January 6 committee hearings: a surprising ethical emphasis

Both the chairman, Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, and the vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, spoke a language which is currently foreign to our politics -- the language of democratic civic virtue.

Thompson invoked the example of the greatest exponent of democratic civic virtue the country has produced, President Lincoln:

Thinking back again to the Civil War, in the summer of 1864, the President of the United States was staring down what he believed would be a doomed bid for reelection. He believed his opponent, General George McClellan, would wave the white flag when it came to preserving the Union. But even with that grim fate hanging in the balance, President Lincoln was ready to accept the will of the voters, come what may. He made a quiet pledge.  

He wrote down the words, “This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect....” 

It will be my duty. 

Lincoln sealed that memo and asked his cabinet secretaries to sign it, sight unseen. He asked them to make the same commitment he did. To accept defeat if indeed defeat was the will of the people. To uphold the rule of law. To do what every other President who came before him did... and what every President who followed him would do. 

Until Donald Trump.

Both Thompson and Cheney recalled to listeners that Congressmembers and all federal workers swear an oath (introduced during what my ancestors would have called the Rebellion of the South against Union, freedom, and modernity) to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.

Cheney evoked the oft un-noted notion of political honor:

“Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

This is not how we talk about our politics. There is good reason. Many citizens feel they have been lied to over and over about unjust and unjustifiable U.S. wars ever since Vietnam. Too many have seen promises of prosperity crumble into rust and privation. Religious charlatans spew fear and vitriol in place of inspiration -- and often directly abuse and exploit their vulnerable flocks. Anger and cynicism eclipse civic virtue.

And yet, if this country is to make it through the challenges of our time, we need to be able to speak of and promote civic virtue.  

Perhaps coincidentally, a religion professor at the conservative Wheaton College, Esau McCaulley, offers a challenging call in today's New York Times to Christians -- mostly of the more conservative sort -- who hold what he labels "a deficient doctrine of sin and evil, limiting it to the individual." Writing about opposition to controls of guns, he concludes:

If some Christians refuse to do this good it will not be because believing in “evil hearts” eliminates the need for gun reform. It will be because they refuse to accept what the Christian faith teaches: Societies, like individual hearts, can be broken and twisted.

As we are by the January 6 hearings, we are recalled to collective civic virtue.