Editor’s note: This commentary is by Peter Berger, an English teacher at Weathersfield School, who writes “Poor Elijah’s Almanack.” The column appears in several publications, including the Times Argus, the Rutland Herald and the Stowe Reporter.
[E]very Christmas Poor Elijah treats himself to “A Christmas Carol.” Ebenezer Scrooge is a powerful man. His tyranny extends over his debtors, his workers, his family and London’s huddled masses. Happily by the story’s end, thanks to three guiding spirits, Scrooge comes to his senses, repents, and becomes as good a man as the good old city ever knew.
Like my friend, I’ve always taken that to mean that there’s likewise hope that each of us in our human folly, our error, and our own excursions into iniquity can come to our senses and heed the voices of our better angels.
Somehow Scrooge’s renewal renews my own hope, too. At least it always has.
There is a man in our land today whose power extends far beyond Scrooge’s. I’m talking about the current occupant of the Oval Office, or as his press secretary prefers to style him, “this President.”
I’m not going to catalog here all the lies he’s told, the manifold times this President has denied saying what he’s on record – audio and video record – as having said, or the times he’s denied with a wink the clear meaning of the words, both errant and deliberate, that issue routinely from his mouth.
It’s his mouth that last week maligned a female senator who allegedly came to his office, begged for his money, and “would do anything” for it. I doubt there are many people in Vermont, Queens or Congress who missed his clear implication or who would miss it were it said about their sisters or their daughters.
His press secretary countered that only someone whose mind is in the gutter would think this President meant anything sexual. It’s not like this President ever boasted on video in language my students can’t use about his fondness for the sport of grabbing women by their genitals.
Oh, wait. That is this President. He’s also the man who bragged on the radio about using his power and position to invade women’s dressing rooms and ogle them when they were naked. He’s also the man who responded to a journalist’s challenging questions by observing “there was blood coming out of her wherever.”
If the obscenity of his words were the worst of it, we’d probably find a way to deal with him the way families deal with the leering, puerile second cousin everyone avoids when he tells bathroom jokes.
Sadly, it’s not the worst of it. This is the man who prides himself on his lifelong avarice for power and his disdain for the ethical scruples that haunt most of the rest of us in our consciences. This is the man who defines the moral high ground by his willingness in his private life to use his money to buy political favors, favors that profit his own interests, even as he denounces the politicians he accuses of selling him those favors.
This is the man who lies without reservation. This is the man who governs by whim. This is the man who never misses an opportunity to congratulate himself, who never learned that bragging is unseemly. This is the man who can compare himself to Lincoln without blushing.
This is the man who understands less about American government and the blessings of liberty than my eighth grade students.
I’m only a small student of history, but I know what Mr. Lincoln said about the advent of an American tyrant. He warned us that our greatest danger would come from within, that someday there would spring up among us some man “possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition,” whose own “distinction will be his paramount object.” This man would “strike the blow and overturn that fair fabric” of our republic, the government by the people that from its beginning has stood as “the fondest hope of the lovers of freedom throughout the world.”
Mr. Lincoln prophetically exhorted us that “when such a one” does come, “it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.” Mr. Lincoln instructs us that, now as then, “gratitude to our fathers,” “justice to ourselves,” and “duty to our posterity” require that we thus defend our republic.
We are required to do this.
I confess that, despite my customary Christmas hope for renewal, I despair that our elected Machiavelli will see his chastening spirits. But perhaps my countrymen will hear Mr. Lincoln. Perhaps they’ll see past their President’s smirk to his smug contempt for them. Perhaps they’ll realize that he’s mastered the Big Lie.
Perhaps those we’ve entrusted with the daily mission of governing will recall their sacred obligation to secure the blessings of liberty. Perhaps they’ll recognize that there come times when they must set aside partisan disputes and even genuine political principles for the sake of a more profound duty, when party agendas, however great, must yield to what is good.
George Washington exalted justice and benevolence. Donald Trump exalts himself. That our national progress has taken us from Washington to Trump says more than all my words.
President Washington warned that political parties would induce men to place allegiance to party and political advantage above duty to country and the imperatives of conscience.
Some of our elected leaders are ignorant of these things. Some are cowards. Others pride themselves on being practical. They are masters of expediency who now are expediting only their own and our own dissolution and destruction.
This is no time to pursue political advantage.
To those who would suggest I’m being excessively alarmist here, the alarming words belong to Washington and Lincoln, not me. To those who would suggest I’m being excessively idealistic, there are few men in our history who better demonstrated their grasp of what is practical than Washington and Lincoln. There were also few men more sensible of the demands of conscience and duty.
It’s not yet too late to hear their words and keep their faith.
In hope, and with a prayer for justice and peace, from Poor Elijah and me.