Blue Collar Muse

All of us who write, opine, editorialize and so on engage in moralizing from time to time.  Perhaps even most of the time.  However, when it acquires Twilight Zone status, I might offer some moralizing of my own in response.

Mack, a nice enough guy on the couple of occasions I’ve had to speak with him, heads for the TZ in a major way by condescendingly sniffing his nose at grubby Republicans for daring to ask other self-identified Republicans to put a little Republican action behind their claims of Republicanism. Mack doesn’t like the idea GOP House members were asked to sign pledges.

He doesn’t pledge allegiance to the flag or salute it either, even though he’s prior military, because “… Nationalism, for its own sake, at least, seems dangerous.”  He’s opposed to party pledges, too.

If the Democratic Party of Tennessee asked me to sign a pledge OF ANY KIND, I would impolitely tell them to kiss my firm and remarkably well -toned ass. Now, maybe, if the pledge was worded a certain way…say, something like:

I pledge to do my job to the best of my ability. I pledge to stay loyal to the People of Tennessee and remain corruption free, and to put policy above partisanship.

Maybe I sign that one.

He closes by patronizing Republicans asking

Isn’t the very act of pledging immediately putting you in opposition of your own intelligence and intuition? Does anyone else out there find loyalty pledges alarming?

I think if you lead, and lead carefully yet confidently, people will follow. Demanding that they do so up front seems so….needy.

Like I said, sometimes, you get out-manuvered in politics. Happens to our side, then it happens to your side. Trying to pre-emptively insure things go your way by strong-arming the people on your side of the aisle isn’t leadership, whether you have a (D) or an (R) next to your name.

The problem, of course, is that Mack and anyone else who exists on the planet, really don’t agree with the sentiments he expresses. At least not in the terms in which he attempts to frame them. Mack’s argument stumbles, in my opinion, when he classifies all “pledges” as the same and condemns them all but tars only the GOP with the brush he waves around as if only Republicans ask for and make pledges.

My objections to his observations are legion. I’ll just list a few, enough to dismiss his premise in my own mind and move on. Each of you can make up your own mind.

Mack is prior military. He pledged to defend the Constitution of the United States when he joined. Of course, that was then. Have intervening years brought him to the place that he thinks that is a bad idea? Should our incoming military members refuse to take the same pledge? Should Obama and incoming politicians refuse to take the same pledge? Should the good Democrats in the TN House have refused to take their oath of office yesterday? Perhaps Mack will object that these are different from the Pledge of Allegiance. I’m not sure why - aren’t they all loyalty oaths to the nation and the state of the highest order?  Didn’t he say such he found such Nationalism dangerous?

What about wedding vows? Are those not loyalty oaths, albeit of a different flavor? What about the implied loyalty among friends and associates, keeping your word, keeping promises, keeping secrets and the like. I cannot say what Mack would say about those things. I tend to find them valuable measures by which a person’s character can be judged. When someone tells me they are my friend, they have pledged something to me. Should I not be friends with people and so avoid the need for sullying myself with pledges?

What about real and implied loyalty to an employer and co-workers? What meaning might Mack assign to the term “proprietary information”? If his boss were to ask him to pledge not to divulge such information about his company to the public or competitors, would he refuse to do so? What if his job depended on it? Isn’t such an agreement a loyalty pledge? Don’t athletes pledge to give their best in the effort and not to “throw the game”? It’s implied, to be sure, but it’s no less real.

The truth is all of us, probably including Mack, agree to be bound by pledges and oaths of loyalty on a regular basis. They might not be quite so formal as the one GOP House members were asked to sign, but they are, nonetheless part of the fabric of daily life. It is also true that there are some pledges that should not be taken. The “guilt by association” connection Mack is trying to pin on the GOP is participation in these sorts of pledges. Things like the personal oath of loyalty some Germans took to Hitler. These are bad things that ought to be avoided.

But to equate asking Republicans to vote for Republicans to fill two government positions when the GOP has a numerical majority in the House with the seamier sorts of oaths that really do exist is a headlong flight into the Twilight Zone. Does Mack really believe that during the first 30 minute recess Naifeh and Odom weren’t encouraging Democrats to stick together? What was Gary Odom doing in his objection to Rep. Casesda’s motion but appealing to fellow members to be loyal to the concepts of fairness and diplomacy? But what do I know? I pledge to my readers to actually think stuff through before I put it into print …

Blue Collar Muse

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 5:07 pm and is filed under Anti Dictionary Democrats, Blogging, Common Sense, Democratic Party, GOP, Individual Responsibility, Kent Williams, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.