Then Let Us Go Forth, Together, Armed Only With Our Conscience And Our Higher Vision

"I pledge allegiance to the dream of the Invisible Whitmanian Republic, and to the principles for which it stands: Cosmopolitan, Pluralistic, with Liberty and Justice for All."

In the wake of yet another horrific mass murder, emblematic of our cruciform culture of violence--with its unholy trinity of salvation religion, consumer capitalism, and unbridled militarism--let us pause to consider that lost America of the road less traveled: the America that Whitman sang, that Emerson exhorted us to midwife, that Thoreau constructed in microcosm with his own hands on the shores of Walden Pond. An America that is cosmopolitan and pluralistic: not just for the rich and the white. Not for the violent. Not for the politicians who are willing tools of the rich, the white, and the violent. Not for the preachers of hatred and their religions of "What about me?" salvation ("Get saved!"). In other words, not for those who are presently ascendant in our national culture and political life.

We need new heroes in this country: real heroes--not soldiers who invade foreign nations to do the dirty work of craven oilmen, not Hollywood fantasies like "the Dark Knight." We've had enough of those "heroes." We've seen what trouble they can bring.

We need heroes of reason and deliberation, of curiosity, of generosity and heart. Heroes who understand that the limit to their own freedom is the freedom of others--and who dedicate their lives to discovering the proper balance: this is Liberty. Heroes who understand that Liberty must always be predicated upon Justice, and that Justice is not "what happens when I get my way" (a corollary of "What about me?" salvation religion) but when the Golden Rule triumphs among us. All of us: without regard to race, ethnicity, creed, gender, sexuality or (and, nowadays, perhaps especially) that forgotten element--the unmentionable--socio-economic status.

Poverty is not an accident from which we avert our eyes: it is an injustice. It is the enemy of individual liberty. The poor are not free to pursue their own flourishing. They are, as a practical matter, enslaved. Lyndon Johnson--for all of his faults (and he had many)--got this right when he declared "war" on poverty.

There is room for warfare in our lives: not wars of violence against fellow human beings--"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Ephesians 6:12).

And low places as well. Indeed, we must wrestle against the dark forces of the self. Salvation religion is popular across this broad land because it promises relief not through effort, not through struggle, but through belief. And anyone can believe anything they like--as it should be. But everyone must be persuaded that not all beliefs are equally true or wholesome. Belief in the "unbelievable" (as the theologian Paul Tillich characterized much of latter-day Christianity) is but a form of selfishness: for it is self-serving self-delusion to think that any salvation worthy of the name can be achieved without effort, without struggle.

Christians must re-dedicate themselves to struggle with the self--not armed struggle against the various external "infidels" that populate many a pious Christian imagination (those "demonic" socialists, secularists, abortionists, sexual minorities, Muslims). Christians must re-dedicate themselves to struggle with the Christian self: that is, to struggle with their whole notion of religion. For, as Rene Girard pointed out long ago, salvation religion that is based upon a substitutionary sacrifice is a religion of scape-goating. And when scape-goating becomes an accepted pillar of one's world view, holocausts result. This is the worm in the apple of the dogma of substitutionary atonement: a dogma that Christians would do well to abandon, once and for all.

Scape-goating is a form of pyschopathology: it is a crude drama of human helplessness and the dark fears that attend such helplessness. Fear must be met with courage, not with sacramental violence against the weak.

Islamophobia is a form of scape-goating; it is, therefore, a form of psychopathology--the psychopathology endemic to and emblematic of the cruciform culture of violence that pervades the United States.

This disease does not infect the Invisible Whitmanian Republic...The Invisible Whitmanian Republic is truly--and tragically--the American road less traveled...

So take the pledge today. Meet your darkest fears with courage. Examine your beliefs and your lives. Examine your religion. And then let us go forth, together, armed only with our conscience and our higher vision.