. I thank God every day that my daughters have developed into responsible and independent young women who are genuinely nice people and who belie the pressures of youth. I have tried to instill in them the notion that they should pursue what interests them and be patient to life’s callings. But in the words of Angela Schwindt, a home-schooling mom in Oregon, “While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.”

In truth, there are no real answers. I cannot explain why the people of Japan were victims of a tragic flaw of nature, or why people every day experience loss, pain, and unfair fates. I will attempt to make sense of the world, to strive for happiness even in the face of despairing times, because I must continue to hope and dream, for myself, but mostly for my children.

The End of Winter

Don't tell me about the world. Not today. It's springtime and they're knocking baseballs around fields where the grass is damp and green in the morning and the kids are trying to hit the curve ball. ~Pete Hamill

Pitchers and catchers reported a week ago. The “regulars” rolled in just the other day. In Arizona and Florida, at least, spring has officially started. For those of us restricted to northern terrains, a sunny day and a picture of young men tossing long-ball will suffice. Baseball is as much about imagination as reality, allowing grown men to overcome abandoned dreams and to be transported in time to the simpler days of youth. For baseball fans, spring is when the cool winds of March and the smell of a leather glove awaken in the senses the hope of new beginnings, when every team is a contender. This year is no exception.

Winter in Philadelphia lingers as the last remnants of snow refuse completely to disappear, the sun’s rays meekly penetrating the cold air. Although nature bequeathed us a day or two of softness, a February flirtation with the gentle touches of spring, the winds quickly strengthened in intensity and the temperatures dropped once again, permitting us to escape the harsh chill of winter only in the daily reports of the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues.

My normal excitement level for the start of spring training and anticipation of a new season has been tempered this year by a reminder of the darker, business side of baseball, talk of money and contracts, revenue and payrolls. I speak particularly of the Albert Pujols contract negotiations, which for Cardinals fans is the source of sleepless nights and intestinal distress. For those of you living on the planet Zortec, let me explain. Pujols is in the last year of an eight-year, $111 million contract. If the Cardinals cannot find a way to sign him to a new deal by the end of this season, he becomes a free agent and the Cardinals, a team of moderate wealth and a payroll that befits its Midwestern television market, will have to compete potentially with every team in the Major Leagues to bid on his services. That means that the Yankees, the Red Sox and, God forbid, even the Cubs, will legitimately be allowed to offer Pujols any amount of money they are willing to dish out to lure him to their team. Some might call that free enterprise. I call it Armageddon.

Being a fan requires certain fortitude and a willingness to endure pain and heartbreak. Only true fans can really understand this. When everyone else says, “Grow up” or “Get a life”, we just shake our heads with the knowledge that the non-fan lacks discernment. A true fan connects to a team the way one connects to immediate family; we are wrapped up in our team’s identity, its players form part of our secret inner circle. I can criticize a player on my team, but if a Phillies fan knocks my second baseman, they just may find extra spices in their cheese steak, if you catch my drift. The star players, of course, are extra special, for they disappoint us less and provide us with the hope of a winning season and the dream of a championship. The longer a star player remains with us, the more we identify with him.

I became a Cardinals fan in the spring of 1967, when I was eight years old. Yes, I know, I am from New Jersey. It is simple really. My second grade class was studying the many different species of birds. Always one to choose favorites, I took an immediate liking to the cardinal, lured by its magnificent, bright red coat and distinctive black trim. There was simply no other bird like it. As it happens, my ornothological studies coincided precisely with when I fell in love with baseball. I had started to play the game with my older brother and his friends and learned that baseball and me were a natural fit. I quickly became consumed by it. When that summer I discovered the St. Louis Cardinals and the “birds on the bat” that adorned their uniforms, I was an immediate fan. Soon I was following my favorite team and my favorite players – Orlando Cepeda, Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Curt Flood, Mike Shannon, and Tim McCarver – colorful players who lit up a ballpark with their grace and athleticism. The bond permanently cemented in the fall of 1967 when the Cardinals won the World Series; I was forever hooked. (Only years later did I discover that it was somewhat frowned upon to root for anyone other than the home team. I have finally stopped looking surprised when someone asks me, “Are you from St. Louis?” after confiding my team loyalties.)

To this day, I identify the Cardinals of my youth with Lou Brock and Bob Gibson. Although the surrounding cast occasionally changed, especially since the advent of free agency, Gibson, like Stan Musial before him, was a Cardinal for life. So was Mike Shannon, who still does the play-by-play more than 40 years later on the Cardinals’ radio network. Brock, who the Cardinals acquired from the Cubs in 1964, remained a Cardinal until he retired in 1979. I can still recite the daily lineup card for the Cardinals teams of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. At the age of eleven, I started playing Strat-O-Matic baseball, an extremely realistic, statistic-based board game, played with dice and individual player cards formulated from the previous season’s statistics. I “managed” eight straight 162-game seasons of Cardinals games, keeping box scores and calculating the season’s at bats and innings pitched, hits, runs, RBIs, walks and strikeouts, batting averages and earned run averages. To this day, I can compute batting averages in my head. I spent more time in study hall writing out that day’s lineup card and studying my team’s statistics than I did doing homework. Hmmm. Perhaps this is why I did not attend an Ivy League college, or why I wince when asked about the works of William Shakespeare. I mean, what was his batting average?

More than four decades hence, you must forgive my indulgence, then, of Albert Pujols. When a player is as uniquely talented and identified with one team as Pujols, it takes a bigger man than me to resist the need for common sense and patience in something as mundane and legalistic as a long-term contract. There is something a little disconcerting about the business of baseball. I am a fan because, for 2 ½ hours each night, baseball reminds me of what life was like when I was twelve, when the most important event was how the Cardinals did against the Mets. I did not know or care about the players’ salaries, or how much money the team made in a given season. I knew nothing of television royalties, ticket sales and merchandise revenues. I paid little attention to union disputes and work stoppages. It was the game and what it represented, devotion to a team and identification with its players, which captured my imagination.

I understand that the Cardinals must protect the future of the franchise. Pujols is 31 years old. He will turn 32 before season’s end, when his present contract expires. According to unsubstantiated reports, Pujols and his agent have asked for a contract in the range of 10 years, $300 million. The Cardinals reportedly offered Pujols somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million over nine years, plus an equity interest in the team for life. Cardinals’ management is naturally reluctant to commit 30% of their payroll for ten years on a player who, in six or seven years, will be in the twilight of his career. The Cardinals would likely agree to pay him $30 million a year for five or six years, but they do not want to be tied into a deal that pays even a player as great as Prince Albert upwards of $30 million a year when he is 39, 40, and 41 years old. Pujols is a great player, and there is no reason to believe he will not continue to be among the best players in baseball for the next several years. But even the great ones do not play at 39 the way they played at 29.

I cannot justify the amount of money we are talking about here. And yet, despite my past moralizing over the inequality of income between the rich and the poor in the United States, when it comes to baseball you can dismiss all talk of economic justice, morality and politics. There is really only one consideration. Do what it takes to win! Pujols is a once-in-a-lifetime player. His first ten years are matched historically only by Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. In ten seasons, Pujols has accumulated 1,900 hits, 408 home runs, 1,230 RBIs, 1,186 runs, 426 doubles, and 914 walks (compared to only 646 strikeouts). Divide each number by ten and you have pretty close to what he has done each season. He is that consistent. He has a career batting average of .331 and an on-base percentage of .426. He has never batted below .312, has never knocked in less than 103 runs, has never scored less than 99 runs. He has twice won the Gold Glove Award for his superb defensive play at first base. By all accounts, he is a great teammate and clubhouse leader.

The famous actress, Tallulah Bankhead, once said, “There have been only two geniuses in the world. Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare.” I don’t know about Shakespeare (see above), but Albert Pujols must be added to the list. If the Cardinals do not sign Pujols and make him a Cardinal for life, I dread the amount of therapy that will be needed to restore my sanity. All of Cardinal Nation will be on Prozac. I know that it will take a lot of money to sign El Hombre, and I hope he means it when he says he wants to remain a Cardinal for life. But if somehow it doesn’t work out, if Prince Albert someday betrays Cardinal red, it will induce panic-stricken psychosis in the annals of Cardinalville. He is the franchise. He is the St. Louis Cardinals.

Perhaps it is as simple as what one Cardinal fan recently advised Bill DeWitt, Jr., the Cardinals' owner, in an email to ESPN's Mike and Mike in the Morning, “He wants it. You have it. Give it to him.” I really do not know what to think about it all. In my moments of dispassion and sanity, I can understand the reluctance to give away the store. Then the fan in me takes over, and I don’t want to hear about contracts and money and long-term revenue projections. For the past six weeks, I have awakened each morning with the hope that the headlines would read, “Cards Sign Pujols for Life.” So I have stopped trying to think about it, and will focus on the game and prepare for another long and beautiful season, when my childlike fascination with baseball and the Cardinals will overtake all the messy details of life.

Ernie Harwell, the longtime announcer for the Detroit Tigers, once said, “Baseball is just a game as simple as a ball and bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes, it is a sport, a business, and sometimes almost even a religion.” As a rational man with a sense for business and economics, I understand the arguments on both sides of the Pujols contract negotiations. But as a Cardinals fan, I simply cannot comprehend life without Pujols.

The President on Prayer, Humility, and the Search for Wisdom

We see an aging parent wither under a long illness, or we lose a daughter or a husband in Afghanistan, we watch a gunman open fire in a supermarket -- and we remember how fleeting life can be. And we ask ourselves how have we treated others, whether we’ve told our family and friends how much we love them. And it’s in these moments, when we feel most intensely our mortality and our own flaws and the sins of the world, that we most desperately seek to touch the face of God. – President Barack Obama, February 3, 2011

In a time of political and social turmoil around the world and divisiveness at home, as the world watched street protests and the march for democracy in Egypt and Tunisia, and as the United States continued to recover from the tragic shooting in Tucson, the President took a moment this past week to speak from the heart. For the past sixty years, ever since Dwight Eisenhower occupied the White House, our presidents have attended the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. This year was no exception and it permitted an opportunity for President Obama to speak thoughtfully and passionately about his personal faith journey, his closeness to God, and his belief in the power of prayer to provide comfort and guidance. The speech, which was both humorous and moving, should finally put to rest any lingering questions regarding the authenticity or sincerity of the president’s faith, which goes far deeper than the majority of U.S. presidents over the past century.

Obama spoke publicly “as a fellow believer” and as one who entered public service through his work on behalf of churches. He acknowledged as a child that he was exposed to very little organized religion and that he “did not come from a particularly religious family.” His father, whom he had met only once his entire life, and then only for a month, was “a non-believer throughout his life.” The president’s mother, who wielded great influence on Obama as a child, and whose Midwestern values remain embedded in his soul, was the product of Baptist and Methodist parents. But she “grew up with a certain skepticism about organized religion” and, like many apathetic and agnostic Christians, took young Barack Obama to church, if at all, only on Easter and Christmas. Despite her skepticism, however, she also was a very spiritual person, “who was instinctively guided by the Golden Rule and who nagged me constantly about the homespun values of her Kansas upbringing, values like honesty and hard work and kindness and fair play.”

It was through his mother that Obama learned to value equality between men and women, the imperative of living an ethical life, and of acting on one’s beliefs. And “despite the absence of a formal religious upbringing,” he was inspired by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and the many prominent Christian leaders of the civil rights movement who sought to “transform a nation through the force of love.” He also was influenced by more ecumenical leaders, such as Father Theodore Hesburg and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose “call to fix what was broken in our world, a call rooted in faith,” led Obama to become a community organizer and to work on behalf of “a group of churches on the Southside of Chicago.” From this experience, “working with pastors and laypeople trying to heal the wounds of hurting neighborhoods," did Obama come "to know Jesus Christ for myself and embrace Him as my lord and savior.”

Like many of us, Obama’s “faith journey has had its twists and turns.” Along the way, “[i]n the wake of failures and disappointments, I've questioned what God had in store for me and been reminded that God’s plans for us may not always match our own short-sighted desires.” As with President Lincoln, who knelt often in prayer when faced with the daily pressures of saving a nation at war with itself, Obama’s Christian faith “has been a sustaining force" during his time in office. In addition to prayer, he finds “consistent respite and fellowship” at the Chapel at Camp David and starts his mornings with “meditations from Scripture.”

At the prayer breakfast, the president subtly alluded to his critics; “when Michelle and I hear our faith questioned from time to time, we are reminded that ultimately what matters is not what other people say about us but whether we're being true to our conscience and true to our God.” He emphasized, however, the uniting force of faith. He referred to Senator Tom Coburn, a conservative Republican who disagrees with Obama on most issues, as “not only a dear friend but also a brother in Christ. . . . Even though we are on opposite sides of a whole bunch of issues, part of what has bound us together is a shared faith, a recognition that we pray to and serve the same God.”

As Obama travels around the country, he is often asked what he prays for. While he resorts to prayer on a host of issues (one of which concerns the length of Malia’s dresses), a few “common themes” recur. One arises from “the urgency of the Old Testament prophets and the Gospel itself. I pray for my ability to help those who are struggling. Christian tradition teaches that . . . we're called to work on behalf of a God that chose justice and mercy and compassion to the most vulnerable.” He spoke of those who have lost their jobs and struggle to take care of their families; people in pain, who have suffered a loss of self-esteem, or worse, their homes and access to affordable health care. He knows that, as president, he cannot help everyone, and that fixing the economy and seeking peace takes time and patience. But as he moves forward, “it is my faith [and the] biblical injunction to serve the least of these, that keeps me going and that keeps me from being overwhelmed.”

The president talked proudly of the many churches, synagogues, and faith-based organizations that work every day to solve human problems, but noted that there are limits to what private charities can do. “Now, sometimes faith groups can do the work of caring for the least of these on their own; sometimes they need a partner, whether it’s in business or government.” As an example, he discussed the work of the Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, an initiative started under President George W. Bush, and which under Obama is working to expand “the way faith groups can partner with our government. . . . helping them feed more kids who otherwise would go hungry. . . . helping fatherhood groups get dads the support they need to be there for their children. . . . [and] working with non-profits to improve the lives of people around the world.” And while such work must be “aligned with our constitutional principles,” it also should be rooted in “notions of partnership and justice and the imperatives to help the poor.”

The nature and scope of some problems necessarily require a more active public involvement, for “in a caring and . . . just society, government must have a role to play.”

[T]here are some needs that require more resources than faith groups have at their disposal. There’s only so much a church can do to help all the families in need -- all those who need help making a mortgage payment, or avoiding foreclosure, or making sure their child can go to college. There’s only so much that a nonprofit can do to help a community rebuild in the wake of disaster. There’s only so much the private sector will do to help folks who are desperately sick get the care that they need.

And that's why I continue to believe . . . that our values, our love and our charity must find expression not just in our families, not just in our places of work and our places of worship, but also in our government and in our politics.

This is, of course, an area that distinguishes philosophically the president and most Democrats from many Republicans, who place greater emphasis on acts of charity and resist the role of government as compassionate benefactor. It is a debate that goes to the heart of our democracy and the role of government. There is certainly room for principled disagreement. But there is no room to question the president’s faith, or patriotism, or love of country. Perhaps this is why the president also spoke of the importance and need for humility. For however polarized and divisive our politics may become, it is always “useful to go back to Scripture to remind ourselves that none of us has all the answers -- none of us, no matter what our political party or our station in life.”

“The full breadth of human knowledge is like a grain of sand in God’s hands. And there are some mysteries in this world we cannot fully comprehend.” It is this challenge, then, the need to balance uncertainty and humility and to be open to other points of view, with the need to fight for what is right and to remain committed to one’s deeply held convictions, which forms the core of our democracy and underlies the president’s need for prayer. Only by constant “reminders of our shared hopes and our shared dreams and our shared limitations as children of God” can Americans travel forward together.

At the conclusion of his speech, the president noted that, while he hopes his prayers will be answered, he knows “that the act of prayer itself is a source of strength. It’s a reminder that our time on Earth is not just about us; that when we open ourselves to the possibility that God might have a larger purpose for our lives, there’s a chance that somehow, in ways that we may never fully know, God will use us well.” Amen, Mr. President.

Remembering an American Idealist and Regretting a Wasted Year

The natural idealism of youth is an idealism, alas, for which we do not always provide as many outlets as we should. --Robert Sargent Shriver (1915 - 2011)

He embodied everything good and decent and optimistic about America. Sargent Shriver, who died this month at the age of 95, was a genuine American idealist. He believed in the power of individuals to make a difference and the power of youth to transform the world. He devoted much of his life attempting to inspire a culture of service and community activism. Few Americans today really know much about Sargent Shriver. Although his intellect and political skills were formidable, he was overshadowed by his connection to the Kennedy’s; the husband of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, he was perpetually relegated to status of brother-in-law.

In the early 1960’s, when the United States resonated with optimism and the nation’s youth felt inspired to serve, Shriver radiated all of the positive energy and spirit of JFK’s New Frontier. When a young and charismatic President Kennedy declared in his inaugural address, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," it was Shriver who led the way. Shriver created the Peace Corps and was its first director. In its formative years, he inspired an entire generation of Americans to commit 27 months of their life in far off lands; to live among peoples and cultures that had, until then, been alien to them. Now in its fiftieth year, the Peace Corps has sent over 200,000 young people to impoverished and developing countries, building bridges literally and figuratively, teaching, learning, relating, and spreading all that is good and decent about American democracy.

Since his passing, story upon story has been told of how Shriver’s commitment and dedication, his passion for youth, and his unparalleled belief in the power of relationships helped change lives forever. He sent an army of bright, energetic young Americans on a mission of peace, armed only with smiles and a helping hand, and asked them to spread friendship and understanding throughout the world.

The Peace Corps emerged from an unformed idea articulated in a series of speeches in 1960 by presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, who called for the creation of a “Peace Corps of talented young people” to boost America’s attempts to win the hearts and minds of developing nations; an effort, according to Kennedy, that had been hampered by “ill-chosen, ill-equipped, and ill-briefed” ambassadors who were losing influence to the Soviet Union. Kennedy called on Shriver to transform style into substance. No one was better suited to the task. Shriver combined the organizational skills of an experienced and pragmatic businessman (he had spent several years as the manager of Merchandise Mart, part of Joseph Kennedy’s business empire) with compelling salesmanship and sincere idealism to turn Kennedy’s untested concept into a lasting legacy of success.

When the brief reign of Camelot ended and many of Kennedy’s aides and advisors left for home, Shriver stayed behind to lead the Johnson administration’s War on Poverty, a more logistically difficult and politically complex task that required immense discretion and tact. Political enemies and ideological opponents abounded. Once again, Shriver succeeded where others had failed. He built a series of institutions – Head Start, the Job Corps, VISTA, the Legal Services Corporation, and other services for the poor – that thrive to this day, making the United States a better, more compassionate country. In 1972, when George McGovern asked him to be his running mate in a losing presidential election, Shriver was the one bright spot in an otherwise regrettable year. Along the way, Shriver assisted his beloved wife of 56 years in creating the Special Olympics, a cause Eunice championed the rest of her life, and which provided opportunities for young persons with intellectual disabilities to overcome stereotypes and to be recognized for their own incredible talents and abilities.

Shriver always challenged others to work harder, to do more, and to dream bigger. Not surprisingly, the root of Shriver’s concept of service was his faith. A devout Catholic, he tried to model his life after the teachings of Jesus. He admired Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and, starting in high school and throughout his life, asked himself every day, “What have I done to improve the lot of humanity?” As Jonathan Cohn noted recently in The New Republic, “Shriver’s Catholicism was in some ways analogous to Day’s: rooted in the ethics of the Christian Gospels; dedicated to working toward peace, social justice, and redemption of suffering here on earth; and concerned especially with easing the plight of the poor and the disabled.” Always filled with good spirits and good humor, it would be difficult not to be inspired by the life and times of Robert Sargent Shriver.

One of my enduring regrets in life is the lack of vision I demonstrated at the age of 22, the time in life when one’s youthful energy, spirit of adventure, and freedom to set one’s path are at their peak. I graduated from Wittenberg University in May 1981 with plans to attend business school at Indiana University at Bloomington, where I had been accepted as a teacher’s assistant in accounting and could expect an MBA degree two years hence. For the summer, I had a job lined up in the financial accounting department of Dresser Industries in Houston, Texas, where my brother-in-law was employed in oilfield services. He had arranged what seemed at the time a great opportunity, a summer working in a real-life, good paying job at a Fortune 500 corporation. So, off to Houston I went.

It did not take long, however, before I sensed that something was missing and that I had sold myself short. Although my intellectual interests had always pointed in other directions, I was captive to conventional notions of economic security. I could feel myself heading for the life of the “Everyman” and emulating Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, “Before it's all over we're gonna get a little place out in the country, and I'll raise some vegetables, a couple of chickens..." I lacked vision and, worse, the courage of my convictions. I needed more from life and work but did not know how to make it happen. How could I devote my life to something more meaningful than the pursuit of money and profit, necessary perhaps to sustain the economy, but spiritually unfulfilling? I needed more.

Three weeks before leaving for business school, I experienced an existential crisis of sorts. While I did not yet know my direction in life, I was pretty sure it should be more in tune with my passions. Law school, which more closely appealed to my interests in politics, government, and society, had until then seemed out-of-reach. As the son of a minister and a school teacher, two traditionally low paying professions that could not easily support the ever increasing tuition at U.S. law schools, I could not reasonably expect much financial assistance, especially after my parents had just put three children through college over the previous eleven years. Ever the pragmatist, my father pushed me to pursue the practical professions, accounting and business. “You need to make a living,” he would say. When I took a course in Native American Literature in college, he snorted, “What kind of a job will that get you?” Although my father’s advice was well intentioned and influenced in part by his having been raised in the Depression, it glaringly ignored his and my mother’s own paths in life, in which service to others was their calling, their raison d’être. Even then, I felt conflicted by pragmatism and idealism.

When the manager of the accounting department offered to hire me as the full-time replacement for another accountant who was leaving at the end of summer, I mustered the courage to inform my parents that I was withdrawing from business school and staying in Houston. “I want to go to law school,” I said. My parents were accepting, but skeptical, afraid that I would not follow through and would find it difficult to make the transition back to school after a year or more of reality. But this was the first truly independent decision of my young life and, given where I sat in August 1981, it was the right decision. Later that year, I was accepted into a very good law school on a full-tuition scholarship and have been very fortunate in my career opportunities. I have no regrets about the path I eventually took.

When examined from a broader, historical perspective, however, my year in Houston was uninspired. Looking back, it was a wasted year, full of idle, unproductive time in which my most creative thoughts consisted of how to get through the day until happy hour arrived. Now, as I ponder the life of Sargent Shriver and all of the young Americans he inspired to serve; as I think of all the young men and women today who serve in the military, or tutor and teach inner city kids in programs like City Year and Teach for America, or commit to a year of community service in AmeriCorps, I cannot help but wonder why I was not more thoughtful in how I chose to spend that period in my life, before I was tied down with mortgages and children and college tuition. “If a young person has any idealism at all,” Shriver once noted, “it's strongest about the time he finishes college.”

A few years after arriving in Washington, I learned of the Lutheran Volunteer Corps (LVC), a social justice ministry founded by Luther Place Church, at Thomas Circle, when it was led by the Rev. John Steinbruck, a passionate and articulate preacher of the Social Gospel. Based in part on the spirit and model of the Peace Corps, since its founding in 1979, LVC has placed young college graduates (and others) into year-long stints with homeless shelters, HIV-AIDS clinics, low-income housing agencies, immigrant aid services, and public policy advocacy on behalf of poor and low-income people in cities throughout the country. Similar to the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and the Mennonite Voluntary Service, LVC was inspired, consciously or not, by the vision and practical guidance of Sargent Shriver. Although I was fortunate to have later served, in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, on LVC’s Steering Committee and National Advisory Board, I have always felt somewhat cheated for having never been among the more than two thousand LVCers who devoted a year or more of their lives in selfless service to the world, and who learned more from the people and organizations they served than they could ever impart.

I know, of course, that we cannot change the past or travel back in time. Sargent Shriver, as much as anyone, would insist that we look only to the future and commit to it. But if I could have done one thing differently in my life, I would have listened more carefully to the voices of people like Sargent Shriver and his cadre of Peace Corps volunteers. And maybe, just maybe, I would have made better use of my time in the fall of 1981. Everyone I have ever known who spent time in the Peace Corps, or LVC, or many of the other outstanding service organizations, have said the same thing, “It changed my life.” I cannot answer precisely why I was so clueless and unadventurous in 1981. But a touch of the Sarge would have done me some good.

First and Foremost a Preacher: The Anti-War Imperative of Martin Luther King Jr.

As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action. But they asked, and rightly so, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent. – Martin Luther King Jr.

On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City and delivered the single most powerful indictment of the Vietnam War by a leading voice of moral dissent in American society. Before a large gathering of Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, surrounded by such heavyweights as Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel and Yale University Chaplain William Sloane Coffin, King explained why it was time to break his silence on the war. Though he had become closely allied with President Lyndon Johnson, he acknowledged that “when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war.” Over the course of the next 45 minutes, he articulated his opposition to war in principle and to American involvement in Vietnam in particular, condemning in the strongest terms the policies of a Democratic president who had, just a few years earlier, helped King secure passage of the most significant civil rights and voting rights laws in American history.

King chose Riverside Church to demonstrate that the anti-war cause he embraced was not a subversive movement, but resulted from a life-long commitment to Christian principles. He had “come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice.” He anticipated, correctly as it turned out, that his statements would be criticized by many of his own supporters, including members of the black community who believed that King’s foray into the anti-war movement would dilute his efforts to secure civil, economic, and human rights for all Americans. He was “greatly saddened” by such criticism, however, “for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling.”

For King, there was nothing inconsistent in speaking out on behalf of the poor and opposing an unjust war. The build-up in Vietnam was diverting resources away from anti-poverty efforts at home and, because of draft exemptions that disproportionately benefited affluent whites, the poor increasingly were called to “fight and die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population.”

We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. . . .

King was first and foremost a preacher whose faith and calling exceeded national allegiances and compelled him to act within the meaning of his commitment “to the ministry of Jesus Christ.”

To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I’m speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men – for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them?

King also had an abiding faith in American democracy and the principles upon which our nation was founded. Four years earlier, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., he spoke to the hopes and dreams of all American citizens that the nation would one day rise up and embrace the ideals of justice and equality for all. “I have a dream,” he said. In 1964, when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, King understood that beyond the race problem in America was the problem of violence and “the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence.” By 1967, however, his movement for non-violent social change was under attack from some of the very people he was trying to help, from the growing militancy of urban blacks and the rise of the black power movement, to the competing visions of more radical and less conciliatory forces. Yet as a follower of Jesus and as a student of Ghandi, King never wavered in his commitment to non-violence, in his belief that love was more powerful than hate, that to break down the walls of oppression and injustice required an appeal to the hearts and souls of his fellow human beings.

From the pulpit at Riverside Church, King ached for the soul of America and believed it “incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war.” In a manner exceptional for an American social critic and prophet of his day, King’s voice of conscience crossed national boundaries. He reviewed the history of colonial repression in Vietnam and saw how western powers repeatedly sided with the forces of despotism and oppression in squelching the revolutionary forces of independence. Although in 1945 the Vietnamese people proclaimed independence from French and Japanese occupation, U.S. policy makers believed the people of Vietnam were not ready for independence, and for nine years “vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to re-colonize Vietnam.”

As a result, the peasants of Vietnam were denied a chance at real and meaningful land reform, something they genuinely needed, and instead were ruled by one of history’s most vicious modern dictators, Premier Diem. By the time King stood in the podium at Riverside Church, superior American air power and napalm had destroyed an ancient culture, its farms and forests; U.S. forces had killed over a million people, including tens of thousands of children. If King was to take his calling as a Christian pastor seriously, if he was to remain committed to his moral and ethical beliefs, he could not remain silent as the United States subjected a country the size of Italy to more than three times the tonnage of bombs dropped in all of World War II.

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. . . . We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.

As a pastor and as an American, King also was deeply concerned with what the war was doing to the American soldiers who had to fight it, for “what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved.”

It was time, King said, for the madness to cease. In demanding an end to the war, he spoke in language consistent with his pastoral calling and which implicitly embraced the Christian concept of care for the “least of these” as expressed in Matthew 25:

I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. . . . I speak as one who loves America.

King encouraged churches and synagogues to protest the war and to take creative actions in opposition to it. He then looked beyond Vietnam and addressed the wrongs of war itself.

A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

King called for a unilateral cease-fire, an end to the bombing, and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. Although in seven years, U.S. policy makers would accept the wisdom of King’s words, in April 1967, King was very much in the minority. President Johnson never forgave King for breaking ranks. A large segment of the civil rights movement deplored King’s violation of an unspoken contract. The mainstream press also turned on King. The New York Times called King’s sermon at Riverside Church “wasteful and self-defeating.” Life magazine said it was “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” The Washington Post suggested that King’s followers “would never again accord him the same confidence” and said he had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, and his people.”

King answered his critics during a television interview on July 28, 1967. When asked about the supposed contradiction between his efforts for civil rights and his statements against the war, King replied, “Justice is indivisible. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And wherever I see injustice, I’m going to take a stand against it whether it’s in Mississippi or in Vietnam.”

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, one year to the day after his remarks at Riverside Church. We will never know how American history might have changed if the nation had followed King’s advice in 1967. Had America listened to King, thousands of young American boys would have come home and lived to work and love and raise families of their own; the people and environment of Vietnam would have been spared some of the worst destruction in the annals of warfare; and America would not have ended its involvement in Vietnam on the wrong side of history.

As I look back 43 years later, it is apparent that the moral courage of a Martin Luther King Jr. is exceedingly rare. His was a lonely courage. He spoke out against the war at a time when the majority of Americans remained in support of U.S. policy. He branched off when the civil rights movement was divided, when supporters of non-violence were dwindling, and when the easy thing to do would have been to remain silent. He publicly broke from a president who had risked his political support in the South to help the causes for which King had fought his entire adult life, and he rejected conformity to an anti-Communist dogma that had dominated American politics for a generation. He exercised a most difficult form of courage, risking everything for a cause greater than himself.

I recognize that Martin Luther King Jr. was not a saint.  He was not perfect. Like all of us, he was a mortal human being with human flaws. No one understood this better than King. But today more than ever we need people with King’s exceptional courage and prophetic insight, his moral voice and passion for justice, his vision of peace and universal love. As a people, we are less complete in his absence.

A Reflection on Our Times

It would be easy to blame the tragic shooting in Arizona on the ugly political rhetoric that has dominated our political discourse during the last two years. There can be little dispute, after all, that the majority of the most irresponsible outbursts of late have originated from right-wing elements of American society. It is tempting, therefore, to blame Sarah Palin, as some in the media have, for repeatedly using the phrase “Don’t retreat, reload” and for displaying on her Facebook page the crosshairs of a rifle scope targeting selected members of Congress, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the talented and popular congresswoman shot in the head during Saturday’s mass shooting. It is tempting as well to blame the treasonous statements of Sharron Angle, who talked of “domestic enemies” in the U.S. Congress during her Senate campaign in Nevada and “hope[d]” that “Second Amendment remedies” would not be necessary. It would be easy to blame the anti-government vitriol of such right-wing talk show hosts and commentators as Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter, who routinely use heightened and emotionally charged language to fire up their audiences. But although violent rhetoric has become a part of the nation’s political climate, there is no point in laying blame on any political party or commentator for what happened in Arizona.

The fact is that we are a violent country, and a big country, and some of our citizens are mentally and emotionally unstable. America has a long history of political violence that has resulted in the assassinations of four presidents and attempts on the lives of six others. Credible threats are made against President Obama almost daily and extraordinary security measures are an unfortunate fact of life for virtually all modern U.S. presidents. Members of Congress, federal judges, prosecutors – all have experienced a rise in threat levels in recent years. We are a nation that loves its guns and we make it excessively easy for most anyone to obtain one, especially in Arizona. We depict gruesome violence in our movies, in our television shows and video games, and then feign surprise when mentally unhinged people act on those images. We live in a violent country that values individual freedoms – the freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, the freedom of association – even at the expense of public safety.

Whatever demons or voices may have influenced Jared Lee Loughner, it was American democracy that was assaulted by his actions, American civic engagement that suffered the most severe setback. As Speaker of the House John Boehner eloquently stated in canceling this week’s legislative agenda, “An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve.” Indeed, the tragedy in Tucson was an attack on the soul of this nation.

In my lifetime, this country has repeatedly experienced intense political divisions coupled with violence against our leaders. During the 1960’s, with the country angrily divided over Vietnam and civil rights, when civil unrest infested our cities, we lived through the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. The 1970’s brought us Kent State and Watergate, school busing and Roe v. Wade, and the nation remained divided and angry. In 1972, presidential candidate George Wallace was shot in the stomach during a campaign rally. During a seventeen-day stretch in September 1975, two attempts were made on the life of President Gerald Ford. In 1981, John Hinckley stood outside the Washington Hilton and shot President Ronald Reagan and his press secretary, Bob Brady, as they walked to the presidential motorcade waiting curbside. During the cultural wars of the 1990s, when we fought over gun control and abortion rights, right-wing extremists blew up abortion clinics and Timothy McVeigh committed the mass murder of 168 people in Oklahoma City.

That this country is divided on political and philosophical grounds is nothing new. From debates over federalism and state’s rights, slavery and civil rights, women’s suffrage and prohibition, Vietnam and abortion, we have been frequently split at the seams. In the 19th century, we faced secession and civil war; a century later, civil unrest, non-violent protest, and cries of “America, love it or leave it.” When John Kennedy went to Dallas in November 1963, Texas was awash in right-wing anger, fueled by the John Birch Society, over Kennedy’s handling of the Cold War, school desegregation, and federal interference with state’s rights. Leaflets containing the president’s photograph and “WANTED FOR TREASON” circulated throughout the city. When United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson visited Dallas earlier that fall, he was spit on by angry protestors. As ugly and grotesque as much of the political rhetoric has been recently – particularly during debates over health care and immigration – it is, unfortunately, not exceptional. It also is largely disconnected from the troubled miscreants who assassinate our leaders or fire assault weapons on crowds of innocent people.

We may never know precisely what motivated Loughner to shoot a popular and well-liked congresswoman, or why he opened fire on a group of innocent citizens, wounding fourteen people and killing six, including a federal judge, a nine-year-old girl, a congressional staffer, and three elderly citizens. Although he espoused anti-government passions, all we really know is that Loughner was a very troubled soul, a mentally disturbed man with a semi-automatic weapon and an abundance of ammunition. In the days ahead, we likely will learn of numerous red flags and warning signals that went unheeded, clues of his severe emotional instability, actions and words committed long before Saturday morning’s shooting that should have given many people pause.

Much of the commentary I have read so far on this matter has brushed over a principal issue: The refusal of this country to treat mental illness properly, and the lack of adequate mental health counseling in schools and communities. As long as we refuse to deal intelligently with mental illness, including its diagnosis and treatment, tragedies like what occurred in Arizona will continue to be repeated throughout the country.

The events in Arizona should also make us question, once and for all, the foolishness of a gun-culture which allows an apparently mentally unstable young man easy access to a semi-automatic weapon. A sensible and mature society places limits on who may lawfully own and carry such weapons. Yet we are the most armed nation on earth. With nine guns for every ten U.S. citizens, only Yemen, at seven guns per citizen, comes even close. According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, since 1968 more than one million people in the United States have been killed with guns (accidents and suicides included). Is it any wonder that the majority of mass shootings happen in the United States? Is it surprising that we lead the world in gun deaths and homicides?

And yet, there are risks associated with a toxic political culture. Regardless of Loughner’s political influences and motives – his political views appear undisciplined and non-sensical, influenced perhaps by a variety of fringe ideologies – it would do us no harm to tone down our rhetoric, to refrain from speech that blames and accuses, that treats our opponents as not just wrong but evil, and instead discover words of hope and understanding. While ugly political rhetoric and acts of incivility in politics have been a part of the body politic since our early history, the consequences of our words and images are today more far reaching and fall on the rational and irrational, the sane and insane alike. What has changed is technology – cable television, the internet, and a 24-hour news cycle. “What’s different about this moment,” according to Matt Bai of the New York Times, “is the emergence of a political culture — on blogs and Twitter and cable television — that so loudly and readily reinforces the dark visions of political extremists, often for profit or political gain.” Whatever Loughner’s politics, “it’s hard not to think he was at least partly influenced by a debate that often seems to conflate philosophical disagreement with some kind of political Armageddon.”

I do not believe that the tragedy in Tucson was the direct result of irresponsible political rhetoric. But if the horrific events of last Saturday shock the American conscience into more thoughtful and respectful discourse, if it forces our schools and communities to better address mental health issues, if it awakens us to the need for more restrictive gun laws, then it will have left a positive legacy on our nation’s history. Solving our economic, political, and military problems is hard work that requires careful deliberation, compromise and discipline. It cannot be achieved with angry denunciations and the demonization of our opponents. Nor does it serve our nation to lay blame on our opponents for the acts of a disturbed man beyond our control. Anger is easy; empathy, understanding, and compassion requires personal strength and discipline. We must learn, as Jim Wallis writes in Sojourners, “to relate to others with whom we disagree on important issues without calling them evil” and understand that our words “fall upon the balanced and unbalanced, stable and unstable, the well-grounded and the unhinged, alike.”