The Burden of Conscience
Imagine being in your mid-80’s and being at a point in your life when you have accomplished a great deal, more than most and more than you had ever expected. Then imagine you want to take your long-earned rest and simply spend time with your loved ones, but you can’t. You can’t because you carry on your shoulders the weight of the world…literally. All of the world’s great evils get translated into the constant and repeated profound injustices and indifference thereto. Fighting injustice is the classic good fight and that’s what you have done your whole life.
That, of course, is the story of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose dying wish was that she not get replaced on the court until a new President had been installed. She did not specify to my knowledge whether she meant until the President chosen by the American people in November is named or whether she meant the more partisan of concepts that a president other than Donald Trump was installed. It truly could have meant either of those two, but they are actually quite different requests. The Constitutionalist would suggest it is the first version on the theory that the election process has begun and the American people have a right to have their say as to who they want to set the tone of their highest court in the land. People who know the passion of RBG’s views on equality and justice would suggest it was the latter interpretation that was intended as she was concerned about the composition of the court and its unbalanced conservative bias that seems intent on denying people certain rights that left-leaning sympathizers like RBG feel are inalienable. Those rights include a woman’s right to choose the future of her own body, the right to the free exercise of sexual orientation and gender identity without discrimination for everything from their right to marry and their right to spousal benefits, and the right for women and all people to be free to be treated in all ways, from suffrage to equal pay, in the same manner as white men.
Of all the deathbed wishes I have heard of, there are few as poignant and reflective of the state of our political and cultural life in this country as that one. Our divided country is spending the weekend debating and exploring every angle of this Supreme Court replacement issue instead of mourning the loss of a great American jurist. Such is the agony our country finds itself in during the worst pandemic in a century and with its house more divided than any time since the Civil War. And now that the reality of RBG’s death is upon us we are finding that just as the receding tide bares all who are and are not wearing bathing suits, so we are finding which politicians are guided by which truths. Is the truth of standing for righteousness or perhaps for what you have proudly proclaimed you would do in this circumstance? Or is it the truth of standing with your political party and the concepts you feel are advanced by the outcome? Or perhaps lowest on the totem of conscience, the truth of what will improve or harm your upcoming electoral prospects?
My friend Gary has an old college pal that writes a weekly blog that Gary occasionally passes to me as he has this weekend. This one was about the importance of standing up for what you believe in, especially at important moments and on important issues. He quoted the movie Amazing Grace about the life of abolitionist William Wilberforce, the Member of Parliament in Great Britain that pushed through anti-slavery reforms in the last half of the Eighteenth Century. I immediately started watching the movie and have yet to finish it. But I saw enough to see that Wilberforce was so consumed by cruelty and injustice of all sorts (he felt for the horse being whipped by the side of the road for failing to be able to stand) that he had to take laudanum to sleep. Such was the pain he felt for the suffering of others. It was this pain that drove him to place his beliefs ahead of all else. It was what mattered to him most.
It so happens that last night, in our search for something to watch, we put on the Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Ed Harris movie Radio. It is the true story of a South Carolina football coach in the mid-1970’s who took under his wing a mentally handicapped black youth by the nickname of Radio and made him a beloved member of the team as an assistant and eventually an assistant coach. He did not patronize him as a mascot, but rather treated him like a human being and in so doing caused the entire school and community to treat him with respect and love. It is a heart-warming story that has a seminal moment when Ed Harris explains to his daughter that as a child he had witnessed a mentally handicapped boy being caged by his family and treated like an animal, and yet he never did anything about it. That regret plagued him and he was determined, upon seeing Radio hanging around the football field, to not let that lapse reoccur. He was plagued by his own conscience and felt the need to do the right thing regardless of the cost. At one point he goes before a dubious town gathering and quits coaching football despite his love of the sport because he feels he owes a greater duty to do the right thing by his friend Radio. Like William Wilberforce, he needed to place his beliefs in justice and doing right by all people ahead of all else, including football. It is a powerful moment.
Life is much easier for people who lack a conscience. In the movie Runaway Jury, there is an equally powerful scene in a court mens’ room where Dustin Hoffman, the anti-gun defense attorney, confronts Gene Hackman, the pro-gun lobbyist and jury “strategist”, about how he can do what he does. Hackman laughs and says that people ask him how he sleeps at night and that the truth is he sleeps just fine because he simply doesn’t care. Caring is burden. Not caring makes life much easier day-to-day. It’s like being devoid of ambition. That is far easier to get through life with than being a driven soul that is not happy unless scaling mountains. Without caring you can sleep like a baby. And the truth is that people are born with or perhaps raised such that they have differing amounts of empathy. Some people care and some people don’t. I don’t know why that is so, but it is.
To have a conscience is a great burden. It means that you must stand up and do the right thing no matter the cost. It is a form of bravery because it is a far harder path to follow than the path of indifference and uncaring. It requires sacrifice and it requires often being in the minority. But like any form of gallantry, it brings with it the greatest pleasure man can know, the pleasure of helping his fellow man. In fact, that is an appropriate segue back to Ruth Bader Ginsberg. She found a path to gallantry by helping her fellow man and in the process helping her fellow woman. We should all be so fortunate to have the burden of conscience to make our last words on this Earth be about doing right for others.