Of Sowing and Reaping

     The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

     Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
                                                                                       Edmund Burke


   
     When I was a youngster, one of my grandmothers had a certain way of praising me to others. She would say, He's going to be the governor of North Carolina.  In her final years, when she lived in a dream world, she would say that I actually was the governor of North Carolina.  I tried to look gubernatorial in her presence. I couldn't bear any notion of disappointing her.
     My grandparents were of the yeoman class who gave this state much of its character.  These folks were resourceful in wanting to transcend the worst of Southern history and the systemic poverty of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.  City people supported the development of farm-to-market roads for the sake of all.  Country people supported a distinguished state university, seeing in it a means for everyone's children to choose a better life. State leaders developed programs to open doors for the poor.
      In these and other undertakings North Carolinians  nourished a political ethic that was, by and large, pragmatic and goal-oriented.  At key junctures they displayed a shrewd skepticism of labels and ideology.    They didn't write the state's official motto, but they could have. It is, "Esse Quam Videri."  --   "To be rather than to seem." They valued leadership. They valued character.  My grandmother thought the governor's office should be a pinnacle of both.
      I have all this in mind because the leadership of my state has fallen into the hands of low people.  One recent development highlights this, for us and for the nation. We now have a law that fosters discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
     This legalized bigotry is a vividly mean-spirited piece of work.  Until the last minute our legislature handled it behind a cloak of secrecy.  Our governor signed it literally in the dark of night.  They knew that it couldn't stand scrutiny, and it has in fact created a groundswell of disgust.
     If this episode is especially dramatic, it is only one in a shabby pattern.  Connivance and dereliction have put our state government in the control of people who give the back of their hand to the long-manifest values of the broader electorate.  Our legislature has gone to the outskirts of the Republican right, in campaigns heavily underwritten by a wealthy extremist. Along for the well financed ride was the fellow who became our rookie governor, a pliable wannabe so covetous of office that he has disgraced himself as a public official and as a man.
     And where were the rest of us? Asleep at the switch, alas. Complacent about developments in gerrymandered districts where the real elections take place in low-turnout primaries controlled by small minorities of voters.  Complacent when the Democratic Party bothered to offer only a cipher as alternative to the bag man's guy for governor. Complacent about the aims of a cohesive faction zealously contemptuous of the values -- and the rights -- of others.
     And so my state must live for a time with the hard lesson that neglect is a stealthy predator on democracy. The nation may be flirting with the same lesson. The Republican Party's presidential nominating process is in the grip of two genuinely bad men who advance by inflaming an emotional minority.  Much lament has been focused on their demagoguery. Less has been focused on the statistic for which the United States is notorious among world democracies: Eighty percent of the people eligible to vote in the Republican primaries have not bothered.  The zealous few have so far controlled the agenda and damaged our country.
     In North Carolina, the zealous few have given us leaders who betray their sworn obligation to serve the better interests of all the people. They have tried to deter voting. They have tampered with the university. The list goes on, and now includes a comprehensive affront to common decency.
     Many of us have watched this vandalism with a mixture of outrage and heartache.  Genuine citizenship is hard work. Generations of ordinary North Carolinians believed in it and labored at it. They produced government that was clean and diligent. Now, in just a few years, their achievement has been sneered away. It is an epic shame.