It’s Personal

On her blog, Idaho Rep. Nicole LeFavour (D-19) reports an encounter with Bryan Fischer of the Idaho Values Alliance:

White haired Reverend of anti-gay causes, Brian (sic) Fischer, caught up with me in the brown marble stair case last week. He wanted to tell me that he wants us to get along. I said, as long as you are pushing legislation which affects my life, that will be hard. He said he didn’t want it to be personal. I said, it’s my life, my family. That is personal.

Bryan Fischer has had friends on the left, and I think has been a great example of how to conduct yourself in public life as a Christian. Rep. LeFavour represents a new generation of radical activists, for whom their proximity to the issue excuses their attitude and actions towards their opponents.

“It’s personal” is an interesting excuse. You hear it all around the world in third world Hell Holes from war lords, religious leaders, and politicians. We saw it in our own country in the run-up to the Civil War. One example occurred in 1856 with the Sumner-Brooks affair.

Senator Charles Sumner delivered a speech against the failed Kansas-Nebraska act, which had led to a blood bath in Kansas. In his speech Sumner criticized Senator Andrew Butler (D-SC). Wikipedia gives the account quite well:

Most serious was his extreme insult of Butler as having taken “a mistress who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean, the harlot, Slavery.” Not content to leave his assault on a political level, Sumner’s three hour oration took a very personal and cruel turn as he began to mock the 59 year-old Butler’s manner of speech and physical mannerisms, both of which were impaired by a stroke that Butler had suffered earlier.

Two days later, on the afternoon of May 22, Preston Brooks, a congressman from South Carolina and Butler’s nephew, confronted Sumner as he sat writing at his desk in the almost empty Senate chamber. Brooks was accompanied by Laurence M. Keitt also of South Carolina and Henry A. Edmundson of Virginia. Brooks said “Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine.” As Sumner, who was six feet and four inches tall, began to stand up, Brooks began beating Sumner on the head with a thick gutta-percha cane with a gold head. Sumner was trapped under the heavy desk (which was bolted to the floor), but Brooks continued to bash Sumner until he ripped the desk from the floor. By this time, Sumner was blinded by his own blood, and he staggered up the aisle and collapsed, lapsing into unconsciousness. Brooks continued to beat Sumner until he broke his cane, then quietly left the chamber. Several other senators attempted to help Sumner, but were blocked by Keitt who was holding a pistol and shouting “Let them be!”

One could say, politics was very personal that day in 1856. Sumner got personal and Butler got personal right back. Is that the picture of where we would like our politics to go? What happens when  political leaders and decide that we should escalate our debates into personal feuds because we feel a personal connection to the issues?

In the decade after the Sumner-Butler affair half a million American men perished in an unnecessary war. I wish I can say that they died so that slaves would be free, but the freeing of slaves is not what led Mr. Lincoln to call up militia. Nor was it the keeping of slaves that drove men to join the Confederacy that didn’t partake in the practice. The freeing of the Slaves was a blessed side effect of the war, but at its heart Americans were driven to the battlefield by what historian Peter Marshall called “paranoia” and “counter paranoia.” Politics had become more than a debate, a topic, an issue, a discussion. It had become personal over issues of home and country, family heritage and kin.

The world over, it is the same. Untold millions suffer and die the world every year  because of politics that has become personal. Politics that has closed itself off not only to civility, but to reason. It’s a scary situation.

Now, let’s be clear. I’m not standing here as Mr. Perfect. We’ve all contributed to this mess, and knowing my own human fraility, I’ll continue to make mistakes. However, I’m pausing for a moment to reflect on the mess we’re making.

Human history tells us how bad political fights can become. Can the breaks be placed on political discourse that’s headed downhill? The answer to that question will, to a great extent, determine our nation’s future.