Under no obligation ...

It’s come to this! The President’s former campaign manager testifies before Congress. The questions are simple. The lawyer asked Corey Lewandowski if the testimony he had given to a Special Prosecutor was true or if the statement he made on CNN was true since they differed.

“I have no obligation to be honest to the media,” was the reply. In other words, he lied, and that was no big deal because he was under no obligation …! This man is considering his own run for the Senate in 2020.

I am a bit old-fashion about this stuff. It may have to do with the way I was fashioned. My folks wouldn’t put up with lying, and the nuns at school certainly wouldn’t. I took an oath almost every week at scout meetings, for several years, to be trustworthy and I try to live up to that promise.

Mr. Lewandowski appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to answer questions about his relationship with the President, and some actions he might have taken on behalf of the President. The White House advised him not to tell the committee anything. The Committee knew this and didn’t expect very many complete answers to their questions.

Lying to a committee of Congress is a crime. For most of the day, Mr. Lewandowski read a statement, prepared by the White House Counselor’s office. The stalemate between the Legislative branch and the executive branch of government continued pour tout le monde a voir.[i] A constitutional crisis unfolds before us each day and no one seems to care.

This isn’t about left or right, conservative or liberal, democrat or republican, or even about politics, but about the ethical degradation of our nation’s governance. Benjamin Franklin said, “You have a republic if you can keep it.” Ours is a unique form of government: three equal branches working with each other and checking on each other. It works best when each trusts the other to do the honorable thing. When that trust is broken, the government grinds to a standstill.

The House brought three articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon in 1974: 1) obstruction of justice, 2) abuse of power and 3) contempt of Congress. The obstruction and abuse of power were so anathema to Americans at that time that Nixon quickly resigned from office. Contempt of Congress, something devoutly to be avoided, occurs when one ignores a call to testify or defies a subpoena to testify. Obstruction of justice occurs when one lies to Congress or to Justice Department investigators. Mr. Lewandowski was instructed to do both, and stone walled the hearing. The White House directed two others to be MIA at the hearing. I’m no lawyer, but …

Branch intramural contests aren’t really the issue. Faith and trust in our government is worthy of our focus. Our nation is divided right down the political middle. Folks on either side of the red or blue line don’t trust those on the other side, won’t have dinner with “them,” won’t date “them,” and don’t want to be around “them.” At all levels of polity, we have state-of-the-art models of non-cooperation in all things government. That’s no way to run a government.

In just the last few weeks, we have heard and read about Air Force crews bedding down at expensive digs in Scotland, our Vice President camping out at a luxury hotel 300 miles from his meetings in Dublin, and the Secretary of Transportation taking her father with her to a meeting to discuss shipping policies that would favor his business. The President, of course, owns the fancy hotels. Our constitution is very specific in its disdain for a President making a profit on his or her business because of his/her office. Yet, foreign dignitaries are encouraged to stay at his hotel in the District of Columbia and other cities around the world, with total disregard for tradition, for law, for policy, or for our Founder’s intent.

Shakespeare laid it out for us, but we don’t have to go back as far as Hamlet or Richard II to see the rot of self-preservation and exercise of personal power from within. We see the corruption in our time, and recent years: a Vice President forced from office because of corruption, a President chased from office for defying Congress; governors spending time in jail for taking bribes, and other major offenses. Today’s corruption in the highest levels of government is at a level not seen since Tea Pot Dome days; it is blatant. Rather than being shocked and awed by the audacity of it, we treat it as if it was only the scandal-of-the-day. Not to worry it will get worse.

Mr. Lewandowski does have an obligation to be honest with the media and the American people. It’s a moral obligation, if not a legal one. Those called to testify before Congress have an obligation to appear and be honest. The White House has an obligation to encourage those under subpoena to show up and be honest.

I do not smell of self-righteousness to ask all of us to try to be honest in our dealings. The stench is with those who don’t feel an obligation to be trustworthy, who consider it OK to lie to the press, to Congress, or to suppress any investigation into those who may have lied to the Congress. Frankly, it stinks to the high heavens.

America is not easy and democracy is not easy. It is even harder when you have a republic. Historians consider it a bit of a cliché to equate our current state of affairs to those of a declining Western Roman Empire. Invasion by the Huns, the spread of a new state religion, and the vastness of the territory all contributed to its fall. Most agree, however, that the rule of strong- willed despots, an economy controlled by oligarchs, and less than competent leaders contributed to its decline. Corruption abounded across the empire in plain view. The Senate, its legislative branch, did little to correct a worsening situation. People stopped listening, stopped being proud of their inheritance and lost trust in their leadership. Romans, proudly proclaiming “Civis romanus sum”[ii] became a boast from the past.

We have a republic. Can we keep it?

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[i] For all the world to see

[ii] I am a Roman Citizen, for those of you who forgot your Latin I. The story is often told that a Roman citizen could walk anywhere in the empire without fear, because an attack on one Roman was an attack on all Romans. They were proud to be Roman and felt safe because they were romanus.

Ubuntu?

The Headmaster of the high school from which I was graduated wrote his Start-of-School letter a couple of weeks ago, addressed to students, parents, town folks, alumni and alumnae. UBUNTU, he explained, will be the motto for this school year; Ubuntu!  Founded in 1842, the school’s traditional motto is Semper Discens. This year’s motto sets a tone for the students and faculty of a learning community striving to build people of character and integrity. Ubuntu! Have you ever heard that word before? Me neither! It is a Bantu word. It is most often translated as “I am because we are.”   

Ubuntu stuck with me because of its simple but very deep message. It resonates a bit like “It takes a village.” If you grew up as I did, in small-town America, the village helped your parents shape you. Your parents drove the first stakes, but the local police walking the beat downstreet helped keep you out of trouble. The scout troop taught you skills to survive in the woods and in life, the teachers on the playground kept the bullies at bay and the games moving. Local service clubs sponsored an elementary school basketball league and provided the town with a swimming pool, a gathering place for teenagers on summer afternoons; a fraternal order provided an annual Christmas movie matinee with Santa Clause, and a bag of fruit from Florida. The churches, on every corner it seemed, created a certain ethos, a way to live and treat each other. There were cultural norms. There was an Are.

Job growth today is in cities where technology reigns. Middle-class jobs are disappearing, replaced by robots. A college degree is the new 8th-grade diploma. As our slow-moving diasporas creep toward the two coasts and the big cities, small village stores close, schools consolidate, and people move. If the small towns shut down, what will be the We Are?  

Morris Massey, a professor at the University of Colorado postulated that You Are What You Were When. His believed that a person is influenced greatly by their teenage environment and experiences. We are because of who we were.  

Much evidence, a lot of it anecdotal, argues for Massey’s theory, and generations of plausible explanations exist for Ubuntu. At three or four score years, people tend to reminisce about their upbringing, almost always referring to teen years, pointing out how school “wasn’t that way when I was a kid,” and  listing the most grievous offenses that got them in trouble; starting with comments about chewing gum in class. The early teen years formed us. They were our When, our Are.

So, does any of this have relevance today? I think of the young teenagers brought up in neighborhoods well below the poverty line, living on streets where random shootings occur on a regular basis, where most qualify for free breakfast and lunch at school and at the library in the summer. I think of neighborhoods, villages really, where there are no service clubs to provide basketball leagues, swimming lessons, no books at home to read or to read others. I think of kids growing up in villages where unemployment is high, where parents see their children losing opportunities to improve their lot in life. Too many have no There. Twenty or thirty years from now, today’s kids will say, “We are what we were when.” Is today the When we want for them? Many will remember Ubuntu, “I am because we are.” Is today the Are we want for them?

The choice of Ubuntu for this year’s school motto encourages us to asks questions: about why we are letting our world behave the way it does, about our nation’s leadership, about how we contribute to the divide in the nation, about how we treat each other each day. We must ask if homelessness and hunger are what we want for our children, our community. We must ask if are making our villages a better Are.

When the next generation says, “I am because we are” …?