January 10, 2010

 

Good Intentions II

I left some ground uncovered yesterday in my discussion of Ollie Stone and good intentions. As a matter of fact, it was the central reality that got me thinking about the whole thing in the first place: people tend to praise the neutral-speak of a David Gergen type, or a Richard Lugar or a Mike Huckabee as though acknowledging peoples' good intentions were some magic formula for solving problems, but I as I tried to make clear yesterday, almost everyone has some high-minded rationale for the arguments they make. Factory owners don't wake up every morning wondering how they can pollute the environment and environmentalists don't spend their time secretly hoping every human will die and the world can be turned back over to the sage brush and sea urchins. There are a few outright misanthropes in the world, but that teenage urge to destroy mailboxes with a bat swung from a speeding GTO, just for the sheer buzz of it, is not the abiding condition of the body politic.

The real difference between people is not in being able to formulate good intentions. The difference lies in believing that a debate should yield, at some point, to an objective universal answer.

We're no longer after the truth, in other words, we're after our selective version of the truth, and we take solace in knowing, after all, we have "good intentions." We "mean well."

But how would you like to be known as the "meant-well Congress" or the "great on paper Engineering Company?" How would you like to be a member of the "really good intentions Chapel?"

At some point, we have to stop giving praise to the pasty-faced anemics who keep complimenting everyone's wonderful heart and start seeking the people who speak loud and plain and without apology. The last presidential election wasn't so much an election about policy, but about style. Who can act calm and peaceful and well-intentioned? Who can appear never to get angry? Who makes us feel like, if nothing else, there will be no unpleasant scene in the restaurant?

The Lord said 'blessed are the peace-makers,' but how, really, do you make peace?

..by being willing to wade into the fight and determine who is telling the truth.

 

More of the Farm Journal --January 10, 2010