Editorials

In case you happen to be a teacher or a parent, saving press accounts, photos and videos from last week in D.C. will provide you with excellent illustrative teaching aids for some important topics. The first insight leaped from the screen on Wednesday into our phone calls with friends and family.

Those in the Eastern time zone were first aware of what was up. Three of them called me early, within an hour of each other: an African-American woman friend with major Democratic political experience in the Midwest, a White woman raised as a Southern Baptist who’s now back in the new South, a Catholic cousin in the D.C. area active in social justice movements. All four of us had the same observation: we were seeing White Privilege in action. All of us knew that if that surly mob of rioters had been Black they’d be dead.

This insight turned out to be commonplace among my friends and in the media we tend to frequent. Seeing something you believe to be true illustrated so graphically though appallingly is oddly reassuring, but watchng White Privilege on the rampage is also outrageous. I’m starting to suffer from disgust fatigue.

But I found another fresh source of outrage in the day’s events. I’m from Missouri, born in St. Louis and lived there into high school. I have about 15 first cousins, many still there, as well as innumerable second and third cousins both in Missouri and at various removes. Just about all of the Missourians in our family, I’d venture to say, are disgusted by the behavior of Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, a smug and smarmy 40ish newbie elected in 2018.

He turns out to be the ringleader in the nefarious group of senators and congresspersons who have been pretending to doubt that President-elect Joe Biden was elected fair and square. Why do I say pretending? 

Because Hawley and his sleazy sidekick Ted Cruz boast the benefit of what passes for an excellent education, so they surely do know they’re making a phony case for their patron . Notches on their academic belts include Stanford, Princeton, Yale and Harvard. Either Hawley and Cruz are aware that they’re lying or their fancy schools have slid downhill intellectually in a big way. 

Don’t get me wrong. In my family going back three generations there are graduates and faculty members of all of the above. All of these people have turned out to be intelligent social justice advocates--not a conservative among them and certainly no fool. Many of them are lawyers—one is even a Missouri Supreme Court Justice. 

A young person in our family has been scheduled to start at one of these institutions as soon the pandemic passes, though the bad behavior of these two shifty senators makes me wonder if that’s a good choice. 

Besides availing themselves of first-ranked higher educational opportunities, even before college Hawley and Cruz attended preparatory schools with religious affiliations which claim to provide moral guidance in addition to book-learning. Though his family was not Catholic, Hawley went to Rockhurst, a Jesuit-linked boys’ school in Kansas City whose motto is “Men for others.” 

After Hawley showed up at the Capitol on Wednesday to egg on the rioters with a corny fist-pump lifted from Black Power demonstrators of the 1960s, and followed that up by voting to reject the valid election results, his old prep school was flooded with demands that the school denounce him.  

In an open letter addressed to “The Rockhurst Community” on Thursday, Rockhurst President David J. Laughlin said this: 

“On behalf of our school’s educational mission… the actions that took place yesterday at our Nation’s Capital which crossed a boundary from freedom of expression to crime are to be condemned. The consequences of those actions ring loud and far. A growing society which shows contempt and intolerance for our treasured heritage of plurality, process, and dignified disagreement cannot continue. 

“I call upon all of our elected officials, including our graduate Senator Josh Hawley, to conduct their own examination of conscience on this matter. If wrong occurs, one ought to seek atonement and reconciliation. These are the Christian principles Rockhurst teaches when wrong has occurred.” 

There’s no report of what Josh Hawley’s examination of conscience might have produced, but critics are coming at him from all sides now. 

Students and alumni of Yale Law School, which he also attended, are now circulating a petition to disbar Hawley and Cruz. 

But this gesture just locks the barn door after the horse is stolen. 

All of the elite schools which these boys were privileged to attend must be missing some part of a moral compass if their graduates behave so badly. 

Didn’t their high-minded high schools teach the ten commandments? 

Don’t these senators believe that it’s a sin to tell a lie? 

And there's something about killing in there too, isn't there?  

Six people are now dead because of the riot that Hawley endorsed. 

Yes, Josh and Ted should be disbarred, but they will still be senators, at least until the next election. 

Because of my Missouri roots, I’m concentrating on getting rid of Hawley. He was elected in 2018, so he should be on the ballot in 2024, unless someone can come up with a good way to get rid of him sooner. 

Senators can be expelled with a two-thirds vote of their colleagues, which is always hard to get, though those who actively participated in the Civil War rebellion were expelled in the 1860s. Senators can also be censured, and only one has ever been re-elected after censure. 

Even without censure, it should be possible to defeat Hawley in the next election if opponents start building their PACs and their ground game now. Signers of the Yale petition, now in the thousands, would be a good place to start. Then they could recruit all of my many cousins.  

And about those elite schools. They need to examine their own consciences to figure out exactly where they’ve gone wrong when they’re producing graduates who are either venal or stupid, or maybe a bit of both, don’t you think? 

Maybe they could get advice from their history scholars.  

In ancient Rome there were two classes of citizens, patricians (from whom the majority of senators were drawn) and plebians (those with fewer privileges, property and rights) as well many other lower social orders which were even less privileged. When there were contested elections, from time to time the upper class candidates would recruit the lower classes to support them by making a ruckus of some kind.  

The Roman Empire eventually declined and fell. It could happen here. 

Just sayin’.