Town Meeting

It's the New England Town Meeting time of year.  Registered voters in most towns in New England meet for Town Meeting (never "the" Town Meeting) at least once a year, and act as the legislative body of that town.  Not their representatives - the people themselves.  Their job is slightly different from state to state, but they all gather to decide on policy, planning, taxes and budget.  And anything else that comes up.

It's the purest form of democracy you've ever seen.  They've been doing it for four hundred years.  Everyone gets a say, everyone gets to speak, including Jim Edgerton (left), subject of  "Freedom of Speech" by Norman Rockwell.  He was a real voter in a real town - Arlington, MA - at a real Town Meeting in 1942.  He was against building a new school, and got up to say so.  He was the only one there who opposed the project, but everyone else listened to what he had to say until he was done.  Then everyone voted - one person, one vote - and they went on to the next item on the agenda.

Voting is a serious thing.  All registered voters attending Town Meeting are given a voting card, maybe the size of an IPhone, and when it's time to vote you raise your hand with the card in it.  First the "ayes" and then the "nays."  The moderator decides who which has prevailed, unless it's close, at which time the tellers get up and count their sections and report the results.  Majority rules.

As you probably know, we've had a house in Truro, MA for almost ten years; we pay taxes there but vote in Oneonta, NY.  We're "non-resident taxpayers," and we get to attend Town Meeting and have our say, just like everyone else.  We just don't get to vote.  I've been to Town Meeting, but haven't spoken.  This year, it was televised on local-access TV, and I watched the whole thing - all five hours of it.  I was moved by the ordinary people just like me who gathered under a big tent on the school ballfield, on a perfectly good Saturday in May, to do democracy.  They came together with their neighbors to make decisions that ranged from the annual budget to a massive affordable housing project to giving seniors a $50 break on a dump permit.  It was community, it was responsibility, it was, in many cases, passion, and it was democracy in action.

Arlington still has Town Meeting.  This year, in the deep, dark days for democracy, Arlington Town Moderator Greg Christiana said this to his fellow moderators, at a gathering before the season started:

“Right now, people are afraid. They see a government systematically chilling free speech. The tyranny of fear is setting in. It might seem like a good time to keep your head down and stay quiet, but silence at a time like this would be a grave mistake. Here in New England, we always stood against tyranny, including by votes at town meetings like this, and I hope we always will.”

Turns out the town was named Arlington to honor those who had fallen while defending democracy, and who are buried at Arlington National Cemetery.  New Englanders are like that.  There's a bridge here.  It's in Concord.  Come for our democracy, and we'll be waiting on the other side. 

Why We're At Where We're At

 .

                      "I don't really mind the government's new death ray, 

                                             because it hasn't hit me yet."

                                                                                               The New Yorker, yesterday

Circles

I've long searched for a way to describe the difference between progressives/Democrats and conservatives/Republicans, without being judgmental or condescending.  We hold different fundamental views about basic values and how human interaction works - but how to describe these difference?

And then Heather Cox Richardson, reporting on the new Pope, juxtaposed the fundamental beliefs of two Catholics, a Pope named Bob from Chicago, and a VP named Vance from Ohio.  Vance first: 

Vice-President J.D. Vance is one of those hard-line right-wing Catholics. Shortly after taking office in January, Vance began to talk of the concept of ordo amoris, or “order of love,” articulated by Catholic St. Augustine, claiming it justified the MAGA emphasis on family and tribalism and suggesting it justified the mass expulsion of migrants.

Vance told Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel, “[Y]ou love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.” When right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec, who is Catholic, posted Vance’s interview approvingly, Vance added: “Just google ‘ordo amoris.’ Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense.”

And now Pope Bob, in a tweet on X:

“JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

Subsequently, his mentor, a Pope named Frank from Argentina, had written: 

 On February 10, Pope Francis responded in a letter to American bishops. He corrected Vance’s assertion as a false interpretation of Catholic theology. “Christians know very well that it is only by affirming the infinite dignity of all that our own identity as persons and as communities reaches its maturity,” he wrote. “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups…. The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by…meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

In other words, we have the motto of a cop named Harry from LA:

Everybody counts or nobody counts. 

So what it comes down to is - who counts?   Is there a hierarchy, or is everyone in with no one left out?

There's a lot to process here.  How does this work in the real world?  I think the difference we're trying to understand boils down to the effort we make - effort that is successful or not.  That effort is only hinted at in what seems like a simple, whimsical poem by Edward Markham:

“He drew a circle that shut me out-

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle and took him In!”

I think that the lifelong struggle to "take him in" is never easy; we can - must - orient our lives around it, or not.  That's the difference.  It's what kind of circle you draw.

For me, I'm glad to 'violate basic common sense' and try my best to draw a circle that includes everyone, with no one left out.  It ain't easy, and I'm often unsuccessful, but it's just part of who I am.  And that's where my politics comes from.

UPDATE:

tl:dr: