Welcome to Political Parables, where I’ll be looking at the complex issues of our day through the lenses of simple, fable-like stories.
The earliest recorded political parable that I know of is the Biblical account of Nathan the prophet confronting King David over his illicit relationship with a married woman and his murder of her husband. He tells the king a story about a rich man who steals a poor man’s sheep, provoking outrage from the monarch.
“Who is this man?” rages David. “Bring him here!”
To which Nathan replies, “You are the man!”
That’s the power of the parable: to remind us of the basic moral codes we believe in, and to reveal when we’re falling short of them.
Ancient Israel was a monarchy, but America is a representative democracy. We elect the leaders that go on to either enact our wills or not; we either hold them accountable, or not. Either way, we agree ahead of time that they will be our leaders, that they will stand and act on our behalf. Because of this, each of us is complicit to a degree in every action our nation takes, even those that we voted against! (A sobering aspect of this odd experiment in human government we find ourselves a part of.)
Therefore, the target for my political parables will not be any one person or party (as if the world were a Hollywood blockbuster with a clearly identifiable “bad guy” that must be defeated) but all of us who combine to form the nation that we are. I hope to talk simply about truths we all hold to be self-evident, the habits of collective life that we’ve worked out among ourselves over the years, and the many puzzling disparities between them.
As I uncover these conflicts between our morals and our morality, between what we believe and what we do, I hope that my accusatory cry will never be, “He is the man!” but rather, “We are the people!”
