The GOP went low. Democrats, go high.
Ancient Greek rhetorician Isocrates taught: “Do not do to others that which angers you when they do it to you.” Similar precepts are found in the Talmud and the Quran. Scholars and theologians have labeled these words of virtue the Golden Rule.
No matter which oracle or sage first uttered these words, this moral directive is exactly what the next president and Congress must embrace for the sake of this country.
President Reagan said, “We might come closer to balancing the budget if all of us (Congress and president) lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.” Practicing the Golden Rule means that we are, with great intentionality, regulating our public conduct so we may not do or say anything we wouldn’t want done or said against us.
Therefore, I will regulate my congressional conduct.
I will not attend any meeting in any hotel or elsewhere to plot the failure of the president-elect. I will not join others in Congress to purposely cause legislative gridlock because I would not want it done to a Democrat in the White House.
If the president succeeds, I succeed, for I am a citizen of this country. I have children and grandchildren who matter deeply to me. Therefore, it would be an act of political self-mutilation to want any president to fail.
In disagreement with some Democratic activists, with whom I share much in common, I will not seek to delegitimize the next first lady by questioning her immigration status.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing or no one, that can compel me to rudely disrupt the president’s State of the Union address. As a person who has delivered several thousand sermons and speeches, I am always prepared for uncivil interruptions, but it would certainly have an unpleasant taste.
The whole world is watching the United States, so we should watch what we say and what we do. As the world’s most expansive democracy, we have a responsibility to kindle a bright light for would-be and fledgling self-rule governments to mirror.
No matter how tempting, I will not refer to the Republican Party as the Repub Party. In addition to the fact that the Repub Party, like the Democrat Party, is grammatically incorrect, the founders of the Republican Party named it such. Why would I call an individual political party or an organization anything different from what they prefer? If Ferdinand L. Alcindor prefers to be called Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, why would I call him Kar or any other name? Why would I use a political party’s name as an epithet other than for the purpose of being childishly negative or hostile?
The Washington belief that whoever holds the gold makes the rule has not proved workable and is dangerously divisive, even in the world’s greatest democracy. The main guidepost to our estranged political parties should be the Golden Rule. In fact, the Golden Rule is the Denali (highest mountain in the U.S.) of our remarkable republic.