I was deeply moved during John Boehner’s installation as the Republican Speaker of the House when he and the former Democratic Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, embraced.
I was reminded of the “kiss of peace” at a pre-game mass of Cincinnati’s Moeller High School football team on which John Boehner played center and linebacker. I was there as a guest of the teams’ coach, Gerry Faust, for whom I was negotiating a book deal before he became head coach at Notre Dame. I played the same positions as Boehner on my high school team; so I feel a certain affinity with him.
In our floating D.C. parish of the 60s, we substituted for the English kiss of peace salutation, “Peace be with you,” its ancient Hebrew ancestor, Shalom, to which we added an African-American colloquialism, “Shalom, Baby!”
Today intolerance is spreading like wildfire against immigrants from south of our borders (“illegal”), from the near east (“terrorists”), and tolerant citizens everywhere are damned as “liberals.”
I’m reminded that in the 1840s, bigotry landed hard on Irish immigrants (my ancestors); and later, on newly arriving Italians (Nancy Pelosi’s). Nor did German immigrants (like John Boehner’s ancestors) escape hatred’s scourge: In WWI a Catholic school was forbidden to teach the German language; and in WWII bigotry’s grip closed a famous German-American restaurant in Baltimore.
There is no cultural, religious, ethnic, gender, or belief group in the United States that hasn’t felt the lash of demagogues peddling hatred.
In my New Year blog, I hoped that the new 112th Congress, “inspired by the 111th," would “do as well or better, and that new members, including Republicans and their Speaker, John Boehner, will help the nation weather its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.”
The kiss of peace at Boehner’s installation reinforced my hope as did the near universal remorse over the Tucson Tragedy. The Republican Health Care stunt echoed some of last year’s muddy, deadlock trenches; but I was cheered watching senators and congress members from opposing parties sitting side by side to hear the President’s State of the Union address.
President Obama challenged both parties to work together to renew a forward looking, innovative edge to our nation’s economy. The Republican Party’s official response disclosed deep disagreement with some of the president’s proposals. The president believes, however, that our differences, vigorously argued in an open, collegial spirit, will yield new creative solutions to vanquish unemployment and other persistent, ugly remains of the 2008 recession.
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Keep the faith, baby!
photo credit, Flickr, CincMatt
