When I worked as a drug addiction counselor, I came to a time when I saw a client taking a path that led, step-by-step, to his own death. No matter how I tried to warn him, he would simply continue making plans for his happy trip to oblivion. Seeing my efforts, and my frustration, an older counselor took me aside and told me, “It’s a good thing that you care. But you can’t care so much that your greatest strength becomes your ultimate weakness.”
It’s time for the progressive movement to hear those words, and to heed the wisdom they contain.
The strength of the progressive movement is an unquenchable thirst for justice. Equal rights for racial minorities, for women, and for gays is not founded in any intellectual celebration of diversity—though there is enough of that—but rather in the overarching understanding that what separates us is not nearly as important as what unites us. We are all humans and all precious children of God, however we understand Him/Her/Them. Because we are all human, we are on the same level, and we deserve the same respect and should enjoy the same rights and protections of the law.
But that same respect has to be extended even to people who disagree with us. While it may be pleasurable to cast our political opponents as true enemies and to vilify them as such, I believe it cuts against the core of progressive philosophy to do so. The most important part of working with our conservative brothers and sisters is to remember that they are truly our brothers and sisters. We are all one—e pluribus unum—and to disparage or discount one part of us does the same to the entire body politic or body of faith.
Yes, I know that conservatives have, all too often, not extended that same sort of consideration to others. That doesn’t matter. The progressive movement cannot allow itself to be defined by conservatives. It must define itself. It must set itself apart from the hatred and politics of division to which America has been addicted for decades. It must move forward to all of the goals we have set before us, but that movement cannot be a blundering steamroller that plows over those voices raised in dissent. If we do so, how will anyone know we are not a continuation of those things we seek to change?
If we are to move forward to justice, then we must do so with an equal measure of mercy. Justice, when metered with mercy, can be a salve to heal all wounds—even those which are not immediately apparent. Without mercy, justice is nothing more than brute force and becomes indistinguishable from the forces from which it seeks retribution. It becomes reaction, rather than action.
We have to understand that America, as a whole, remains more conservative than progressive. Yes, Barack Obama was elected president, in large part because he promised to fix our health care system and right the economic injustices of our current economy. But at the same time, Prop. 8 was passed in California, denying the basic right of marriage to the gay members of our families. Similar measures were adopted in Florida and Arizona. In Arkansas, the ability of children to enjoy protective rights of any unmarried parents, gay or straight, through fostering or adoption was stripped.
These are truly unjust actions. But if we allow the progressive movement to be broadly reactive without first building the shared values and beliefs that make such actions sustainable, then our house will turn out to have been built upon the sand. And when the electoral rains come, we will be washed away as thoroughly as it now appears our opponents have been.
America stands ready to enter a new era. Progressives are positioned to be a leading voice in determining the direction in which we will move. But we must not forfeit our voice because the progress towards our goals must be slow and winding. We must temper our thirst for justice with the strength of our mercy—or else we risk allowing our strength to become our downfall, and all the work we have done to come this far will have been offered in vain.
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For another response to Rabbi Lerner’s Op-Ed, read Hussein Rashid’s blog here.
