There is no them, just us; What can I – what can we – do?

I thought and thought over the last few days and concluded I have nothing new, insightful or remotely important to say about the horrific murder of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk.

To be honest, I didn’t pay much attention to Kirk and knew little about his views. I feel wholly unqualified to opine on his importance or his legacy. History will sort that out.

I do know that political violence – violence of any kind, anywhere – is a cancer on a civil society, and on a society that is hoping to be civil.

I unreservedly condemn those from every political perspective who have tried to profit their position off this violence. I have no idea what comes next, but it is deeply, deeply worrying.

And I also know that Kirk’s shocking murder on a Utah college campus caused me to try to go back to “first principles” and ask myself what I truly believe, what I really care about, what does it mean to be a citizen in this confoundingly awful time?

As I get older, if not smarter, I live more and more in my head and my head is in the past.

I gravitate in times like these to what I think of as American eternal wisdom.

Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can not but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you can not fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.

That’s Lincoln, of course.

Has any president ever spoken a more eternal truth?

Those words were spoken on March 4, 1861 as the man from Illinois became the 16th American president, faced with not a threat but the very real possibility of civil war.

The political leadership of several southern states saw Lincoln’s election as an existential threat to their way of life, and they performatively “seceded” from the national Union, an action, as Lincoln saw it, that was simply as impossible.

Lincoln used his First Inaugural Address to speak directly, reasonably and factually to his political opponents. He counseled patience and he appealed to patriotism.

While the people retain their virtue and vigilance no Administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can very seriously injure the Government in the short space of four years.

My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new Administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend it.”

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

The better angels of our nature …

Other first principles:

• I believe in a pluralist America. I’m white, Catholic, on Medicare. I grew up in the Midwest, worked as a journalist and in politics. I’m not afraid of people with different backgrounds or different beliefs. We are all the ancestors of immigrants, and that diversity is strength not something to fear.
• I believe the American experiment is – and still can be – the “shining city on a hill” that Ronald Reagan spoke of. Far from perfect is this Union, which is why the Founders spoke of creating a “more” perfect one. No one does that alone. It’s up to us.
• I believe in the brilliance of “checks and balances,” the idea that unlimited power is unlimitedly corrupting. Simply put our system does not work without the checks and the balances contained in the Constitution.
• I believe that Constitution, always imperfect, is still the best foundation ever invented for a democratic government. I also believe it only works when all of us are determined to observe the limitations the Constitution imposes, the responsibilities it requires and the restraint it demands. When we ignore those limits, responsibilities and restraints no Constitution will save us or allow us to be more perfect.
• I believe in the essential worth of every individual, even those I profoundly disagree with.
• I believe in politics, meaning I believe when people with strong, passionate political beliefs act with honor, decency, good faith, respect and – here’s that word again – restraint, it is possible to use the tools of politics to compromise, survive to disagree again and move forward. That is democracy, slow, often messy and frequently unsatisfying. But what is the alternative? There is no good alternative.
• I believe our politics have been profoundly degraded by too much money, too much greed and too much bad faith.
• I believe the First Amendment is first because it is the most important. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Those words and the ideas they express are really important. I believe in the First Amendment.
• I believe in education, especially public education. Education is, or should be, about the ability to think critically and reason logically. Education means weighing conflicting ideas. Education means a working understanding of our history and our democratic system. Education is still the best, surest path to a fulfilling and meaningful life, and not just a life about making money.
• I believe social media is the enemy of the words above. The Internet is a cesspool of hate, misinformation and social isolation. To understand this reality is to find liberation to think for yourself.
• I believe in the words Robert F. Kennedy said on the night Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968: “What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.”
• I believe we need more people in public life like Utah Governor Spencer Cox. I wouldn’t personally agree with nine out of ten things the conservative governor believes, but he’s trying to summon our better angels, if we listen.
• I believe in community, by which I mean people working together on the ground creating new and better communities where people from every walk of life, rich and poor, immigrant and native can have a better life.
• I believe political leadership – real leadership – requires a hour-by-hour, day-by-day commitment to reducing the division and hate that is fracturing our country. This does not require silence when evil is present. It does, however, require a willingness to reach for first principles when a hot take seems more satisfying.
• I believe I haven’t always abided by my own words, and I believe I need to do better.
• And I believe in US, not THEM.

“Suppose you go to war,” Lincoln said in that long ago Inaugural Speech, “you can not fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.”

The present moment is what we have. We must deal with it.

I believe we need a new birth of commitment to genuine civility, meaning lowering voices, listening more, showing more empathy and less certainty. Doing so requires a genuine commitment to first principles – decency, respect for the law, disavowing violence, understanding that we have one country and that many, many different people with many different beliefs and life styles populate that country.

Ideally a new commitment would come from the top and from the bottom at the same time, but it must start somewhere.

Don’t count on them to do it. It’s up to us.