Democracy Belongs To Those Who Show Up

“Don’t blame me. I’m from Massachusetts.”       

--1970’s bumper sticker

The death of Senator George McGovern this week recalled the most lopsided presidential election in United States history, fifty years ago next month. The 1972 race between incumbent Richard Nixon and McGovern was a blow out for the ages. Nixon beat McGovern with 68 percent of the popular vote and 97.7 percent of the electoral vote.  Only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia went for McGovern. But it was the coda to that election which was most startling. Just twenty-two months later, Nixon became the first President to resign from office, facing impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors that he and his staff committed, ironically, all to get him re-elected in ’72.  But that’s how it is in a democracy. You never, ever really know.

We can never predict what will happen in an election or post-election. Until the vote actually takes place and the ballots are counted, no decision has been made, no man or woman elevated to our highest office. History is still unwritten, just waiting for us to participate.  Whether an election is a landslide or a squeaker, every vote does really count. Consider John F. Kennedy who defeated Nixon in 1960 but did so only by .17 percent of the popular vote.  

So why do so many Americans still not even bother to show up and vote in our presidential elections?  We may call ourselves the land of the free and the home of the brave. 2012 may be the most important presidential election in our lifetime, as many pundits and pols declare. But then why will millions of our fellow neighbors and citizens stay at home on election night and neglect to make their voices heard?

In 2008 131 million Americans eligible to vote did vote, but 98 million other eligible voters just sat out.  57.1 percent voted but 42.9 percent didn’t bother to go to the polls.  That was the highest percentage of voters in fifty years, back to that infamous ’72 election, but I wonder.  Why all the no-shows? 

Is it apathy about the process? Cynicism about the candidates?  Maybe frustration with the whole chaotic process?  I get that many Americans are fed up with the way our country elects its Presidents.  By November 6^th, Romney and Obama will have spent a combined $2 billion to get elected, about $15 per vote. Voters have been buried under hundreds of thousands of hours of radio and TV spots and scores of robo phone calls.  I think most Americans are polled out, debated out, and electioned out.   

Yet this does not excuse any American of eligible voting age from embracing the most precious and hard fought human right we possess as citizens: the simple privilege of voting.  Think of it. We show up at the polls and there are no tanks parked out front to intimidate or harass us, no gun toting soldiers blocking the doors.  There is no one looking over our shoulder in the privacy of the voting booth. We do not fear arrest or imprisonment or torture because we choose to vote.  No religion or political party or movement or tyrant rules us with an iron fist.  We are free. We can vote.

So yes, feel free to join in on all the complaining about how democracy is such a messy experiment at times.  Argue your point.  Praise your candidate or skewer the other guy. Make some civic noise—that’s the right of every single American.  But then a week from next Tuesday, vote. VOTE!

Get up off the couch, put down the screen, click off Facebook and Twitter, stop texting for just a little while, get to your local polling station and then vote.  Be freedom in action, freedom embodied, freedom alive.

As the patriot Samuel Adams declared in 1781, “Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote he is…executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.”

Don’t blame me. I’m from Massachusetts and I’m going to vote.  How about you?

The Girl Who Wanted To Go To School

“Few…are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.”   --Ernest Hemingway

If you don’t yet know the story of 15 year old Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai, you should. Every one in our world should.  If you care at all about human rights and dignity, get to know this incredibly courageous young woman. 

      Her dream was and is the dream of many children and youth in our world: to be able to go to school and to learn.  But for that desire, and for her very public advocacy of this hope for all the girls and young women of Pakistan, a week ago last Tuesday Malala was shot point blank in the head by a Taliban assassin. As I write this column, she lies in a hospital bed in Great Britain, breathing through a ventilator and clinging to life.

      Malala’s public story began in her hometown of Mingora in the Swat district of Pakistan. For years Swat has been the focus of radical Islamic fundamentalist Taliban insurgents who seek to impose harsh religious laws upon the populace, including a total ban on the education of girls and woman. The Taliban has already blown up and destroyed hundreds of schools for girls and women across that nation. In 2009 Malala became a very visible target for her outspoken and thoughtful opposition to this policy. While her neighbors and fellow Pakistanis often turned a blind eye to the Taliban or even agreed with their warped religious views, Malala spoke right up.  She wrote a very public blog for the British Broadcasting System and was the subject of a New York Times documentary on her life and work, and all at just 11 years of age! 

      As Malala blogged, “I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taliban. I have had such dreams since the launch of the military operation in Swat. My mother made me breakfast and I went off to school. I was afraid going to school because the Taliban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools. Only 11 students attended the class out of 27.” And, “On my way from school to home I heard a man saying ‘I will kill you.’ I hastened my pace and after a while I looked back if the man was still coming behind me. But to my utter relief he was talking on his mobile and must have been threatening someone else over the phone.”

      Yet Malala’s fears turned out to be all too true.  Her public stature grew. She was nominated for an international peace prize by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.  She became the Chair of the District Child Assembly in Swat.  The Taliban warned her and her family that she would be shot if she continued to go to school and to speak out.  And so on October 9th, as she and her classmates sat on a school bus, Taliban “soldiers” boarded the vehicle, put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. All because, in the words of one BBC editor, “She was just the girl who wanted to go to school.”

      Such brutality, cruelty, and evil leaves me almost speechless.  What kind of “army” or human being or supposedly “religious” person or movement would assassinate a teenage girl all for the “crime” of trying to go to school?  Pakistan is supposedly America’s ally in the war on terror but where are the Pakistani voices of outrage, protest, and bravery to speak up for and protect the children like Malala? 

      Where and when will the voices of moderate Islam finally emerge in that country and the world? Who will have the guts to finally wrest their faith back from the hands and hearts of folks like the Taliban and their supporters, who use the cover of religion to justify patriarchy and cold blooded murder? Seems to me the citizens of Pakistan need to show much more courage. They already have a great role model in Malala Yousufzai. 

      In an interview on a morning news show in Pakistan last December, Malala said she was speaking up in spite of the danger and even imagined confronting face to face the Taliban. “I think of it often and imagine the scene clearly. Even if they come to kill me, I will tell them what they are trying to do is wrong, that education is our basic right.”

      Pray for Malala.

        

  

Big Bird Wins But Voters Lose

“All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players..."              

 --William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"

     

     I only watched the first fifteen minutes of the Presidential debate last week before I switched the TV over to view the last Red Sox game of the season.  Admittedly that wasn’t a very inspiring choice either, as the Bronx bombers destroyed the BoSox 14-2 on a rainy Wednesday night. But I’ll admit it. I nixed the first debate. I don’t plan to tune into the other two debates either, nor the Vice Presidential smack down between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan or even the televised tussles between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren, which I like to call “He Said-She Said”.

      I’m guilty as charged, a civic slacker I guess. Unlike 67.2 million of my fellow Americans who watched Obama and Romney go toe to toe, the next time the dark suited contenders stride on to the stage to perform, I’ll be watching a rerun of “Mythbusters” or maybe “CSI” to chill out after a long work day.  Yes I’ll absolutely read the newspapers and listen to the radio and surf the net the next day to learn about what happened and what was said. But watching it live? I’ll pass.

            Because there is one truth I think most citizens, politicians and media types know about the debates but are reluctant to name out loud. Debates are about performance more than anything else. Debates are theater, political theater sure, but theater nonetheless. Debates are for the most part highly scripted events, right down to each and every body movement, gesture and seemingly “spontaneous” remark. 

            It’s no mistake debates happen on the stage, before an audience, in a theater like setting.  The stars are two actors who have prepped for weeks and weeks to learn their lines cold, and have rehearsed over and over before the big night. Then finally it is show time. The curtain rises. The thespians stroll on stage and the drama begins. Act 1. Scene 1.  They act. They perform. And just in case one of them actually says something unplanned or unrehearsed their minions and sycophants await just offstage ready to spin it all back on script.   

            And then there’s us, the audience. I’d like to believe that when we watch a political debate we’re sincerely trying to learn more of the substance of what a candidate might actually do if elected. Yet the truth is we are also hoping to be entertained and amused by a candidate’s flub or a debater’s one line zinger, right?  We secretly watch a car race for the crashes.  Why should this blood sport be any different?

            The most talked about, tweeted about, discussed remark by Obama or Romney last week was not the Governor’s plan to cut federal taxes. It was not Obama’s defense of universal healthcare either. No. It was Governor Romney’s remark about cutting funding for Big Bird and “Sesame Street”.  Big Bird.  Is this the central takeaway from the two men who would lead the United States of America for the next four years? Yes it is a cute line and certainly quotable and I’ll bet Obama wishes he’d come up with something similar.  But really?         

            Yet that’s how it has always been for these Presidential sitcoms, political reality TV writ large. No one remembers the substance of the debates but everyone can recall that one great line. Walter Mondale asking President Reagan in 1984, “Where’s the beef?”  Candidate Reagan grabbing a microphone at a 1980 Republican debate and angrily declaring, “Mr. Green I paid for this microphone!” 1988 Vice Presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen skewering Dan Quayle: “Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy!”   

            Lots of light.  Lots of flash. Lots of heat. Lots of posturing.  Good for a YouTube viewing. Then lots of critiquing the next day about who “won” and who “lost”, who “came across” as Presidential and who seemed flat and listless but not a lot of substance. Not much gravitas. Reading the debate articles the morning after, I wondered if I was perusing theater reviews rather than cogent political analysis and thought. 

            One New York Times reporter wrote Romney looked like an upbeat choirboy and Obama like an uptight college professor.  Well thanks for that analysis!  We certainly now know much better who can govern our nation through the most challenging and momentous times in a generation or more.

            So during the next month I pray that every American will read and think and consider carefully all the issues before casting their vote. But for me and my civic discernment, how a candidate “performs” on a debate stage has little or nothing to do with the real work of the Oval Office.

            All the world may be a stage, but finally, being President of the United States is not an act.

           

           

                  

162 Games Later and Still A Fan

"There were three men down, And the season lost, And the tarpaulin was rolled, Upon the winter frost.”  --Paul Simon, “Night Games”

This Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, the Boston Red Sox will play the final game of their 2012 campaign, contest number 162.  The year began, as with all baseball seasons, in the hope that only April in New England can bring. Hope for a competitive team. Hope for the playoffs.  Heck, maybe even hope for another World Series title. Remember?

In the early spring just six months ago, our part of the universe thawed out and warmed up.  In the blooming of the buds on the trees and the bulbs bursting forth from the chilly ground, we believed then that anything was possible. But now 181 days later the Red Sox have experienced their first 90 plus loss season in 46 years.  This team is the worst BoSox contingent since 1966.

I’ll admit I’m very tempted to complain, to whine about this year, to join the predictable hyper-critical “pig pile” now burying our woeful Sox.  They are being ripped to shreds in print, on the talk shows, by the water cooler, and over coffee at Dunkin Donuts.  In reading some of the more caustic sports columnists, like the Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy, you’d think the Sox had committed a mortal sin by having such a sub-par year. “The 2012 Sox would have been better off letting this sorry season bleed out quietly. Sometimes it’s OK to simply admit that there is nothing to celebrate.”   

But guess what? There is a cause to celebrate, always will be if you are a real sports fan, a fan, one who is in and at the game for the long haul. All nine innings, all 162 games and then back again to the next Opening Day in just another six months, April 1, 2013, at Yankee Stadium.  No one bad year can ever change that or change me. My birth as a fan began when I was seven years old in 1968 and discovered the Red Sox.  That year I biked to my local CITGO gas station to purchase an official Fenway Park glass mug and I can still taste the cold chocolate milk I’d drink from that keepsake as a little boy.  Fandom isn’t ever fickle.  A fan is faithful.   

So I’m not ready to adopt another team to cheer for.  I will still proudly wear my Red Sox cap out in public, head held high.  These final weeks I’ve still tuned in to the game as I drive in my car, comforted by the familiar voice of Joe Castiglione, the crack of a bat on a ball, cheers for a great strikeout, boos for the other team. 

Yes this week I’ll pack away all my Red Sox hopes but only until the new season next year when it will all come back around.  And then I’ll hope again.  And then spring will come again.  Fenway Park will echo again with the cries of “Beer here!”  Moms and Dads will bring their excited sons and daughters to their first game ever.  With wide open eyes and full hearts those kids will walk into a 101 year old cathedral of memory, just like their grandparents and great-parents did too.  They will learn how to be a fan. 

A fan: not just for one game or one great championship run. Not just when the hits fall and the sun shines and the “W’s” pile up.  A fan is finally only a true fan when they stick around for the hard times too. When the stars players break our hearts, when the bats swing and whiff, when the losses mount, when the team just does not have the horses or the hearts to win the race.

Still you cheer. Still you hope. Still you anticipate beginning anew, the top of the first inning, no score yet.  That’s true for sports. That’s true for life too.

Because finally “the game”, whether between the lines or in the real world, matters in the playing and not just the winning.  The game matters not only on warm spring days of hope but also on frosty October nights of disappointment, when the tarpaulin is rolled out one last time to blanket the turf and the winter nights settle in and New England turns towards the end of another season.

“Wait ‘til next year!” Maybe a losing season is actually not such a bad thing.  I know the more rabid fans will protest such competitive blasphemy, but life is finally life. The game is the game.  Some days we win. Some days we lose.  But the gift always is this—we get to play. We get to compete. We get to be a fan.   

See you at spring training.

Dependent On Others and Not Apologizing

Dependent (adjective) 1. relying on someone or something else for aid, support, etc.

                          --Random House Dictionary

            One of my favorite architectural gems is the Rhode Island State House in Providence, just down Route 95. “Little Rhody” boasts a grand capitol building, topped by the fourth largest freestanding dome in all the world. But it is what sits on top of that dome which has my interest these days, a statue called “The Independent Man”.  Weighing in at some 500 pounds and 11 feet high, this lone man, herculean and powerful, perched 278 feet above the ground, is a symbol of human freedom and human independence.  

            How we Americans love this image and ideal of a human going it alone, the lone man or woman who makes it all on their own with little or no help from anyone. The entrepreneur who starts a company from scratch in a garage and then reaps billions for herself. The solider who singlehandedly storm’s the enemy fort and saves the day.  The cowboy who confronts the town bandit at high noon, shoots him (of course never in the back) and then rides off into the sunset, dependent on absolutely no one.  Even his best friend is just a horse. Cue music. Roll the credits.

            Oh if only human life were that simple or easy.  Sure I strive to be as independent as the next person. I’m proud of the fact that much of what I’ve achieved in 51 years has come about because of individual effort and yet the truth is: I didn’t get here on my own. Not by a long shot.  I’m not only self made.  I’m God-made. I’m communally created too, the product of a family that loves me, a faith which sustains me and even a government which at times has really helped me. I depended and still am very dependent upon people and institutions, even here in the land of the free. I need the whole society to support me at times on my life journey.

            I’m dependent. I am “The Dependent Man”, though something tells me I won’t get a statue anytime soon. 

            For these days the notion of depending upon others, especially the government, is viewed with derision and contempt in many political circles and on too many campaign trails.  Candidates decry a so-called “culture of dependence” which has overtaken America. Pundits speak of entitlement programs like Medicare (health insurance for the old), Medicaid (health care for the poor) and Social Security (pension for the aged and disabled) as if these are a civic plague, examples of human weakness and an inability to just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. 

            This aggressive anti-government, anti-assistance, and anti-dependency philosophy is best summed up in the title of a recent best selling book: “A Nation of Moochers: America’s Addiction to Getting Something for Nothing” by Charles J. Sykes.  As the author claims, “In the wake of the Great Recession, we’ve shifted from a culture of celebrating and encouraging those who are productive and hardworking, to a culture where handouts, bailouts, freebies and entitlements dominate.”

            To depend upon Uncle Sam for a check to help pay the rent or to buy some food for your family—is that now a moral failing? To depend upon the government for some extra help to pay for fuel oil in the winter or to receive unemployment compensation when you just can’t find a job--is this so terrible? To depend upon Beacon Hill or Washington D.C. for assistance, in the hope of helping the “least of these” our neighbors: the poor, the disabled, the homeless, and the sick.  Is this really so unreasonable?

            Me? I know my family and I are dependent upon the government sometimes. My retired Mom and Grandfather receive excellent healthcare courtesy of a federal government program. As a veteran my father was very well cared for in the last years of his life in part because of the Veterans Administration. I went to a public university because my neighbors in Massachusetts paid taxes making tuition affordable for a middle class kid.  I went to grad school because Uncle Sam backed my loans. Parishioners of mine, between jobs and struggling, never lost their health insurance because the state I live in guarantees health care for every citizen and part of that tab is picked up by the feds.  I once worked with developmentally disabled adults whose housing costs were subsidized by the government.  Otherwise they would not have been able to live and work on their own.

            Are all of these folks really “moochers”? I’m no socialist, to use the pejorative swipe some so casually toss around. I work for a charitable institution which also takes responsibility for doing our small part in housing the homeless and feeding the hungry. I too worry about rising government debt. I know that all our entitlement programs need to be reformed both through reasonable tax increases and benefit cuts, something neither Presidential candidate has the courage to say out loud.  I get that. 

            But as a person of faith I passionately and fully believe that our nation has a moral and ethical responsibility to help folks who are in need, who are hurting, the ones who have been beaten down by the harder edges of bare knuckles capitalism.  No political philosophy should ever trump our communal commitment to show compassion to our neighbors.  No miraculous economic system or “opportunity society” will ever be able to completely eliminate human suffering, poverty or the dependency of the few on the many for help.  

            I’m with Jesus, when he says, quoting the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and sisters and toward the poor and needy in your land.”    

            Sometimes I’m independent as a human being and citizen. But sometimes I and millions of our fellow citizens are dependent and just need some help and care from the government.  When did that become such a civic sin?   

There's More to Life Than Being Busy

Busy (adjective) 1. actively and attentively engaged in work or a pastime; not at leisure
 --Random House Dictionary

I checked my watch today to see if there were perhaps more than just twenty four hours in the day, that maybe 13 o’clock or 14 o’clock had appeared magically overnight, giving me a few more precious hours to manage all that I have to do and accomplish. Because you see I’m busy. Very busy. So if I could only extend the day, squeeze just a bit more time from time, then I’d finally not be so…well..busy. Right?

Part of it is this time of the year, mid-September. Everyone is busy.  Summer is over, regardless of whether or not the calendar claims otherwise. School kids march home from classrooms like modern day suburban Sherpas weighed down by their overstuffed backpacks.  Moms and Dads drive all over New England, delivering children to sports games and music practices and math tutoring and plays. I see these forlorn parents in parking lots, minivans idling away, as they text on smartphones and double check just where they are supposed to go to next.  Who knew so much of adult life would be spent in the car as our second home?

And work, if it slowed down at all last summer, is right back up to speed too.  Emails overflowing the in-box, anxious missives awaiting a response. Cell phones chirping, laptops cranking, offices humming.  The line at Starbucks is long again and traffic is jammed not to the Cape but to Boston.  There’s a reason American workers are among the most productive in the world.  We are busy. Very busy.

An interesting word, “busy”.  Its roots are Germanic and it once meant “to be anxious”.  For a time “busy” meant one was a promiscuous in the romance department! But in the early part of the 20th century “busy” came to mean its current usage: having a very full life, filling up our waking hours with lots of stuff to do.   

There are good things about being busy.  It can keep us out of trouble, as in “idle hands make the devil’s work.”  Busyness can give us a sense of purpose, a reason to bound out of bed in the morning.  Busyness in the culture connotes success: the confident professional striving into the world, Blackberry in one hand, latte in the other, ready to conquer all that waits. There was a time in my life when I loved being busy too, scheduled to the hilt, calendar overflowing from sun up to sundown but not anymore.

Maybe it is age. Maybe it is experience. Maybe it is wisdom. Maybe it is just exhaustion but I don’t think I want to be so busy anymore.  And in talking to friends and family and the folks I serve as spiritual guide?  These days when I ask: “How are you?” they almost always say, “Busy!”  But when I ask them what might make them happier, they reply, “Just more time.”  To be with loved ones. To play. To rest. To pray.  And to not be so…busy.

I’m not really sure how “busy” came to be the normal setting in our world.  Yes some of us are busy at times because we have no choice: a single Mom raising kids and working full time.  A harried worker trying his best to keep his job. The eager college student putting himself through school with a full class load and two part-time jobs. For some busyness equals survival.

But sometimes I think we humans are also busy because we are afraid that if we slow down we might just question how crazily we live, maybe even wonder “Is this all there is?” So we just keep going on. We keep the kids busy in the prayer and hope that they won’t get into any trouble.  We keep busy and end up not knowing our spouse or even children so well anymore.  Worst of all we mistake busyness for meaning in life: that our lives must matter and make a difference because, “Hey—I’m really busy!” That’s my sin.

But there is another way to live and not be so busy and it all starts with the notion of a day, just one day, this day. You see when God made that first day in the Creation story, it was just that, one day. Just one. “God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness God called ‘night.’ And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.”  From the start a day is just that one day: singular, solo, contained. 24 hours. 1440 minutes.  86,400 seconds.

Can’t subtract anything from that and more important we can’t add any more time to that day either.  We can try to get more organized, try to squeeze in more activities, download productivity apps, juggle calendars, sleep less, run faster, rush, rush, rush but at day’s end all we have is a day.

An intentional spiritual life sees that one day as a gift from God, a miracle even. One day which is finite. One day which has never happened before and will never, ever happen again.  When we see any day as “the day” which God has made and God has given, then maybe we can be a little less busy and a little more balanced about our time.

So let’s be busy, sure.  But let’s also remember that unchecked busyness takes a spiritual toll.  That work only matters if it also gives us the chance to play.  That activity only satisfies when it gives way to rest.  That getting ahead for “me” has to be balanced with time to help and serve “thee”.

God knows I’m busy. But God knows too that finally, all we have is one day.

Remembering September 17th, 2001

True confession: I’m relieved that the anniversary of the September 11^th attacks will pass by in a relatively low key fashion this year.  There are remembrances, large and small, but nothing like the nationwide commemorations last year on the tenth anniversary.  

Don’t misunderstand my relief for a lack of compassion towards anyone who lost a loved on that awful September day 132 months ago. I can’t imagine what life is like now for someone who said goodbye one last time to a spouse or child or friend in the days before or on 9/11.  All Americans assumed a bright autumn day was just another normal day, but that normalcy was forever destroyed in the rubble of skyscrapers, in plane wreckage on a Pennsylvania field and in a damaged Pentagon building.  We should always remember that day as a nation.

Yet as an American and person of faith, I need to look for some good in the evil of 9/11, hope beyond the visceral horror, fear and shock I still experience whenever I see the images from that day.  So this year, while remembering September 11^th, 2001, I’ll also remember September 17^th, 2001. 

There wasn’t much good news on that Monday.  The stock market plunged 684 points, 7.1 percent, on its first day of trading post 9/11.  Grim rescue operations continued at Ground Zero. Hundreds of thousands of stranded travelers were still finding their way back home. But in Washington, D.C., President George W. Bush carried out the most courageous act of his eight year Presidency. That day he visited the Islamic Center of Washington and greeted its leaders and members in front of the cameras for all to see. He spoke out forcefully and bravely against retaliatory acts of violence toward American Muslims and Arabs and of the need for interfaith understanding and peace. 

“These acts of violence [on 9/11] against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith. And it’s important for my fellow Americans to understand that,” said Bush. “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war.”

Remember that this happened not even a week after the worst terrorist attack in the history of the United States. The country was a hothouse of anger and fear and on war footing.  Thousands of Americans, anyone who even looked like an “Arab” or a “Muslim”, were suspect in the eyes of many. Mosques received bomb threats.  In Mesa, Arizona just two days before, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a 49-year-old Sikh, was murdered by Frank Silva Roque, who declared in “defense” of his crime, “I'm a patriot and an American. I'm American. I'm a damn American.”

Yet Bush strode into this atmosphere of religious ignorance and hatred with calm and care, speaking as a deeply devoted Christian in defense of his Muslim brothers and sisters.  It was the act of a true statesman and one I want to remember and more Americans should remember too, eleven years after 9/11.  As one who was and is admittedly not the biggest fan of President Bush or his legacy, I have to say that this time he got it right: absolutely, positively, completely.

In a recent New York Times article about Bush’s visit, Samuel G. Freedman wrote, “Eleven years after the fact, Mr. Bush has been treated like a prophet without honor in his own land. He was barely mentioned at the Republican convention last week….Yet there was always another side to Mr. Bush…his deep faith and respect for all religions.” Freedman notes Bush was the first Presidential candidate to visit a mosque and that on September 11, 2001 the President’s appointment schedule included a 3 p.m. appointment at the White House with a delegation of American Muslim leaders.

Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, met with President Bush at the Islamic Center on September 17th and stood behind him as the Commander in Chief asked his fellow American to act with tolerance towards their Muslim and Arab neighbors.  Awad says that the video clip of that speech, “should be played over and over to remind people that what made America great is respect for religious freedom and zero tolerance for hate crimes against innocent people.”

So remember September 11^th.  But let’s remember September 17^th too.  Even the darkest days are visited with glimpses of inspired leadership and God’s light and hope for our far too often broken world.