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The
Compassionate Community: Ten Values to Unite America
Miller's 'new moral vision' for America
Review by James O. Chatham, Special to the courier-journal.com, September 30, 2006
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The Compassionate Community: Ten Values to Unite America by Jonathan Miller, Palgrave Macmillan
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Many of us Americans have convinced ourselves that the only way for us "to win" is to trash and vilify our adversaries. It happens in the marketplace, in courtrooms, in athletic
contests, in religious organizations and most emphatically in political campaigns: We believe we have to show how rotten and evil the adversary is for us to prevail.
We may win temporary victories this way -- especially elections. But the great loser is human community, which gets battered, undermined and destroyed. We create a
society that does not respect or trust its leaders and feels deeply cynical about its own prospects.
Jonathan Miller has set out to find a better way. Are there
fundamental values people of differing religious and political persuasions can find in common, values that will bring us together and upbuild community? Is there an escape from
our current adversarial suicide?
Miller, the state treasurer of Kentucky and a devout Jew, wants us to focus on values
he finds in several religious traditions, including his own. The greatest is compassion. "There is no value more celebrated in the human experience than compassion. ...
Nearly every world religion ... has accepted God's revelation of compassion for others." The central theme of The Compassionate Community is, "Love your neighbor as
yourself." This is where religious ethics begin.
Building on compassion, Miller develops "10 essential American values that emanate
from this core theme:" opportunity, responsibility, work, family, freedom, faith, justice, peace, respect and life. He associates each with a biblical character (Noah, Moses,
Esther, etc.). With stories from his political and family life, he discusses each, naming specific programs across the country that act on that value. And he bids us, his
readers, to join the effort. A section at the end provides organization names and e-mail addresses.
The book gives a new moral vision for America, a vision to replace the "politics of self-interest" that currently ravages us. It also issues a strong call to commitment,
connecting the vision with specific commitments we can make.
The question the book leaves us with is: How are we, and our leaders, going to
abandon our current path and replace it with another? Miller writes, "All it takes is a recommitment by all Americans to show compassion for others and to demand that our
elected representatives, civic activists and religious leaders join in ... this journey." Miller provides www.TheCompassionateCommunity.com for more information.
Miller is a deeply devout man. He also has broad knowledge of governmental and private human help programs. In this book, he brings the two together to show us, his
people, a better way. The book seems idealistic. It is hard to imagine how great numbers of people will follow its call. But with the innate compassion that resides in the
hearts of millions of Americans, is it not possible that effective national leadership can ignite the flame. Many of us live in that hope.
[James O. Chatham is pastor emeritus of Highland Presbyterian Church in Louisville.]
Miller seeks treasure of kinder, gentler democracy
Review by Frank Lockwood, Lexington Herald-Leader religion writer, October 21, 2006
Publisher's Weekly calls The Compassionate Community "a must-read for all Americans concerned about the future of their country."
In 1892, the Supreme Court, in Holy Trinity Church vs. U.S., referred to the United States as "a Christian nation." At the time, most American leaders considered the
Bible the final arbiter on religious matters. Entire towns closed down on Sundays, placing a higher priority on church than on commerce.
Today, America is a far more diverse place with many holy books and several Sabbaths.
Many people view religion as divisive and want to remove it altogether from the public sphere.
But Jonathan Miller, Kentucky's state treasurer, contends there are lowest common denominators that people of all faiths share that can provide a faith-based foundation to
undergird American democracy.
In The Compassionate Community: Ten Values to Unite America, Miller seeks these universal values.
The greatest, he says, is compassion. Love of neighbor is an idea that Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, plus Native American
and African indigenous religions already embrace.
"These traditions teach us that showing compassion for others, particularly the needy, is a manifestation of God's love for us all," he writes. "This ethic of compassion for
others is deeply ingrained into American history and culture."
Atheists and agnostics aren't excluded from Miller's community either. Anyone is welcome who believes in family, faith, freedom, work, respect, responsibility,
opportunity, justice, life and peace.
Miller, who is Jewish, teaches Sunday School classes at Lexington's Temple Adath Israel. Each of the book's 10 chapters focuses on a Hebrew Bible hero or heroine and
uses the story to teach a moral principle. For example: Abraham and the Value of Responsibility; Deborah and the Value of Justice; Moses and the Value of Freedom.
Each chapter also offers Miller's proposals for advancing his values agenda. Justice, for example, is promoted by supporting high-quality education for all. Respect is fostered,
Miller argues, by (among other things) supporting campaign finance reform, lobbying and ethics reform and redistricting reform.
In The Compassionate Community, Miller takes some of the Democratic Party's traditional values and reframes them in religious terms.
For example, he calls for a "holy war on poverty." Arguing that the money we spend on foreign oil helps fund terrorism, he calls for a "declaration of American energy
independence."
Miller also advocates what he calls "Faith Balance." Instead of mandatory school prayer, Miller suggests setting aside a "moment of silence," which children could
devote to prayer if they so desire. This proposal appears to conflict with Wallace vs. Jaffree, a 1985 Supreme Court case that struck down a law authorizing a one-minute
period of silence in Alabama schools. Similar laws have since been passed in Virginia, Indiana and Texas.
Under "Faith Balance," Miller suggests the Ten Commandments are problematic if posted in public buildings. Instead, he suggests creating a multifaith display focusing
on "compassion."
How Miller's "Faith Balance" proposals will play among voters remains unclear. The state treasurer suggests Kentuckians are placing to much of an emphasis on hot-button social issues.
"In 2004, I traveled to some of the poorest counties in Kentucky -- among the poorest counties in the United States -- to campaign for state legislative candidates," Miller
writes. "I ventured into the Appalachian 'hollers' -- valleys of substandard houses and trailers without running water or indoor plumbing -- to talk about educational opportunity
and affordable health care. I was met time after time with one question: 'What is your position on gay marriage?'"
Miller, a Harvard-educated Democrat and former congressional candidate, writes that American politicians should focus less on partisanship and more on the common good.
That's a call that resonates for many people. Publisher's Weekly calls Miller's book "a must-read for all Americans concerned about the future of their country." Politicians
and religious leaders are also recommending the book.
The biggest plug of all comes from former vice president Al Gore. The 2000 Democratic presidential nominee calls The Compassionate Community an "elegantly constructed,
value-laden" book.
All the King's Men
Review by Roger K. Miller, courier-journal.com, September 16, 2006
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All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, 1946 (Harcourt)
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A central thing to bear in mind in reading Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men is that the politician Willie Stark, like Huey Long, the Louisiana governor and senator upon
whom he is based, actually delivers substantially on the grand promises he makes for better schools, medical care and roads for ordinary citizens mired in backwoods poverty.
In Long's time, ordinary Louisianans, black and white, appreciated this political rarity immensely, though not many others did, aside from a few people such as the journalist
(and admirer of rogues and scamps) A.J. Liebling. In Warren's novel, it is also a journalist, Jack Burden, who most appreciates this promise-keeping -- or, rather, ex
-journalist -- for Jack has left newspapering to become Willie's factotum and right-hand-man.
"At least the Boss does something," Jack says at one point, unlike the previous half
-century of administrations of the unnamed Southern state. "They sat on their asses," Jack continues, feathering their nests and those of their supporters at the expense of
the citizenry. From such conditions do dictators often spring.
That said, it should be emphasized that All the King's Men is not essentially a political
novel. It is the classic tale of a decent man fallen from great height because of his own flawed nature. First published in 1946, it won the Pulitzer the next year, was made into
a multi-Oscar-winning movie in 1949, has been perennially popular for 60 years, and has been repackaged in this Harcourt paperback as a tie-in to the new movie version
starring Sean Penn, which opens Friday.
For that matter, neither is it exclusively the story of Gov. Willie Stark. It is at least as
much, perhaps even more, about Jack Burden. Jack narrates the novel from the viewpoint of 1939, looking back over the previous three decades. About a third of the
way through, he comments that "the story of Willie Stark and the story of Jack Burden are, in one sense, one story."
In the beginning, circa 1920, Willie is a rural innocent -- honest, earnest, dogged and slow-moving. When he learns that, in what had been deemed his big break into politics,
he has been used as a stooge by the establishment, Stark determines to get back at them by succeeding on his own.
He succeeds with a vengeance, becoming wildly popular with everyone but the
entrenched interests. They complain that Willie is giving the state away and driving off business -- complaints similar to those made at the same time against President Franklin Roosevelt.
In the course of chasing his glory and combating those who would thwart it, Willie changes radically. He turns to using all kinds of low tactics; he motivates aides and
enemies alike through fear, bribery and blackmail.
Through it all, Jack sticks with him, wondering, increasingly, why he does. It is
certainly neither for love nor money. It seems like a compulsion, which could be right, for Willie says, simply, "you work for me because I'm the way I am and you're the way
you are." The unstated connection may be that both are trying to flee their past.
Jack's past has been one of irresponsibility. The novel tracks the growth of his
character out of this trait.
Opposing Willie's dark vision that "man is conceived in sin and born in corruption" are
Adam and Anne Stanton, idealistic brother and sister and Jack's friends since boyhood; indeed, Jack has long been in love with Anne.
It does not give too much away to tell that Willie, like Long, is assassinated by what might be termed a disgruntled acquaintance. In fact, the book ends in a slaughter --
killings and other deaths triggered by a Southern Gothic miasma of accusations, personal guilt, a revelation of falsely assumed parentage and shifts in romantic/sexual relationships.
Warren (1905-1989), a native of Guthrie, Ky., was a renowned poet, a gift that comes clearly through in the novel's thick, descriptive language. Willie's native Mason City, for
instance, is "the place where Time gets tangled in its own feet and lies down like an old hound and gives up the struggle."
At the end, Willie's estranged wife Lucy tells Jack she has to believe that Willie was a great man. Later, Jack tells himself he has to believe the same.
I don't know. I'd like to believe it, too, but I have my doubts. At the very least it can be said that this is a great novel about a man who wanted to be great.
[Roger K. Miller, a former newspaper book review editor, is a freelance writer, reviewer and editor.]
Is anybody happy?
Lee Iacocca, former president and chairman of Chrysler Corp., in a June 26 Fortune magazine interview with Alex Taylor III. Article appeared in the July 26, 2006 issue of The Kentucky Gazette.
"Why am I writing a book at all? I'm a patriot. I think this country is screwed up royally, and I can't sit idly by while it goes to hell. We have to stand up and lead before we're
taken over by the Chinese. Out of the past nine presidents, I probably voted for five Republicans and four Democrats. A pox on both their houses. I could have run for
president in 1988 as a Democrat-Independent, but I'm glad I didn't.
"When I was at Chrysler, I only took a salary of $1 a year, though I made a lot of
money on stock options. When I saw Lee Raymond of Exxon Mobil made $400 million in one year – that's pretty absurd. How do you explain that?
"I don't have to pull any punches (in the book). You have to be more decorous when you are running a company, but I'm not worried about that anymore. I never in my
lifetime saw so many people who are so affluent, but they are all anxious. Is anybody happy anymore?"
Deliver the Vote
Review by Dale Emmons, Campaign & Elections Magazine, "Political Bookshelf" pg. 52, May 2006
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Deliver the Vote: A History of Election Fraud, An American Political Tradition -- 1742-2004 by Tracy Campbell
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My ole Kentucky home has a colorful and sorted history of election related fraud. By highlighting just one Kentucky episode detailed in this great book you will understand the
tradition of which I write. Following an election in 1900 a dispute arose. William Goebel the Democratic nominee for Kentucky Governor was assassinated because
Republicans feared he would win his challenge to their nominee's apparent victory. They had reason to fear! Goebel was administered the oath of office on his death bed.
While the Bluegrass does not have a monopoly on this behavior, Campbell notes our "long sordid tradition" of
thwarting majority wishes. The examples are numerous: a 19th-century constitutional ban against ministers holding political office (because so many were opposed to slavery
); elections by stand-up "voice" vote until the Civil War; and the 1905 theft of a mayor's race in Louisville that was so blatant the courts
overturned it, only to see the Louisville bosses, the Whalen brothers, return to power in the next election.
This is not just a Kentucky book. Yes the writer, Tracy Campbell, is an Associate
Professor of History and Co-Director of the Wendell H. Ford Public Policy Research Center at the University of Kentucky, yet his content is national in scope. Drawing
upon records of elections from our pre-colonial era through the 2004 election, Dr. Campbell chronicles how a persistent culture of corruption has long thrived in American elections.
American elections are often held up as the model for other democracies. Yet following the bitterly contested 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, Delivering The Vote reveals
that our democratic house has never been in proper order. In an earlier review of this book my friend and noted Kentucky journalist Al Smith wrote, "One of the problems
with crooked elections, for all but the losers, is our habit of joking about them." He added that the stories "are so comical they render us insensitive to the darker truths of
persistent corruption undermining our democracy."
In closing allow me to return to some disgraceful episodes which occurred in my state
and to a personal note. In the 1980's and 1990's in the Appalachian region of Kentucky, there were murders of two candidates for sheriff. Dr. Campbell then gives us
a timely note on the conviction for vote fraud of a "Pikeville attorney and mega-rich coal
operator." Details related to this case continue to surface in recent reports about his interest in the political fortunes of several high-ranking officials. Prior to being in the
unenviable position of becoming the recipient of witness subpoenas from both the federal government and the criminal defendant in this vote fraud trial, I was admittedly a
bit naive about the consequences. Having learned this lesson in the school of hard knocks, I now have a clear understanding of the gravity of this subject.
For political professionals and citizens this book will serve as a guild which offers some
surprising suggestions to a demoralized electorate to claim the democratic birthright intended for our great nation. For those who would like to hear Dr. Campbell deliver a
lecture on this book, he will be featured at the American Association of Political Consultants Mid-West Chapter Conference in Kentucky June 9-10, 2006.
Politics Without Passion
Review by George F. Will, Washingtonpost.com, May 14, 2006, Original Review HERE
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Politics Lost: How American Democracy was Trivialized by People who Think You're Stupid by Joe Klein
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Half a century ago, the best columnist America has ever produced, Murray Kempton, lamented that the absence of honest passion was a shared characteristic of professional
wrestling and American politics. Kempton was dismayed because in 1952 the Eisenhower campaign hired an advertising agency. What would we come to next?
What Time magazine columnist Joe Klein thinks we have
come to -- politics "gangrenous with cynicism" -- is summarized in the title of his invigorating new book, "Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized
by People Who Think You're Stupid." Politics, he says, has become "overly cautious, cynical, mechanistic and bland," sins he blames on professional political consultants.
Klein's memory of what he craves -- the "natural," "personal," "spontaneous" politics of
"freshness," "unpredictability" and "naked emotional intimacy" -- is of the brief, eloquent address Robert Kennedy made to an African American audience, outdoors in
Indianapolis, the night Martin Luther King Jr. died.
But that was elicited by a tragedy. If banality is the price we pay for the mostly
mundane politics of a tranquil democracy, we should pay it gladly. The world would happily have forgone the most luminous episodes of democratic leadership -- Lincoln's,
FDR's, Churchill's -- in order to avoid the catastrophes that elicited them. Pericles would not have been Periclean if Athens's problem had been gasoline at $3 a gallon.
"It was," Klein writes, "Richard Nixon who really represented the future in 1968." That
campaign, "pureed by pollsters" (a characteristically felicitous Klein phrase), was indeed a triumph of packaging.
But Klein neglects another 1968 campaign, George Wallace's, which was spontaneous
, personal, even visceral, emotionally honest -- and repellent. When, during the first 2000 debate, Al Gore could not stifle the sighs that expressed his disdain for George
W. Bush, Gore was being spontaneously honest. And the country recoiled, rightly.
Klein says that "no pollster, indeed no hired political consultant, has ever taken so
active a role in determining the style and content of a presidency" as Pat Caddell did for Jimmy Carter. His presidency-as-permanent-campaign, run "from a consultant's-eye
view," resulted in a significant dumbing-down of the office. But that is how it began :
Carter's politics of ostentatious "authenticity" -- his peanut-farmer-who-carries-his-own-luggage act -- triumphed over Gerald Ford's unfeigned naturalness.
Klein rightly connects the politics he dislikes with the fact that "an enormous special
-interest industry seemed to sprout instantaneously in Washington, starting in the late 1960s -- lobbyists and researchers and fund-raisers" for this, that and the other faction.
Well, yes: High-stakes government that directly dispenses trillions of dollars and influences, with tax benefits and regulations, the flow of trillions more, elicits a high
-stakes influence industry. Thoughtful people who recoil from many repugnant aspects of contemporary politics should squarely face the fact that big government begets bad politics.
But now big government is going to fix things. It has discovered a duty to elevate our
political discourse.
The McCain-Feingold law regulating the quantity, content and timing of political speech
includes a provision requiring candidates to appear, at least by their voice, in their ads, saying the functional equivalent of this: "I'm [candidate's name] and I approve this ad."
Such "stand by your ad" requirements rest on two assumptions, neither of which has anything to do with McCain-Feingold's ostensible purpose of combating corruption or
the "appearance" of it.
The first assumption is that forcing close identification of candidates with their ads will
discourage negative ads. The second assumption is that negative ads are bad.
The first assumption is dubious, because negative ads can convey true and useful
messages, and because negative ads work and so will continue to be used. The second assumption is sinister: Government has a right to try to set what it considers
the proper tone of speech in campaigns that determine control of the government.
One moral of this story is that aesthetic laments, such as Klein's, about the frequent
tawdriness of democratic politics can incite improvers who will make matters worse. Still, Klein's high-spirited and morally serious book is a saunter down memory lane,
through many political moments that will make you cringe and a few that won't, such as:
At a town meeting, a man demands to know what the candidate would do about "all
these bastards" born to welfare mothers. The candidate, Klein recalls, "glared at the man -- he seemed truly angry -- and said, 'First, sir, we must remember that it is our
duty to love all the children.' "
So spoke, during the hotly contested South Carolina primary in 2000, an indignant
George W. Bush. Politics still has exhilarating moments.
georgewill@washpost.com
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