2008 approaches. The nation faces perhaps the greatest dangers I have seen
since I was a small boy. Many suspect that powerful forces in the government are
intent on provoking a world war.
Do you really want to choose between Hilary and Newt for president? Or Gore
and McCain? Or any other candidates likely to be offered by the Evil Stupid
Party or the Stupid Evil Party? Whoever runs, the choice appears destined to be
between Endless War and War Without End.
For those of us who believe that the time is ripe for an ambidexterous
Third Force in American politics, an alternative- in Bill Kauffman’s words- to
the "two for the price of one parties", the discussion always ends with the
question of leadership: who in the world could lead us?
The great American populist- alright, technically he is Canadian- Neil
Young, in his recent album Living with War, has a song called "America
Needs a Leader". This is true enough: boy, do we ever. But when he names names
it is a bit pathetic. The best he can do is Barack Ubama and Colin Powell
(though he does suggest Powell run to atone for his sins).
And the whole thing sounds a bit desperate, like we are eager for a
demogogue.
I am not eager for a demogogue.
I am not eager for any sort of politician, even a Catholic one.
No Brownback.
I don’t doubt the sincerity of his conversion, but like most American
Catholics, I don’t think he realizes the social implications of his faith.
And no Santorum. If his career survives prolife Democrat Bob Casey Jr.’s
challenge, I’ll let Specter take up his defense.
No nobody on the current scene.
Any candidate in the Last Hope movement- or perhaps the "Last Ditch"
movement- would have to at a minimum:
a) Not carry undue Leftist or Rightist political baggage, which pretty much
eliminates Nader and Buchanan, whatever their merits.
b) Offer an alternative to politics as usual.
c) Not be any sort of Mass Media pundit.
d) Not be politically ambitious, for the desire for power is itself the
prelude to corruption.
And
e) Appeal to every patch of the crazy quilt coalition some of us dare hope
for: decentratlist Leftists, Paleo and Traditionalist Conservatives, the better
sort of libertarians, Greens, Catholic Worker type anarchists, working class
people, farmers, po’ folks, and all the other assorted malcontents that may,
just may, in the best American tradition, pull together to save the country from
the neoconservative nightmare that has fallen upon us, to tear us away from the
grinning proclaimers of World War III, to call America home.
But wait.
There is someone on the periphery of the national scene who offers an
appeal to the better sorts on the Right and the Left, someone who flies with
both wings, who has written for both The American Conservative and
The Sierra Club magazines, who is at once antiwar and antiabortion, who
is quintessentially American without being a rabid nationalist, whose analysis
of the national dilemna reaches far beyond politics to the cultural and
agricultural roots of the problem.
What’s more- and this to his credit- he has shown absolutely no political
ambition whatsoever.
He is a poet and a farmer, an honest man. He hails not from the Beltway or
one of the little beltways of the New America, but from a real place, a holdout
from the Old Jeffersonian America.
And he is a prophet.
Draft Wendell Berry for President!
–Daniel Nichols
Hear, hear!
Would Mr. berry allow himself to be drafted, though?
I love it! But I strongly suggest his reaction will be Shermanesque–”If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve.”
As I was reading Last Hope I was thinking of Wendell Berry (I had just been reading his poems from Tibered Choir prior to reading your post). Hear Hear I third that suggestion.
Sorry…Tibered sounds to European…I meant Timbered Choir
Daniel -
I’m sure with the powerful bloc of voters you listed, Wendell would be able to raise at least 300 dollars in campaign funds…
Hear hear! I’d sign on for that campaign.
(But, would Tanya Berry ever forgive us?)
No, I’m sure Mr Berry would not want to run. I’d be wary of anyone who wanted to be president.
Granted, this is an exercuse in wishful thinking, but I think Jeremy underestimates the numbers in the voting bloc I outlined. There are a lot of disaffected folks on both left and right, and the makings of a new populist movement are certainly there, given inspiring leadership.
No, I’m sure Mr Berry would not want to run. I’d be wary of anyone who wanted to be president.
Granted, this is an exercuse in wishful thinking, but I think Jeremy underestimates the numbers in the voting bloc I outlined. There are a lot of disaffected folks on both left and right, and the makings of a new populist movement are certainly there, given inspiring leadership.
While this post is wistful, wouldn’t it be great?
I would volunteer for a political campaign, the first time since 1968, when I was 14, the last time a poet ran for president…
McCarthy’s last serious-ish run was in 76. I think Russell Kirk worked on his campaign, or at least supported it.
I like Mr. Berry, but are you sure he is really pro-life? I’ve never read any of his comments on the topic one way or the other, and I think he once confessed to voting for Bill Clinton. If he’s a true pro-lifer, I’ll sign up too.
“Really prolife” as in “prolife activist”? No, but he has made comments that clearly portray abortion as an immoral act.
Heck, in The Unsettling of America, circa late 70s, he even saw a connection between artificial contraception and the use of pesticides.
No, I don’t mean “prolife activist”. I mean someone who truly believes that unborn human life should be protected by law in all cases. I’m still working through Berry’s “Unsettling” … not sure what to make of the contraception-pesticide connection. My first reaction is that comparing these two either exaggerates the pesticide problem or trivializes the contraception problem, but I’ll try to keep an open mind.
To see a connection does not necessarily mean to equate things. I think he was referring to the sort of habit of mind that leads to a slash and burn mentality. But it has been a very long time since I read that book…
Actually Berry is one of the few thinkers who have linked the logic of sexual sin and the logic of ecological sin (John Paul II and Juli Loesch Wiley are the others who come to mind).
I remember reading an article by Berry in a Sierra Club News Magazine a decade or so ago that was definitely prolife. Who else but Berry could have that type of article in a periodical published by the Sierra Club?
Great post. I’d vote for Berry!
How about Bill Kauffman for VP? He’d be sure to return the office to the sort of benevolent do-nothingness for which it was famed before the Cheney decided to play the Wizard of Oz.
Heck, he could even fulfill his duties from his front porch in Elba, New York!
And I thought you were going to say Christopher Zehnder.
S.
No, he will be Secretary of Defense!
Or lack thereof.
S.
My wife and I just finished re-reading the “Gift of Good Land”, and I rekindled my 20-year old love for Wendell when I heard him speak at the University of Kansas and at Wes Jackson’s Land Institute back in the mid-1980s.
And certainly from my own semi-agrarian perspective, he is definitely a prophet, misunderstood sometimes within his own. God bless, Daniel, very good post.
When Mr. Nichols listed the qualifications for a leader, I began to wonder
who could possibly be left in the U. S. to meet them. I was delighted to see
his pick is Wendell Berry.
What will have to change for this man to gain serious consideration?
1. The media. We hear much these days of the malign influence of
mega-Hearstian moguls. Mr. Murdock is not alone in his thirst for change in the
Middle East, as witness Washington, D. C.’s other paper, The Washington Times.
But Rupert Murdock thinks bigger and more audaciously than other idea vendors. He is
openly courting Hillary Clinton, a ringer for Bush in her support for war in
Iraq. Dems you lose, Repubs you lose. You do not have to be told by me that
we are in the grip of a juggernaut.
2. Folks. Red state, blue state.The amazing closeness of the past two
elections tells us that Americans fancy the state’s ministrations, domestic and
foreign. As such, how do like-minded folk of our stripe manage the first
steps in the long march through the institutions, to borrow the well-worn
proposition of Gramschi?
3. Thinkers. I recently picked up Raissa Maritain’s fine book, We Have Been
Friends Together. She and Jacques Maritain were struck by the wall of
rationalism, positivism, atheism and Marxism that dominated the Sorbonne at the
turn of the 20th century. So distressed were they that they agreed that suicide
was better that aimless relativism.
From this they were saved by the intervention of the Holy Spirit. One
hundred years later, we witness variants of the -isms Raissa and Jacques faced.
They are insidiously worse today, in some ways.
Many academics now place sovereign value on the absence of truth. At the same time, while in the philosophy and science departments skepticism reigns supreme, over in the sociology, English, black studies, queer studies, and women’s studies departments there’s no flinching. The truth of the Cause is Absolute. But try to find the philosophers and scientists whose disdain for truth prevents them from joining in campuses protests in support of their aggrieved colleagues in the favored disciplines. They won’t mince words about truth.
So much for the rationalists’ scholarly quest for Truth.
4. Religious Leaders. Our leaders, the bishops, by and large, have little
of the prophetic zeal for Christ. They tend to be organization men, whose
voices — in these days of warfare that fails palpably to meet just-war standards,
of cowardice in Congress ideas in the public arena with ferocity and outrage such as — are mute. To be fair, some statements of bishops condemn the Iraq aggression. Nonetheless, consider that the NCCB runs an expensive media outreach. Have you ever seen a thing it has done?
I will bend my efforts to make Mr. Berry better known. The simple truth
of the Beatitudes has a chance, if we practice Our Lord’s teachings, and if
we gird ourselves with the Sacraments, especially with the Holy Eucharist.
Daniel Bonner
Mr Bonner- Well said. As for bishops, my wife and I are thinking of transferring our membership from the Ruthenian Byzantine church to the Romanian Byzantine, where the prophet Bishop John Michael presides.
Berry for President?
Make that three hundred and TEN dollars in his campaign fund. (But it’ll have to wait til Friday when I get paid again!)
“Actually Berry is one of the few thinkers who have linked the logic of sexual sin and the logic of ecological sin (John Paul II…are the others who come to mind”
I would add Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomeos as he has extensively written and spoken about this issue as well.
As Father Myroslav Tataryn said about 20 years ago (another prophet), “…if we are to drink of the cleansing, vivyfying, and sanctifying waters of the Jordan without first straining those waters through a filtration system, the Eastern Christian must be concerned with the environment…when we act in discord with creation, the ecosystem. we destroy beauty and order – we sin!”
Deacon RLB
n.b. I second your assessment of Vladyka John Michael – a great man in a sea of episcopal mediocrity. Certainly his concerns about the war have been more than borne out, and his economia with the HRM monastery was exactly what a good shepherd would do – and they now thrive spiritually.
“Actually Berry is one of the few thinkers who have linked the logic of sexual sin and the logic of ecological sin (John Paul II…are the others who come to mind”
I would add Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomeos as he has extensively written and spoken about this issue as well.
As Father Myroslav Tataryn said about 20 years ago (another prophet), “…if we are to drink of the cleansing, vivyfying, and sanctifying waters of the Jordan without first straining those waters through a filtration system, the Eastern Christian must be concerned with the environment…when we act in discord with creation, the ecosystem we destroy beauty and order – we sin!”
Deacon RLB
n.b. I second your assessment of Vladyka John Michael – a great man in a sea of episcopal mediocrity. Certainly his concerns about the war have been more than borne out, and his economia with the HRM monastery was exactly what a good shepherd would do – and they now thrive spiritually.
Sorry about the double post. I’m still tending towards the Ludite when it comes to computers.