STEADY, DON’T FRET, LITTLE EDDIE!

By Edwin Cooney

It’s all true, of course. While growing up, everyone called me Eddie. I was the youngest of three Eddies who attended our residential School for the Blind. One Eddie (Edgardo) was little, chunky, and very, very smart. The second Eddie (your standard Edward) was tall, skinny, and musically very, very talented.

Finally, there was me: Edwin. I was the youngest and the least smart or talented, and was even called by some “Little Eddie”. I discouraged all of that when I was twelve. Now that I’m a bit long in the tooth and silver around the temples, Eddie just doesn’t fit. However, there’s still some little kid in me.

One aspect of my personality, especially noted by my sons, is that I often over analyze people and events. “Dad, you think too much!” they frequently accuse me.

Well, from a purely political standpoint, I haven’t been this pleased since Jimmy Carter was President-Elect thirty-two years ago. For the most part, it has been a gratifying time. However, my reading and conversational habits have lately gotten in the way.

About a month ago, I decided that, as a student of history, I hadn’t read enough about the notorious Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Had someone asked me about him and “what made him tick” as they say, I couldn’t have told them much. So, I consulted my local library. I’ve been reading not only the latest Stalin biography, but I’ve also just finished a book comparing and contrasting Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler.

Such reading can hurriedly transform the most full-throated optimist into a quivering cynic. To read once again how Adolph Hitler transformed his rejection as an art student by the University of Vienna and his subsequent squalid Vienna existence into hatred of undeserving peoples is mind-boggling. Then, to read how Joseph Stalin used his alcoholic father’s abuse and the bullying he received by bigger kids in the neighborhood into a lifelong determination to achieve revenge through power and dominance is almost enough to surrender to the ideological Conservatives’ insistence that men, especially ambitious men, are basically evil.

One of the finest men I know is a devout ideological Conservative and Christian gentleman. He insists essentially that men are fallen and not trustworthy, especially when it comes to the establishment of government. He believes that America, “endowed by her creator” as it says in our Declaration of Independence, having been founded as a Christian nation, is an exception as long as it conforms to the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. Okay, fair enough -- but my friend, who is also a devoted capitalist, doesn’t seem to acknowledge evil when it comes to the accumulation of “capital”, or if you prefer, money. Government, he acknowledges (the more local, the better, of course) rightfully controls crime, but it should never attempt to regulate the “free market”. Thus, America, as long as it lives up to the basic Ten and doesn’t regulate capital, is a special place reasonably devoid of evil and certainly far more worthy than the rest of God’s creation which contains men and women of other faiths and political systems.

Notice I said above, nearly devoid of evil. There is of course a most vexing American “evil”. You guessed it: it’s called “Liberalism”. Liberalism, after all, is almost devoid of all principle -- with the exception of class envy, of course, and a tendency to worship at the troth of relativism and secularism, where people too often try to figure things out rather than simply accepting the teachings of St. Paul and Milton Friedman.

I’ve endorsed most of the tenants of Liberalism in recent years. I do believe that everyone has an obligation to share through both charity and taxation. I also strongly support equality of opportunity. (Note: As for America being a “Christian” nation, President John Adams’ State Department informed the Moslems of Tripoli in 1797 that America officially endorsed no religion including Christianity.) I believe that people’s individual backgrounds do dictate not the excuses but the reasons for people’s behavior. However, just as I get comfortable with that conclusion, someone throws me a curve that nearly drives me to my Conservative friend’s point of view.

This week it was Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s alleged attempt to sell President-Elect Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. If the highly regarded Chicago-based Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is to be believed, the government
has proof of the deed obtained through an authorized wiretap. The Senate and the President-Elect have both properly distanced themselves from the beleaguered governor. Conservative talk show hosts are sporting genuinely happy smiles for the first time since November 4th, believing as they do that there’s just got to be a link between Blagojevich and Barack Obama.

So, you ask, what’s the point of all this? The answer is simple—Eddie’s incredulity! I just don’t get it. I’m repelled, of course, by both Hitlerism and Stalinism. I don’t, as I once did, buy ideological Conservatism. Even more, I’m almost just as repelled by the lesser sins of Governor Blagojevich. It’s hard to believe that Governor Blagojevich would even consider subjecting President-Elect Obama’s name to such shabby behavior. The little kid in me, once called Eddie, wants to kick and scream at Governor Blagojevich, even more than at self-satisfied Conservative talk show hosts and personal friends.

Throughout our lives, most of us seek to identify and establish the boundaries between right and wrong, good and evil. We do this for the most part because we try not to step over those lines.

Occasionally, however, someone who is too close for comfort to someone special does step over one of those lines -- and Eddie starts fretting again!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY