Daily Archives: January 10, 2011

Dear Sarah Palin,

I doubt you will listen or read any of this, and I doubt even more that you will do anything, but I send it in the hopes that there is still some shred of humanity left in you, something that ideological rhetoric hasn’t swallowed and made hollow.

Like snow, this rhetoric of violence accumulates, and at first it stirs the blood and makes everything clean and clear, just as a new snowfall does. But the grime and dirt that follows reminds us that beautiful, stirring rhetoric can cover an ugly, mean soul.

Almost all of us at one time or another will have adversaries and maybe even enemies. But Jesus said you had to love your enemies. Where is your love? I do not see it in this poster or hear it in your words. Has your rhetoric become your savior? Has it left your soul mean and ugly, a place suitable only for grime and dirt. I hope not. Not only for your sake, but for the sake of my soul and souls of the rest of the citizens of this country. This country can only be great when the people are great. And the people can only be great when rhetorical demonizing doesn’t become our savior and consume our souls.

You are not the only politician, pundit, or private citizen to spread this rhetorical demonizing, but you are not above blame, either. The blood of many is the blood of one. People died in a church in my hometown in part because of this rhetorical demonizing. People died in Kansas and Arizona and other places because of it as well. Your hands are not clean. Nor is your heart. Sadly, neither are mine.

I am reminded of the words of, I believe it was Benjamin Franklin, who at the end of the Constitutional Convention, when nerves were raw, tempers still flared, and people grabbed for absolutism and threatened not to approve sending the U.S. Constitution on to the states for ratification, turned to his fellow delegates and said, “Gentlemen, let us doubt a little of our own infallibility and put instrument to paper” and approve sending the document forward.

I think a little more doubting of our own certainties and infallibility is in order before rhetorical demonizing hollows out our souls. It’s a sign of humility. It’s a sign of compassion. It’s sign that you’re truly human in the best sense of that word.