(Host)
At first, this might sound counter-intuitive, but Clint Eastwood’s
appearance at the recent Republican Convention reminded commentator Bill
Schubart of nothing so much as a famous passage in Shakespeare.
(Schubart)
Mercy derives from empathy or the capacity to experience another
person’s feelings. The response from someone lacking empathy is most
often framed intellectually or rationally rather than emotionally. If
your friend tells you that he or she is sad, angry and afraid because
their spouse has just left, it’s unlikely that you would respond with a
plan for him or her to find a new one or to wreak legal and fiscal
revenge on the departed spouse. It’s more likely that you would
acknowledge and endorse your friend’s feelings by expressing your
understanding and sympathy. Most often, people in emotional distress
need only to be heard and acknowledged. Heavy-handed attempts to fix
their problems and offer advice not only miss the point, they further
isolate the distressed individuals. When one is privy to the pain of
another and allows that person to give it voice, it often allows the
distress to diminish in time and make way for sound advice.
But
some people are simply tone deaf to the pain of those around them. They
are comfortable blaming those in adversity – kids struggling with bad
youthful decisions, people in mid-life who have fallen out of the
economy, or the elderly struggling with the infirmities of old age. They
experience no empathy and may even blame the victim. This Atlas
Shrugged vision of those who have not managed to claw their way up the
economic ladder to wealth or even subsistence has become politically
popular.
Today, the charitable endeavors of an organized society,
often called its "social safety net," are commonly called
"entitlements" with an implied judgment that those in need have chosen
their lot in life and greedily await relief.
The organizing
principles of government have always included efforts to enhance
community and, though they may change over time, they have generally
included the orphaned, the poor, the unemployed, the infirm and the
aged.
To suggest that we abandon these principles at this point
in our history is to me unthinkable – much less to give as the sole
reason for doing so the need to lower taxes on the wealthy among us –
who are richer now than they have ever been in our 200-year history but
still have not created the jobs that have gone missing because they
don’t want to be subject to regulatory laws like the rest of us. But
that seemed to be the gist of Clint Eastwood’s remarks at the Republican
convention – and it was an interesting moment of political theater.
It was reminded from of a passage from Shakespeare’s "The Merchant of Venice"
in which "The quality of mercy" is described in some of the most
eloquent lines ever expressed in the English language.
It goes like this:
The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
And it famously concludes that "earthly power doth then show like God’s
When mercy seasons justice."