Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Our Exceptional Republic

In our faith, in our politics, in our finances, in our daily lives–the following passage from the Gospel of Luke is more than a script in a religious book. It is a story and lesson that transcends all walls and borders we have constructed for ourselves, and can bring us closer to that “More Perfect Union” once dreamed of in tougher times:

9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11  The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am  not like other people-robbers, evildoers, adulterers-or even like this  tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

  13  “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up  to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a  sinner.’

  14  “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified  before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and  those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

These troubling times aren’t about how much you’re giving from your bank account, though charity is needed; they’re not about how compassionate you are, though empathy is needed; they’re not about how much you have done individually, though great individual effort is needed.

The message from this passage isn’t about being justified before my God or any other; it is about the one, simple rule that made America and has bound it together for scores and scores of years–“Love thy neighbor.” It is a credo so universal, so fundamental and yet so seemingly-radical today that it cannot be found in any political party plank; yet it is the one truth of American politics and the one antidote for an ailing republic.

What we need in our public servants–and what we need to show each other as citizens–isn’t the “look at me” attitude. (That I should write so frequently makes me equally guilty of this appraisal) American pundits and cynics cling more ruthlessly today to the notion of “What have you done for me lately?” and not the eternal stuff of true Exceptionalism:

“To seek, to strive, to find, and not to yield.”

Look not at others and cry, “What have you done?” but look at yourself and ask, “What have I done?”

If your answer is, “I have done enough,” then you have failed the test of citizenship in the Exceptional Republic we fight so fervently to maintain.

The coursing blood and steeling pulse of these united states are the citizens who stand up and say, “My country today will be better than my country yesterday–for all people.“


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14 comments

  1. ItStands

    to that Republican claim on “American exceptionalism.” We are exceptional, but not because we shoot off our guns more or push other folks around harder. If we are to be exceptional, it’s because we never say quit, we never believe it’s good enough, and we will never rest while there are still mouths to feed, futures to foster and peace to be understood and obtained in every darkened corner of the world.

    We are less Charlie Sheen and Douglas MacArthur than we are those nameless, faceless Americans who make the small sacrifices every day that make this country run, and those who have given their lives without fanfare or remembrance to a cause so remote, so extraordinary that it is rendered delusional:

    Peace.

    Thanks for reading, as always, friends.

  2. Strummerson

    of a Rabbi who always kept a note in each packet.  One said “I am nothing but dust.”  The other said “The Universe entire was created for my sake.”  We often encourage our children to strive to be exceptional, to do their best.  But we also caution them that they are no better than anyone else.  Each nation, culture, and community should strive to be exceptional, not claim it as a privilege.  

    The city on the hill image comes from Matthew, where Christ encourages his dejected followers by comparing them to a shining city on a hill.  Though they feel lowly, invisible and inconsequential, he compares them to Jerusalem, the city whose physical glory and position as the religious and political (and thus cultural) center cannot be ignored even if one tries.  Winthrop challenges colonizers of Massachusetts to be a city on a hill, for “all the eies of the world are upon us.”  It is a charge and a heavy one.  He obligated them to strive to become an ennobling light to the whole world.  Reagan perverted this into a facile claim of providential privilege and prerogative, suggesting an irreducible infallibility.  This is what conservatives mean by ‘exceptionalism’ and its a complete chauvanistic hollowing out of the ethical force of the formulations they draw upon.  They don’t know jack all about the Bible they tout or American History.  

  3. John Allen

    Rather, it is rooted in competition. There isn’t much of a possibility for “love thy neighbor” when your neighbor is viewed as a competitor. The Right loves to push the claim that America is a Christian nation. In reality, America is the least Christian of nations.

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