COMMENTARY: A Misplaced and Dangerous Analogy

c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) The defeat of Sen. Joe Lieberman in Connecticut’s Democratic primary on Tuesday (Aug. 8) marks yet another indication of the triumph of partisanship and the disappearance of statesmanship in the United States. The extremes prevail while the middle ground disappears. It is deeply discouraging. Lieberman is a politician that […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The defeat of Sen. Joe Lieberman in Connecticut’s Democratic primary on Tuesday (Aug. 8) marks yet another indication of the triumph of partisanship and the disappearance of statesmanship in the United States. The extremes prevail while the middle ground disappears. It is deeply discouraging.

Lieberman is a politician that an independent-minded person of faith could respect. He takes his faith seriously in a culture that so often trivializes or scorns such faith. The fact that his is an Orthodox Jewish faith served to remind the often divided Jewish and Christian communities of our shared history and common values.


Lieberman paid a price for actually having a faith that required something of him. You may remember that he would not campaign during the Jewish Sabbath. (When was the last time a Christian candidate abstained from Sunday campaigning?) His religious sensibility surely played a role in his criticisms of our often abhorrent mass media. Lieberman helped to protect the legitimacy of bringing faith-based moral convictions into the public square. It will be even harder to do so now.

I think it was also his faith that required Lieberman to seek common ground with his adversaries and to look for bipartisan compromises. Even a Republican, he seemed to think, could be a loyal American and a decent human being. Imagine that! Can it be? This helped evoke similar civility from like-minded Republicans, who were also encouraged to recognize the common humanity of … actual Democrats.

As people like Lieberman get driven out of politics, all we will have left are partisans who see the adversary as demonic creatures with horns and cloven hoofs.

The bloggers had a field day with Lieberman’s did-he-or-didn’t-he “kiss” of President Bush at a State of the Union address. No loyal Democrat would give the president anything approaching a kiss. It seemed to me that all of this fuss over a maybe-kiss drew uncomfortably on the betrayer’s kiss motif found in the Gospels. Judas betrayed his master with a kiss, and so did Joe Lieberman. The fact that Lieberman happens to be Jewish makes me wonder whether a vein of anti-Semitism was tapped here.

The main complaint against Lieberman was his support for the Iraq War. Polls now indicate that the country is more divided along partisan lines by this war than it was by the Vietnam War. As one who lived through that earlier war, I find this incredibly disheartening.

Lieberman was one of many Democrats who initially supported the Iraq War. What changed was that he refused to switch his position when the great majority of the Democrats were heading for the exits. He was viewed as providing a fig leaf for the president’s failed policies. He instead argued that, despite our mistakes, it would be irresponsible to abandon the Iraqi people now. This was a reasonable, if arguable, position. He did not deserve demonization for it.

One way to evaluate Lieberman’s efforts at civility and bipartisanship is by historical parallel. Those who saw how dangerous Adolf Hitler was as a rising politician in Nazi Germany were mistaken if they did anything to cooperate with him. Civility, compromise and nonpartisanship did not make sense because Hitler was an evil man bent on destroying German democracy. Some people are just beyond the pale; they cannot be treated with civility. They must be fought until they are driven out of public life altogether.


A large number of vocal Democrats seem to have arrived at a similar view about George W. Bush. A recent New York Times ad made this connection explicit. After naming the sins of the administration, the ad says: “People look at all this and think of Hitler _ and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come.” Among the signers were Jane Fonda, Jesse Jackson, Jessica Lange, Susan Sarandon and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.

If Bush is viewed as Hitler, then Lieberman’s efforts to work civilly with him make him a collaborator-traitor who must be driven from office.

I have been very unhappy with many things this president and his team have done, and I have not hesitated to oppose them vigorously. But I think our democracy is not long for this world if we start playing the Hitler card when we disagree with each other’s policies.

KRE/JL END GUSHEE

(David P. Gushee is the Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn.)

To find a photo of this columnist, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by last name.

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