The Saccharine of Sacrifice

Aztec sacrifice in portrait

Nothing warms the blood of a political contrarian quite like convention season, yet this does not necessarily equate to actual bloodlust. With conventions there are all the deliciously choreographed speeches and sloganeer banners and base banality that have come to make up our modern political spectacle, there are also real nuggets of note.

My assumption is that all Democrat conventions are orchestrated by Broadway directors and all Republican conventions are produced by on-loan corporate communications departments. But both end up with roughly the same mix of carefully scripted pablum. When they don't, inquiring minds take notice.

In this case my objection is to Governor Chris Christie's "keynote" address at the Republican convention. I know it is by now conventional wisdom that the address missed the mark, focused too much on Christie and too little on Romney and otherwise failed to find the G-spot of political pundits. Fine.

My objection is with what he actually said and what they predictably ignored. Somewhere near the end and perhaps lost in disappointment was Gov. Christie's admonition that America demanded "shared sacrifice." I may have said before and undoubtedly will say again: I find the entire notion of national shared sacrifice anathema to the entire American project.

Imagine a football team behind at half-time. The score is 35-3. The coach takes them into the locker room and says, "Look, only a few of you are getting hit play after play. We need to go out there and share the hits, distribute the tackles. If only all 11 men on the field could take an equal measure of the punishment, we might pull through this thing."

Imagine a good Samaritan who comes across a grisly car crash. Upon finding a victim with a badly crushed leg which is trapping her in a burning car, he says, "don't worry, I'll cut off my left arm so that our suffering is equal."

The entire letter, spirit and motivation behind shared sacrifice assumes impending doom. Nobody voluntarily shares sacrifice unless the end is near. Up to that point any rational human being shares concern, cooperates on solutions and contributes effort.

To be overtly gruesome, when plane crash victims chronicled in the movie "Alive" were facing the end, no one said "I'll eat your arm if you eat mine." Instead they found the strongest among themselves and sent them out on a treacherous, last ditch mission to find help.

America doesn't need shared sacrifice. Sacrifice is for pawns. America needs champions. It needs those who succeed in spite of the system, the circumstances or the season. Those who bring others along through their sheer grit and determination. Americans know how to work, want to succeed and impulsively take risks. When the tax code, the regulators and the do-gooders stand aside, it is amazing what accidentally gets done.

I will not share sacrifice. I will share work. I will not ask someone else to sacrifice for me. I will ask for a chance.  No man should be asked to give more than the full devotion of his abilities. To take and not earn is a tempting sin. To willingly earn so that others may take is equally so.

Virtue is found in striving for the substantive, not sacrificing for the saccharine.