State of Confucius

I just figured out why we're having a Constitutional crisis over the Presidential election. It's because of the last Superbowl! A while back some folks took the trouble to correlate the NFC and AFC winners over the years against the winners of the Presidency and came up with the NFC roughly mirroring the Republican winners and the AFC the Democrats. So, remember how last year's game ended? Time ran out on the AFC's Titans as they got the ball just a half a yard shy of the end zone. Really close, but no game winning TD. Sound familiar? Obvious proof there's some mystical connection between the NFL and federal elections!

Not! Just because you can line things up in your mind does not mean a causal relationship exists. About the only thing these events share is that they both drew large TV audiences.

But back to the subject at hand. In last month's column, I started ranting on the candidates' apparent love of Machiavelli, but I didn't take the idea as far as I wanted. Machiavelli's The Prince is an intensely interesting book. It's been called many things, but it is basically a set of winning strategies--things like how a leader should best control, inspire and terrify both the people who work for him and his opposition, and when it is best to conquer, retreat or make alliances with other countries. The work has been scorned and vilified over the centuries because it warns against using any sort of moral compass when deciding a course of action. It concentrates on winning the game, not on doing what is right for the body politic.

Throughout the long campaign, both of the major candidates and their supporters have been completely Machiavellian, calculating everything they said. I'm hard pressed to find a single principled stand between them. Consider Al Gore on gun control. I can believe that in his heart he wants to reduce shootings of all sorts by putting major restrictions on gun sales, but did he ever advance any meaningful gun control proposal? No, because his Machiavellian tactics said that would lose too many voters in key states. I guess he forgot he might rally more people to his cause if he did it right. Likewise for George W. He actually ran a double Machiavellian ploy. Follow me here. I have trouble believing that he really gives a damn about abortion, but he needs the votes of the Fundamentalist Christians. He would do their bidding, overturning Roe versus Wade through judicial appointments, in spite of the fact that this amounts to an extreme governmental intrusion into private lives, something he professes to be against. That's the first ploy. The second ploy came during the debates when he denied that he would do this--that he wouldn't use abortion as a litmus test for his appointments. Yeah, right! And all this while complaining about Gore lying to gain the Presidency!

The Machiavellian maneuvering continues in the country's latest spectator sport-recounting votes. In blatant displays of self interest, both sides are attempting to lock out each other's votes. The Republicans even bussed in demonstrators to disrupt the Miami-Dade recount. They succeeded big time. Dimpled chads or not, no recount was done there because the county gave up. They claimed it was the short deadline but the well organized opposition shouting in their hallways was clearly a factor too. The Democrats' rhetoric was a little loftier than the GOP's, but it changed when it served their interest. At one point they supported a full manual recount of every vote in every county in the state--which is exactly what Florida should have done from the start. However, when absentee ballots were held up to scrutiny, they were just as exclusionary as the Republicans, quibbling about postmarks and trying to minimize Dubya's gains. Neither side focused on finding the true outcome of the election.

Is there any alternative to these Machiavellian attitudes? Whatever happened to caring about truth and the public good? Is it possible to be both strong and moral?

2500 years ago in China there was a great philosopher named Master K'ung, usually known in the West as Confucius. Unlike mystics such as Gautama the Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Zoroaster, K'ung lived his life as a government bureaucrat. Oddly enough Machiavelli was a bureaucrat too, but K'ung came to a very different set of ideas. He wrote mostly about how to conduct the business of the state in a righteous way. He despised leaders who grew fat while the people struggled in poverty and wrote eloquently about the duty of officers and ministers to be charitable, to be just and to live modestly. He often phrased this as following the "Will of Heaven" but in real terms it meant doing things for the good of the people as a whole. His work started a tradition of public service in China that survived the comings and goings of several dynasties. Even today I think our current leaders could learn a lot from him to find solutions to our biggest problems: rampant greed, uneven justice, and lack of charity toward those the good times have missed.

We really shouldn't need Confucius that much. Did you know the Bible also exhorts us to help the less fortunate? It says that quite a few times, much more often than it condemns homosexuality, for example. There is a long history of charity and helping others throughout the Jewish-Christian-Muslim tradition. It's been a major factor in establishing the many social programs found in this country, even the government's. Early Christians would take this to extremes, often taking in complete strangers to feed, clothe and house them, regardless of their faith or station.

It's obvious few people do face-to-face charity these days or we wouldn't have a homeless problem. I guess everyone is too scared of what the unwashed will track in on the carpet! No, most people, Christian or not, leave this sort of full frontal charity work to underfunded halfway houses and soup kitchens, or to faceless government welfare programs. But lately we seem to be sliding away from supporting even these. We squabble endlessly over things like school lunch programs and welfare because of the cost, spending our money instead on the latest bomber. Individually we might remember to send a check at Christmas but that's about it.

Or we give at church. Lots of good people think their offerings at church go to help to poor, but in reality only a tiny fraction does. Trust me, I've been a fundraiser and there's a lot of overhead. Especially in the religion biz there's big fancy buildings and staff to take care of before the poor. I'm sure some churches spend more manicuring their lawns than they do on charity. These are usually the ones that will tell you that good works alone do not allow a person into Heaven, that being Saved is the only measure of faith. That's a disgrace. Too often their only motivation to help others is in the form of converting them to the faith. Hmm, do you detect a little self interest on the Church's part here, trying to build up its revenue, sorry, love offerings from the faithful?

Many preachers, especially televangelists, also play up the theme that Jim and Tammy Baker pioneered, that of seeing material possessions as a sign of God's favor. Get real, the true signs of God's favor are not found in shiny cars and large bank accounts. The Godhead's favor is showered throughout this universe without discrimination. It's found at the sub-atomic level, in protons, neutrons and electrons that inexplicably last billions of years without disintegrating--happily assembling into all the shapes and substances we know. It's found in flowers and honeybees, in rainbows and clouds, oceans and mountains. It's found in the celestial mechanics of gravity and nuclear fire as they combine into the miracle of a sunrise every morning. Reality. Nice trick that.

Oops! I'm digressing into areas not covered by the Bible! We'd better get back down to earth before we all get nosebleeds.

Perhaps I overreach by painting all Christians with such a broad stroke. There are lots of wonderful, kind people volunteering their time at church-run charities all over this country, especially now as we approach Christmas. This is a wonderful thing. Even if you don't go to church I would recommend getting involved. Try dropping off some food at the local kitchen or even rolling up your sleeves and serving some meals to the needy. Hand out a little extra change to the street people, buy folks a meal at McDonalds, let them use your shower, SOMETHING! Whatever feels right. And don't be afraid to do it in the other months too.

Not a very Machiavellian attitude, is it? Usually The Prince is boiled down to "the end justifies the means." I can understand that too, but my question there is, whose ends are these? If it was the public good, I probably wouldn't be complaining. But it's all in service of selfishness and greed I'm afraid. I just wish our new leader, whoever he is, includes the charitable side of Christianity in his administration and cuts back a little on the money grubbing give-me-my-tax-cut-and-don't-you-dare-try-to-regulate-me brand of politics in vogue these days. It'd be nice too if he'd remember that literal reading of the law often leads to foolishness just as literal reading of the Bible can. Look for the spirit in which it was written, not the loopholes.

And having the new cabinet employ a little wisdom from Master K'ung might be a good thing too. I don't think Bush or Gore will take any of my suggestions though. Lately I've ceased to care which party wins; just get on with it! You know what? Let's throw out the whole election and let the Superbowl really decide the new President this year! The inauguration could take place right after the game and we'd only be about a week late from when we usually do it, what do you think? At least the lawyers won't make any more money arguing about those damn dimpled chads that way. You know, this might work! I'm going to go back into the Closet now to find a number for an oddsmaker I know, because I think it's the Vikings this time and that means Bush.

Anyway, be sure to have a peaceful and charitable Holiday Season! Thanks for reading and until next month, the Closet is closed.


(C) 2000 - Rusty Pipes