Gratitude is a public virtue
“Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” – Malachi. 3:10
On Feb 7, I wrote this in my commentary, “Plant your pink giraffe”:
“If you’re an alert American, you know you have to oppose the dishonesty and destructiveness of Donald Trump and his followers every day. Their lies and selfishness have no truth, no intelligence, and therefore no substance or real power in them.”
Soon after the commentary was posted, I received a long email from a reader who is a Trump supporter. He wrote, in part:
My heart leapt when I saw what you said [about The Christian Science Monitor].... Then my heart sank...when you lit into Donald Trump AND his followers. I'm dumbfounded how [you] ...can be so blind and deaf in your viewpoint/words re Trump and his TENS OF MILLIONS of supporters worldwide.
Just based on the law of averages, there must be many many good, decent and intelligent people--including ME--who were conservative, populist Republicans before DJT came onto the political stage and are thrilled to support him and his approach to government and world affairs....
Where on earth do you get any hint that property developer/investor, father of 5, grandfather of 13, employer of thousands, hero to much of NYC, preventer of war with Korea, Iran, Russia, uber trade negotiator, etc. is in any way for destruction...?
It's really hard to understand how people such as you--and there seem to be millions--became so self-righteously blind.... At best, I guess we'll have to chalk it up to your staying in a news silo so steep it is barely reporting half of the good accomplished during the Trump admin, or the mess that is transpiring now.
I think we won’t list you on any ballot as K Collins (D) or K Collins (R)...we'll list you as K Collins (V)...for Virtucrat...perhaps the most virtuous who ever trod the globe! Yikes!
He was right, of course. It’s unfair to lump every Trump follower into one basket, and I’ve since changed my wording in the commentary to refer to the dishonesty and destructiveness of “some of” his followers.
But then last week I read an excerpt from Robert Kagan’s new book, Rebellion: How Antiliberalism is Tearing America Apart – Again, published in The Washington Post, and it made me think again of the letter from my reader. Here is part of what Kagan wrote:
How to explain [the] willingness [of Trump’s millions of followers] to support Trump despite the risk he poses to our system of government?... It is what the Founders worried about and Abraham Lincoln warned about: a decline in what they called public virtue.
Public virtue, according to Kagan, is when “the people...love liberty, not just for themselves but as an abstract ideal for all humans.”
[Abraham] Lincoln, in his famous Lyceum address, lamented that the original spirit of the revolution had dissipated with time, leaving Americans with only the normal selfishness of human beings. The original ‘pillars of the temple of liberty’ had ‘crumbled away.’ A little over two decades later, the nation fell into civil war.
Kagan fears that America is again falling into selfishness, focusing on what’s good for “me” and “mine” and neglecting the public virtue the country needs to help keep itself and humanity moving forward.
French political theorist Montesquieu believed that without strong public virtue, a democratic republic would likely face conflict between various “factions,” all chasing their own interests at the expense of public good. This, of course, is what is happening now in America. My reader was mocking the concept of virtue, but the uplifting power of public virtue – devotion to doing what’s right for humanity and not just for oneself and one’s own people – may actually be the very thing needed to pull Americans and the world out of its tailspin.
But how do we get there?
It’s easy to identify the qualities that constitute virtue itself, things like selflessness, humility, honesty and compassion. These can help steer nations toward peace and progress. But by themselves they are not enough. There is one quality that, perhaps above all others, is capable of lifting a people out of the sickness of strife and uniting them in purpose and vision: gratitude.
What did Jesus do when he faced some of his toughest challenges – feeding thousands of people with virtually no food at hand,1 raising his friend Lazarus from death,2 preparing for his own execution3? In all those cases, before he could move forward, he gave thanks.
It’s time for us, too, to give thanks. Thanks for God’s love that opened the thought and inspired the courage of America’s founders to establish freedom for a nation and hope for the world. Thanks for God’s love, over decades and centuries, that has opened the thought of millions around the world to the same idea of freedom and hope. Thanks for God’s love that has inspired courage in country after country to find fresh ways to oppose tyranny (as I write this, Georgia is taking its turn). Jesus was unsparing in his disdain for the hypocrisy of his opponents, but he never mocked or rejected the sincere, unprejudiced seekers. He healed them.
Private virtue is based in moral clarity; public virtue, the kind that stands up to the toughest challenges in the world, is based in gratitude – gratitude for God and for the honesty, wisdom and love that are evidenced in the people around us every day. Lincoln’s description of America’s promise for humanity, that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” is a profound expression of gratitude for the wisdom that the founders planted in the nation. There is wisdom and eternal goodness, too, in the courage of Ukraine, the welcoming spirit of Georgia, the joie de vivre of the French, the integrity of the Swiss. (One could go on, of course. These are countries I know better than others.) Gratitude is knowing the eternal substance and indestructibility of all that is good.
The struggle Americans are engaged in now is for all of us. It’s a spiritual struggle. We may think that freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, universal equality and the spirit of self-government can be lost to the world because America itself is at risk, but this is not true. There is a divine Principle governing humanity that is universal and indestructible. Gratitude is the glue that cements that Principle to human experience, and our job is to take that gratitude and own it, wherever we are.
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1 Matthew 15:36
2 John 11:41
3 Luke 22:17, 19