Orion > Discourse and Dissent >Wendell Berry

FACING THIS YEAR'S presidential election, our people are bitterly divided. This
division is perhaps as great a threat to our future as is the possibility of a second
term for Mr. Bush. And so the paramount question for Sen. Kerry's campaign is
how to oppose Mr. Bush effectively without so exacerbating the country's
political differences as to reduce the possibility of effective government should
Sen. Kerry win the election.

One answer, I believe, is to base
the campaign solidly and clearly
upon our traditional principles of
politics and religion. (I am reluctant
to say that religion ought to be a
political issue in the United States,
but it is unstoppably an issue in this
campaign.) If the campaign is based
soundly enough on principles, then
it can be carried out, at least by
Democrats, as a reasoned
argument, and thus without
sensationalizing personal and
emotional differences. The further
great advantage is that the Bush
administration can be shown all too
handily to be in violation of many of
our country's traditional political and
religious principles.

Our government was understood by its founders, and it is understood by many of
us still, as a government of laws -- of laws based in part on the laws of God. But
the Bush administration, by various arrogations of power, has led us dangerously
in the direction of autocracy. A government of laws cannot pardonably ignore
either the rights of its citizens or its international treaties. A lot of people now
long for national officials who are constantly and strictly mindful of our Bill of
Rights.

Our government has a long -- though imperfect and incomplete -- history of
international cooperation, the good results of which are now seriously threatened
by Mr. Bush's unilateralism and his doctrine of preemptive war.

Both our political and religious traditions instruct us that the truth makes us free.
Our kind of government can govern effectively only by telling the truth, just as
effective citizenship depends on knowing the truth. Official secrecy and official
lies, even in a "good cause," can carry us toward tyranny. Our government is
meant to conduct the public's business in public.

Traditionally we have believed, and sometimes have acted on our belief, that
political democracy depends upon a significant measure of economic
democracy. Since World War II we have changed rapidly from a country owned
by many people to a country owned by a few. This has been explicitly the
program of some administrations, including that of Mr. Bush. We need an
administration that is opposed to such a program. This country should not be
entirely owned and run by the great corporations.

Our federal system was conceived as a way to balance national unity with local
self-determination and self-sufficiency. Terrorism has made local economic
integrity more necessary than ever before. All the regions of our country are
dangerously dependent on long-distance transportation. The emphasis in
agriculture should now be on genetic diversity, local adaptation, and
conservation of energy. We need, for a change, an agriculture policy that
focuses above all on the health of the land and the economic prosperity of
smaller farmers, rather than the agribusiness corporations.

Along with all the rest of the world's people, we have inherited ancient
instructions for the stewardship and good husbandry of the earth, with clear
warnings, now significantly verified, of the disasters that will (and already do)
attend our failure. We have responded by continuing our elaborately rationalized
destructions. But bad precedent is no excuse for bad behavior. The Bush
attitude toward the natural (God-given) world is sacrilegious and wildly
uneconomic.

The human norm, as established by Christ (and others), is love even for
enemies, forgiveness, neighborliness, and peace. It is therefore troubling that
members of the present administration, while making much of their commitment
to Christ, are insisting on the normality of hatred, greed, revenge, and
unremitting war. To make us afraid, they speak much of the willingness of our
terrorist enemies to kill themselves in order to kill us, as if this were an
innovation. They forget, or they would like us to forget, that our policy of nuclear
defense has been suicidal from the beginning. Our increasing destructiveness of
the natural world is likewise suicidal. Such desperate security and prosperity
cannot be reconciled with reverence for our Creator, who endowed all humans
with certain inalienable rights, including life.

Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry is the 2004 recipient of the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Award for his recent book, Citizen's Dissent: Security, Morality, and Leadership in an Age of Terror. He is the author of numerous works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry including In the Presence of Fear: Three Essays for a Changed World, now in its fifth printing.

Mr. Berry's last essay for OrionOnline, Thoughts in the Presence of Fear, has been reprinted in seven languages in more than seventy countries, and read by two million people worldwide.