The beloved country has been through dark times before. In the early 1950s, Edward R. Murrow, a broadcast newsman, produced a show for CBS called “This I Believe.”
He asked all kinds of people for an essay on what they believed. It had to fit within five minutes. If you think as a writer, rather than as a broadcaster, that’s about 650 words.
Wallace Stegner, a writer and teacher of writers, made a plea for moderation that I admire. The essay, “Everything Potent Is Dangerous,” includes this:
Passionate faith I am suspicious of, because it hangs witches and burns heretics, and generally I am more in sympathy with the witches and heretics than with the sectarians who hang and burn them. I fear immoderate zeal — Christian, Muslim, Communist, or whatever — because it restricts the range of human understanding and the wise reconciliation of human differences and creates an orthodoxy with a sword in its hand.
I think “an orthodoxy with a sword in its hand” is exactly what the Founders sought to prevent. I think today’s version of that orthodoxy uses the National Guard to intimidate cities and the FBI to harass critics.
Murrow said he began the series at a time when many Americans were confused — and fearful. In that climate, it must have been wonderful to hear serious people think aloud — with honesty and integrity — for a few minutes.
If our own times have you down, you might try listening to a broadcast or two.
• Sources: The introduction to the series is here:
https://thisibelieve.org/essay/16844/
Wallace Stegner’s essay is here:
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