Graceful Words

I once criticized one of Digby's posts as how not to be a moderate liberal, but today he more than makes up for that. Digby posts a wonderful speech Clinton made on an anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech and ends with this:

Martin Luther King was murdered before his dream could be realized. But it's getting better slowly but surely. There will be no going back. It's an enormous achievement for a screwed up country like ours that we've finally managed to make progress in spite of the huge cultural obstacles that were virtually built into our political system from the very beginning.

Democrats led the way on that and paid a huge political price. For all the talk of spinelessness and weakness that you hear out there, when the chips were down, the Democratic Party showed that it would stand up for what was right. There is no doubt which party Martin Luther King would choose today.

I'm not evolved enough, I'm afraid, to be forgiving for what the Republicans have done to this country these last few years. I'll need some time to come to that. But, I appreciate the notion that we can't let them sour us and turn inward. Nothing will ever change if we do that. And I figure as long as African Americans are in our party fighting the good fight, the least I can do is stand beside them.

In this partisan world where we each wrap ourselves in our comfortable partisan blankets, listen to our partisan radio shows and peek outside (but always within earshot of our partisan echo chambers) just long enough to remind ourselves what a big bunch of corrupt idiots the other side is, we need to remind ourselves we are all in this together. One country, one people, one world, one humanity. And yes, that is a liberal concept but we often forget to apply it to the most obvious alternative culture around: the conservative next door.

Lately its felt like were loosing the good fight; hell, maybe we are losing, but I don't think so. Not over the long term anyway; we still have the youth on our side. But it's vital we don't turn this into our tribe versus theirs, that's supposed to be their problem. Once we give up on love, compassion and understanding, what do we have left?