By Edwin Cooney
It’s tempting to label racial hatred,
the availability of handguns, and people’s pride in or disdain for President
Barack Obama as the prime factors in the church shootings nearly two weeks ago
in Charleston, South Carolina, but I assert that the root of the Charleston
tragedy is self-righteousness. Thus I offer
the following observation: the major human tendency we have to fear today is personal
self-righteousness -- civil, political, and even moral self-righteousness -- which
so dominates our energy and convictions that it obliterates reason, logic, and
the essential authority of secular and spiritual law.
When our Founding Fathers established
the Constitution and thus our federalist system nearly two and a half centuries
ago, they created a system designed to meld the passions and practicality of
free men and women as they strove to establish and maintain free and functional
government. No longer would we be ruled
by the will or majesty of royalty, but rather by the reason and will granted to
us as an individual birthright. Hence,
the era of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Franklin showered us with almost
boundless opportunity. However, there
were two gifts that were beyond their ken to grant us — respect and wisdom —
two essential qualities to properly assess the legitimate freedoms and rights
of other people.
Perhaps it was the realization that
respect and wisdom would only be ours after centuries of both experiment and
experience in self-government that was behind President George Washington’s
warning in his farewell letter against our dependence on political parties. Political parties, which increasingly are
energized by political doctrine rather than by collective knowledge and wisdom,
seem to render contempt toward the very idea of acknowledgement and compromise,
the only two avenues to the success of republican government.
Contempt toward the beliefs, rights,
and even the legitimacy of others appears to be the “in” way of thinking, believing
and thus acting in 21st Century America!
Hence, we come to our latest national tragedy, the outrageous murder of
Reverend Clementa C. Pinckney and eight parishioners of the African Methodist
Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina around 9 p.m. on the evening of
June 17th, 2015.
Those close to the investigation of
Dylan Roof, the alleged murderer of these extraordinary men and women, have
said that Roof’s bullets were intended to be the opening shots in a racial
war. As of this writing, however, just
the opposite is occurring. What’s even
more encouraging is how genuinely and magnificently the families and closest
friends of the victims are asserting love and forgiveness from within their
personal heartbreak.
Absent, so far, is the threat of the
street thug, the condemnation of the ambitious black politician or preacher and
even the doomsday prognostic tomes of the sometimes-elitist socio/political
commentator. From President Obama on down,
most of those who hold or hope to achieve supreme public responsibility seem to
realize that some human tendency passed the point of worthy service on the
night of June 17th, 2015. I identify that tendency as self-righteous thinking
and behavior.
Even more gratifying, evidence to that
possibility can be seen in the insistence, even on the part of southern
governors, that the battle flag and statues of the Confederacy should be
removed from prominent places in venues of national honor and placed in museums
where they truly belong.
Of course, political beliefs and
convictions are an essential part of a free society, the prime responsibility
of which is to master its government.
However, for too long we’ve moralized rather than categorized public
priorities. We tend to preach and shame
rather than attempt to persuade the unconvinced to share our convictions. Thus, self-righteousness reigns supreme in
21st Century America.
Time invariably not only heals, but
also sifts the real from the apparent. It’s
possible that as the intensity of the tragedy at the African Methodist
Episcopal Church fades and is replaced by a contentious presidential campaign,
some elements of the self-righteousness of our day will rear its ugly head.
Meanwhile, I’ll remember the call of
those wounded families who treated their pain with their power to forgive. I’ll remember the governors, congressmen and
women, senators, and mayors who saw the victims’ tears and heard their cries
and sought to remove symbols of their grief (namely, sacred Confederacy icons)
from venues of honor at their own possible political cost!
Above all, I’ll remember the President
of the United States of America who substituted the harsh demands of
traditional self-righteous assurance with a call for “Amazing Grace!”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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