Your word is a lantern to my feet and light upon my path.
—Psalm 119
The many ways in which right-wing Republicans have damaged this country over the last 30 years have been well documented. They range from unfair and irresponsible economic policies, which have favored the super-rich while running up our national debt, to divisiveness sowed in cynicism for political ends. (Think of Reagan's demonization of "welfare queens").
But one of our most insidious problems of all may be the extent to which right-wingers have fueled America's anti-intellectualism.
The strategy certainly isn't new. As I've noted many times before, historian Richard Hofstadter documented the phenomenon thoroughly in his book Anti-Intellectualism in America. Popular disdain for intellectuals is one of things that sunk the candidacy of Adlai Stevenson, who was disparagingly referred to as an "egghead."
With the election of George W. Bush, hostility toward the learned and articulate appeared to have reached an all-time high. His tendency to mangle the simplest sentences and speak like a cowboy who had no use for formal schoolin' or book learnin' resonated with large numbers of voters who apparently don't want their president to be any smarter than they are.
Now Sarah Palin has picked up the torch and is carrying it with exuberance. Her incessant winking—which conveys a sense of patronizing superiority, even as it's meant to come off as folksy—is just one of the tactics she is employing in her attempt to turn her lack of experience and intellectual prowess into strengths.
But as James Wood suggests in a brilliant essay in this week's New Yorker there's something more subtle at work.
"In recent elections," he writes, "the Republican hate word has been 'liberal,' or 'Massachusetts,' or 'Gore.' In this election, it has increasingly been 'words.' Barack Obama has been denounced again and again as a privileged wordsmith, a man who has 'authored' two books (to use Sarah Palin's verb), and done little else." Wood goes on to quote Phyllis Schafly, who has denounced Obama as "an elitist who work[s] with words," and Rich Santorum, who called Obama "just a person of words," adding, "Words are everything to him."
It is an odd line of argument, coming from people who profess to be devout Christians. As David Gracie points out in the introduction to his translation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Meditations on the Word, Christianity is the religion of the Incarnate Word." Indeed, The Gospel According to John starts off with the line, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God."
The writer was not talking about just any word, of course. In the original Greek, he used logos, which has several meanings. It can refer to reason, for example, and it has often occurred to me that it is not unlike the Buddhist concept of dharma—the way or law, in Sanskrit. Both seem to point to the eternal order of the Universe.
Nevertheless, words of a more earthly nature are clearly important to all branches of Christianity. Central to the faith are the Ten Commandments, the gloriously poetic psalms, the Lord's prayer, and the letters of Paul. Moreover, according to the Gospels, Jesus himself didn't merely rely on simple words. He often got his points across by employing metaphors!
Heavens! Were words everything to Him?
In a sense, they were. But if we are to believe the Gospels, he also acted on his words, bringing people together to commit random acts of kindness, as the popular phrase goes. (Call him a community organizer.) And of course his final act was to die on the cross to prove to the religious establishment that they had no ultimate power over him or anyone else who is determined to follow the dictates of his heart.
But words were essential to his ministry, just as they are to the work of any teacher. And were it not for the egghead scholars who have translated the Bible over the years, Christianity would have withered away.
Of course, it seems that all of this is meaningless to the religious right. There is only one word that appears to matter to a lot of these folks—the word "Christian" itself. What does that word mean? Is it someone who loves God and loves his neighbor, as Jesus suggested. Is it someone who has pinned all of his hopes on an afterlife? Is it someone who thinks people of other faiths are going to burn in hell? Is it someone who engages in heavy-handed evangelism, in spite of Jesus' warning to his disciples that they should avoid ostentatious displays of their faith? Or is it someone who is carrying on a tradition that is responsible for some of the most horrendous black marks on the history of humanity, from the Spanish Inquisition to the disease of pedophilia in the Catholic Church? The answer depends on your definitions, and can be arrived at only through deep and respectful dialogue. But the religious right has no interest in that dialogue. To them, the matter is settled. One needn't consider trivial and annoying questions.
The other day, for example, I heard on NPR some interviews with students at Liberty University. All were planning to vote for John McCain because of his "Christian values." That Obama's life has revolved around the church and has been a testament to Jesus' central message—love thy neighbor—is something that has been lost on them. Likewise, they seem unconcerned that McCain—a longtime Episcopalian—suddenly discovered the Baptist Church a few years ago. Perhaps he likes the hymns better. But I can't help thinking that he made the switch in hopes of coming across as a more authentic "Christian." (The Episcopal Church is losing members and is therefore of minimal political value these days. What's more, half its remaining members favor gay rights!)
It's clear that the cynics behind the Republican machine fully understand and value the power of words. That is why they are so fearful of a candidate like Obama, who loves the English languages and uses it well. They do not want to elevate public discourse in this country because if they did, they would lose their ability to define a wide range of important words, from 'liberal' to 'Christian' to 'freedom.' They remind me of Humpty Dumpty, who said in "a scornful tone" in Through the Looking Glass, "When I use a word, it means just what I say it means." He went on to suggest to Alice that objective definitions of words, and dialogue about them, do not matter. "The question is," he said, "which is to be master—that's all."
In a sense, he was right. The Republican political machine has controlled our public discourse, with the help of spineless and compliant mainstream media, for a generation. But ultimately, they can no more control words than the enemies of Jesus could control him. They took his life. But his words live on. So do a lot of others, from those in the Declaration of Independence (like Christianity, the United States rests upon a foundation of words) to those in the speeches of Barack Obama. The good news is that we remain free to think about their meanings for ourselves—and understand that while a wink may be an effective communication device, our use of words is what distinguishes us from animals.
—Tom Robotham
tomrobotham@gmail.com