Sermons by Rev. Don W. Vaughn -Foerster
Hobgoblins and Voting Booths
Rev. Don W. Vaughn -Foerster
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
October 29, 2006
We are into the witching season. Halloween is next Tuesday and ghosties, ghoulies, goblins, and hobgoblins in the form of costumed children will parade through our neighborhoods. This is all in good fun, but some adult folks, cloaked in other forms of semantic and ideological deception, will continue to parade through the media and through our psyches. Theirs is a more malevolent parade starting in the dark, underside of self-interest - a parade of distortion and deception. That parade began weeks, if not months, ago and will continue into the voting booth on the first Tuesday of November. And, unless that day's votes are counted honestly and accurately, the parade will continue into the indeterminate future.
This conjures up blood-letting goblins for me - sort of hemo-goblins, better known as hobgoblins that represent the unthinking, opportunistic and misguided attitudes coursing through the veins of many voters and on the basis of which they will cast their ballots in the upcoming election. These are hobgoblins that I think I can see whether others can see them or not. In fact I see so many such hobgoblins nowadays that I find it hard to name them all.
This morning I want to talk about a few of them. One really big hobgoblin for me is the possibility that this election will be one more nail in the coffin of the U. S. Constitution and our democratic republic. It seems a lot of people in our country view the Constitution as more of a hindrance than a help. They don't grasp that a social contract, which attempts to level the playing field for all persons, is very likely the only real protection they have from the unscrupulous and greedy among us.
Of course, some folks think they can be more unscrupulous and greedy than everyone else. They are so caught up in the competition for power and control that they create their own "reality" and blind themselves to the effects of their own actions. They want to act as if what they already "know" is enough and anything or anyone who contradicts their conviction can be or must be ignored. We have a society filled with people who refuse to entertain any notion that may challenge their beliefs. There are people you can lead to the voting booth but you can't make them think -- to paraphrase the old saying about horses - which, I'm sure, can also be applied to both donkeys and elephants.
However, it isn't just the self-servingness -- and in some cases the obtuseness -- of the general populace that puts our constitutional system at risk. From the beginning of our country, there were commercial, aristocratic, and religious hobgoblins that wanted a strong executive branch basically served by the legislative and judicial branches of government. The Revolutionary War did not rid this country of aristocrats, oligarchs, and plutocrats -- those who wanted a king or a charismatic figure to call the shots for a subservient public. Before and after the Revolution there was a hobgoblin notion that a single, strong leader makes a secure nation whereas the first step toward security is for people to believe in each other and themselves.
Congress itself has recently committed the unthinkable. It has given the President authority to ignore habeas corpus and imprison citizens indefinitely whenever he perceives them to be threats to his notions about the defense of our "homeland". In effect, Congress is allowing the President a power that the barons took away from King John at Runnymeade in 1215. Granting such power to the President means to me that Congress has violated its oath to uphold the Constitution of the U. S. and has, itself, taken a long step toward tyranny.
Neither did the Revolutionary War rid this country of religious zealots and autocratic preachers who wanted the whole country to walk in lockstep up through those fabled pearly gates into the service of the god who resided only in their minds. There always have been religious hobgoblins, floating up from the nether world of dogmatic theology, who would control our political system despite of the separation of powers of the government and in violation of the civil liberties that the Bill of Rights provides for the citizens of this country.
These hobgoblins that are trying to scare us into autocracy and theocracy have never gone away. For instance, despite the wishful self-serving thinking of many politically religious persons, the separation of church and state is clearly asserted in the U.S. Constitution in two places -- first, in Article VI of the Constitution and then in the First Amendment. Article VI requires of Congress and of executive and judicial officers both of the United States and of the several states, an oath or affirmation to support the Constitution but specifies that no religious test "shall ever be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the United States." The First Amendment restrains Congress from making any law that would tend toward any establishment of religion. Religion and government clearly are separated. Even so, persons and groups, who would have their version of religious morality control the rest of the nation, steadily chip away at our constitutional protections by pressing for constitutional amendments about such things as laws against abortion, homosexuality, school vouchers for religious schools, same-sex-marriage, and the like. If these folks pursuing these religious objectives have read the Constitution, either they do not understand it or they reject it in favor of a more autocratic, theocratic system.
Measures to restrict civil liberties and provide for more centralized authoritarian control of society have continued to put our constitutional system at risk. These measures have ranged from the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1799, which were designed to curb criticism of the government at a time when war with France seemed imminent and which gave the president unprecedented powers to deport undesirable foreigners, to the World War II concentration camps on our own soil in which German and Japanese Americans were held for the duration of the war, on to the Patriot Act of 2001, which continues to give our current president even more powers than the acts of 1799.
Along with these threats to constitutional guarantees of individual rights, there has been the growing influence of an essentially fascist hobgoblin - the military-industrial complex identified by Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1961 in his last, and probably his most controversial, speech as president, Eisenhower acknowledged that the post WWII world compelled the United States to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions but he went on to warn about the influence of this complex. He pointed out that the influence of this complex is virtually total in our economic, political, and even spiritual lives and he warned that we must guard against its unwarranted influence. He went on to say that "The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." Talk about hobgoblins that never disappear!
The disastrous rise of misplaced power about which Eisenhower warned has taken place. It is distressing that no less that Benito Mussolini has defined fascism as the government and private corporations working in concert. We now have in this country a complex arrangement of large corporations and the military that has insinuated its way into almost every national consideration. The potential for abuse is enormous. We should worry along with the Tao Te Ching which says, "An army's harvest is a waste of thorns, Conscription of a multitude of men drains the next year dry." We should listen to James Madison who, in the oppressive climate of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1799, wrote, "There never was a people whose liberties long survived a standing army," and "The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the dangerous weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad." (From "Political Reflection" in Aurora General Advertiser, 2/23/1799.) In this situation not to perceive a threat to our rights and liberties as guaranteed by the Constitution is to have our heads in the sand. It is to let the growing signs of fascism proliferate in our country until we are free no longer.
Even more compromising and insidious, however, is the power private corporations have gained over our public life in general. In a way the military-industrial complex is only the handmaiden of the multinational corporations of which there become fewer and fewer as they gobble each other up. (A small business venture doesn't stand a ghost of a chance with them.) If military power is a threat, the enormous wealth that can buy military power is a greater threat. Whether our Constitution can survive the great influx of money into our political process that is now going on is an open question. The news this weekend is that big money is now beginning to go to the Democrats because it looks like corporate America may have to deal seriously with them in Washington after this election.
The irony is that it is the way our Constitution was interpreted by our own Supreme Court in 1886 that set up both this country and the world to be run eventually by mega-financial interests. In the 1886 case of Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, a dispute over a rail bed route, the U.S. Supreme Court deemed that a private corporation was a "natural person" under the U.S. Constitution and therefore entitled to protection under the Bill of Rights. This gave corporations the same powers as private citizens. But, as time has shown, corporations actually have far more power than any private citizen. Corporations can marshal the votes of large numbers of private citizens in ways that single citizens cannot. Corporations can defend and exploit their rights and freedoms more vigorously than any individual and therefore they are more free and more powerful! Furthermore, corporations have become the primary vehicle by which those with the most money can siphon it out of those who have less, thereby creating the greatest disparity in wealth in this nation's history. This Supreme Court decision, according to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, "could not be supported by history, logic or reason" and was a great legal blunder that changed the whole idea of democratic government. It set things up for automatic oligarchies to form - as if the dominant demon of the underworld found a way to take on the corporate human form. (This paragraph based on the article "The Uncooling of America: the History of Corporations in the United States" by William Kalle Lasn.)
I have been painting a dismal picture of the state of our democratic republic but that is only because I think something can be done to improve its state. We don't have to let the "hemo-goblins" bleed us dry. We can start stripping away those noxious attitudes and self-serving expectations that are eating away at our body politic. Raising this issue is something like getting into hot water, but isn't getting into hot water what keeps you clean? And, do those who don't get into hot water just let the grime collect? But, didn't Benjamin Franklin, as he left the last session of the constitutional convention, remark that we have a republic - if we can keep it?
Working on this may be discouraging at times. But we can surmount discouragement. There is a story in a book on punctuation that relates quite well to our situation. The book's title is Eats, Shoots and Leaves; its author is Lynne Truss, an English punctuationist who would dearly love for people to show right relationships between their words, phrases, and clauses by using commas and other puntuational equipment properly. Ms. Truss tells about the time she was at a book-signing and a rather bedraggled woman came up and said despairingly, "Oh, I'd love to learn about punctuation." The author, with a laugh, held up a copy of her book and replied, "Here, this is the book for you, madam." Acting as if she thought she had been disagreed with, the woman said, "No, I mean it. I really would love to know how to do it. I mean, I did learn it at school, but I've forgotten it now, and it's awful. I put all my commas in the wrong place, and as for the apostrophe...!!!" She threw up her hands in despair. The author responded," So shall I sign it to anyone in particular?" The woman went on, "And, I'm a teacher. I'm quite ashamed really, not knowing about grammar and all that; so I'd love to know about punctuation, but the trouble is there's just nowhere you can turn, is there?"
This story demonstrates how you can virtually drown people with information about how our political system is failing to work as it should, but you can't make their minds absorb that information. But, even as the author knew that there was information in her book that would help people master punctuation if they would just pursue it, we know that there are resources for us to pursue that higher citizenship which enables us to do what needs to be done when the chips are down.
For instance, I have been greatly encouraged by reports that some faith-based groups are actually trying to promote election-year civility. Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and Evangelicals have been getting together on a middle ground that will help them deal in a socially constructive way with the current wedge issues of abortion, same-sex-marriage, homosexuality and the like. They are actually trying to work out compromises that will get all parties some (but not all) of what they want. "Win-Win" may be becoming a watchword again. Then there are increasing numbers of orthodox Christians and evangelicals who understand that the New Testament does not endorse many of our nation's present and proposed social policies but instead calls for caring for the earth and its environment, helping the poor, keeping religion and government separate (i.e. rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, etc., just as Jesus said) and promotes alternatives to violence and war in the handling of crime and terrorism.
And, not only in the religious realm are people of diverse views coming together. There are strong signs that people from the divergent political parties are discovering each other. We seem to be re-learning again that there are people in all political parties who are conscientious, trustworthy, and noble. Party labels are beginning to make less difference as many Democrats and Republicans, Socialists and Libertarians discover that they share both a commitment to our constitutional system and a common human ground more important than the policy matters over which they differ. Some are even beginning to question the mental health of those who base their whole identity on a political party rather than treating the political party as only a means for accomplishing intermediate goals.
There are people out there strong in compassion and with rational minds. We can find ways to link up with them and begin to strengthen public awareness of the dangers to our constitutional system. We are not alone. We do not have to let our leaders beguile or frighten us into ourselves becoming traitors to our Constitution. We can look to our own strengths and courage and confront the forces that would lead us into someone else's desired Armegeddon. We do not have to let our fears and doubts prevent us from facing hobgoblins head on.
Most of all, I am encouraged by my memories of the civil rights and peace movements of 40 to 50 years ago. The difficulties we faced in those days seemed insurmountable but our country went a long distance in overcoming them. That there is still more to do does not cancel what was done. We are now in a time that requires all who believe in the rights and liberties embedded in our Constitution to organize again -- to make clear again to a self-serving leadership and a docile, fearful public that our democratic future requires us to return to the intent and spirit of the framers of our Constitution. Along with writing letters to editors and congresspersons and working in the political party of our choice, we can yell out for all the world to hear that the chipping away at constitutional guarantees (to re-coin a word) makes us "mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore."