I, Too

On the drive home from work today, I was reminded of a poem by Langston Hughes. I was listening to the Mitch Albom show. He was playing audio clips from Donny Deutsch's  recent interview of Ann Coulter on The Big Idea and asking, "Where is the outrage?"

Here's an abbreviated version of the exchange:

Deutch: If you had your way ... and your dreams, which are genuine, came true ... what would this country look like?"

Coulter: "It would look like New York City during the [2004] Republican National Convention. In fact, that's what I think heaven is going to look like. People were happy. They're Christian. They're tolerant. They defend America."

Deutsch: "It would be better if we were all Christian?"

Coulter: "Yes."

Deutsch: "[Y]ou said we should throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians,"

Coulter: "Yes."

When pressed by Deutsch regarding whether she wanted to be like "the head of Iran" and "wipe Israel off the Earth," Coulter stated: "No, we just want Jews to be perfected."

Mitch went on to comment about the wave of attention and the number of media outlets that latched on to Don Imus and his ignorant remarks about members of the Rutgers Women's Basketball team. I suppose his point was that Coulter's comments—equally ignorant and equally charged, if not more so—deserve at least the same level of attention and outrage as those uttered by Imus.

Perhaps outrage is appropriate. But moving beyond the emotional response,  perhaps something more is required. Perhaps people who claim to love America need to be reminded when their words and views are in direct conflict with the principles on which this country was founded. Ironically, the same first amendment that grants individuals the right to stand up and make inflammatory, outrageous and ignorant statements on television, also promises the right to freedom of religion and prohibits the establishment of the national religion that Coulter desires.

In yesterday's Daily Dharma, I quoted from The Sutra on the Eight Realizations of Great Beings. In the second realization, it says:

All hardships in daily life arise from greed and desire.

Greed and desire are the forces within us that cause us to want the world to be as we are. We grasp for comfort, and often comfort comes in the form of being surrounded by people who don't push our buttons, who don't challenge our deeply held beliefs, who don't suggest that there is any way to live a proper life, save our own. But those of us who remember our civics lessons know that America was never intended to be that place. What kind of America would we live in if everyone understood and accepted that fact?

What do we do, as Buddhists, when confronted with remarks such as these? Do we dissent? Do we rally against them? Do we protest? Do we denounce? Perhaps the challenge is to become like the Bodhisattva Wondrous Sound and speak to the speaker with clarity and compassion in words she can understand.

Comments

[Tom]

I feel no outrage. The belief by Christians that theirs is the One Way is well known to me. [I was raised in Tulsa, home to Oral and Richard Roberts.]

The clip from the transcript that you show of Deutsch's MSNBC show was shown on CNN and I didn't get why anyone's upset. What Coulter said is very much in line with what Christians are taught, and that is not prejudice. It is part of their deep desire to convert others, to save them from hell, and bring them to heaven.

Coulter's "problem" is Judaism, not Jews. Christ is The Way.

[Tom]

Also, Coulter went on to say, something to the effect that, the New Testiment was the rest of God's Words that Judaism doesn't believe. If believers in Judaism believed the whole of the Word of God, rather than just the Old Testiment, then they'd be perfected.

I see nothing surprising or offensive in that sentiment. Of course, Coulter and other Christians don't believe we Buddhists are going to get to heaven. We, too, fall short of the bar. We, too, need to be perfected in our beliefs.

[chalip]

Hello Tom...

I do agree with what you are saying... And if Coulter was a religious leader making these statements, I suppose there would be no need for controversy at all.

I think Mitch's point, and the point of others who are bothered by statements like this, is that people who stand up to speak to issues that are American and not religious (as in the arena of politics) should probably avoid making statements that suggest that Americans should be Christain.

Unlike Mitch and others, I don't think the statements were antisemetic. I do think they are anti-American. I think they are statements made by a person who wants her country to be more reflective of herself and her views.

I think those are careless pronouncements when you live in a country (and claim to work for the betterment of a country) whose ideologies are rooted in freedom.