“An empty stomach has no ears.”
Latin proverb
Aesop’s fable of the Wolf and the Lamb recounts the tale of a hungry wolf coming upon a lamb by a stream. The wolf, troubled somewhat by the innocence of the lamb and wishing to justify his impending murder, accuses the lamb of various slights and infractions deserving of the wolf’s wrath, all of which the lamb politely refutes. The wolf moves on to transgressions committed the year before, but the lamb explains that he was not old enough to have completed those crimes, whereupon the wolf blames the lamb’s brother. The lamb explains that he has no brother. The wolf, flustered and frustrated, insists that it must have been someone in the lamb’s family, and cuts off the conversation by saying that he won’t delay his meal to debate the matter any further, “You are guilty, and I am hungry”, and promptly ate the lamb. The moral of the story? “The unjust will not listen to the reasoning of the innocent.”
It is of course a stretch to describe anyone in the highest levels of the political world as “innocent”, but the dynamics of searching for guilt to justify hostility is a well worn path through the battleground of party politics. It would seem the impossible dream to imagine the possibility that politicians might forego dirty tricks and needless witch hunts motivated not by a love of truth, but by hatred for the opposition; yet might not we, less consumed by the love of power, pursue truth with more innocence? Might not we, none without sin, lay down our stones, at least when it comes to minor offenses? Is our hatred such that we need to reprimand a woman we don’t know for kneeling on a couch in the oval office? Have we become so bereft of reason that we can justify hospitalizing a faculty member for assisting a controversial speaker in leaving a college campus? When did hatred and hostility become our spiritual center instead of love and forgiveness? We are better than this, or at least we should be.
It has always seemed to me a sad irony that we reserve our greatest antagonism for those we are closest to. Wives reserve their most pointed insults for their husbands, and men feel free to use their ugliest words to assail their wives. We say things to our mates, our parents, our children, our brothers and sisters; that we would never dream of saying to a coworker, a friend from church, or a neighbor. Those who most deserve our forbearance, forgiveness, and civility are often the last on our list to receive it. When love departs, hatred inevitably fills the vacuum left behind, and civil wars are always the bloodiest, as we slay our own countrymen on the battlefield of our disappointments. It requires a heart that forgives for the sake of forgiveness, an intellect that sees beyond passion, values that stand against the winds of hatred, to be the voice of peace and reason. Thankfully, as the tsunami of post election hysteria subsides, we are beginning to see a remnant of reasoned voices coming from the left. These will be the Phoenix that rises from the ashes of the democratic party, if there is to be a Phoenix, and are our one hope to preserve us from an unchallenged single party rule. We are a nation of checks and balances and conservatives need the humility to distrust absolute power even when it is in our hands. Reasoned voices from the left who set aside their most outrageous positions to enter the political mainstream, should be engaged and embraced as friends with slightly different points of view, fellow travelers on the road to the future. As iron sharpens iron, these are brethren who keep us from becoming dull. The haters, the shouters, the crude and hostile warmongers; these do not require that we reciprocate in kind. These are lost souls mired in their hatred, and as George Bernard Shaw pointed out, if you wrestle with a pig you get dirty, and the pig enjoys it. Best to keep ourselves clean, best to respond with kindness and pity. They do not need us as an enemy, they are their own enemy.
As we watch those in the highest levels of celebrity and power engage in the bloodsport of ideological warfare, as we listen to their diatribes, are subjected to their tweets, and are bombarded with their bias; we must resist the temptation to be swept into the aura of their royalty, and the bloodlust of their cannibalism. Kings talk a good game, but they leave the life or death battle to their pawns. Common men need to embrace the commonality of their commonness. By that I mean, we need to see that the animosity that serves those who would enlist us into their armies will only serve to separate us from each other. Likewise, if we surrender ourselves to the even more powerful forces of hatred, anger, and vindictiveness; then we will always eat our own, and forever be divided. A hungry stomach has no ears; the unjust will not listen to the reasoning of the innocent; and the heart at war will not regard the entreaty of peace.
by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter
Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago
About a Kingdom on a mountain
And a valley folk down below
On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath a stone
And the valley people swore
They’d have it for their very own
Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of heaven
You can justify it in the end
But there won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away
So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill
Asking for the buried treasure
Tons of gold for which they’d kill
Came an answer from the Kingdom
With our brothers, we will share
All the riches of our mountain
All the secrets buried there
Now the valley swore with anger
Mount your horses, draw your swords
And they killed the mountain people
So they won their just rewards
Now they stood beside the treasure
On the mountain dark and red
Turned the stone and looked beneath it
Peace on Earth, was all it said
Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of Heaven
You can justify it in the end
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away
Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of heaven
You can justify it in the end
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away
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