A talk at the City Club of Eugene, June 2, 2006

Martin Luther King said: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

By that standard we all should be dead.

Forgive me if this talk is both a celebration and a diatribe: a celebration because of the lifetime of extraordinary works of Mark Clarke and Peg Coe and a decade of brilliance by the Lord Leebrick Theatre, and a diatribe because we have little time to save ourselves from political annihilation. While my language is apocalyptic, the crisis in American nerve, American justice, American law, and American ideals is real and getting, by the day, worse.

I have re-read the Constitution: a document I revere for its wisdom and complex simplicity. (Although I would say, in relation to the prohibition against granting titles of nobility, that I have some questions about the Lord Leebrick outfit.) It (the Constitution, not this Lord Leebrick fellow) vests all legislative powers in Congress. (Art. I § 1)

It says every bill passed by Congress, before it becomes a law, shall, "… be presented to the President … If he approves he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it with his Objections to that house in which it shall have originated …" (Art. I § 7)

The executive power is vested in a President. (Art. II § 1) The President, before assuming office, shall take the oath: "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of The President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." (Art. II § 1)

At this point you may be wondering if the teleprompter has the wrong speech, but stay with me for a moment. On 750 occasions, so far, President Bush has been presented with a bill passed by Congress. No bill has he vetoed - not one. Instead he has issued, with little publicity, "signing statements" in which he directs the executive department either not to enforce these bills, or to enforce them in accordance with his interpretation (constitutionally, the province of the Supreme and other Federal Courts).

In short, our Constitution's separation of powers into three branches - our vaunted checks and balances - has been compressed into a single person - President Bush. He has usurped unto himself the legislative and judicial functions, and has chosen to enforce such laws as he sees fit in the way he sees fit. For example, on March 9, 2006, he signed the renewal of the USA Patriot Act. Here is an excerpt from his signing statement:

"The executive branch shall construe the provisions … that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch … [and will] withhold information … which could impair the deliberative process of the executive …" [March 9, 2006 weekly compilation of Presidential documents, pp 425-426.]

In other words, Congress cannot expect the reports of FBI activities that the law requires. Not only will President Bush not enforce the law, he has told Congress to pound sand.

Moreover, he sees no need to justify to us - the citizens who own the government - why this departure from law and precedent is necessary, is justified, or is wise. The few and the puny cries of dismay have been greeted with the litany of 9/11, that dissent is disloyal, that we are at war (albeit not a declared war in the constitutional sense) and that we are in peril and should be afraid.

And maybe we are. How else can we explain the utter lack of scrutiny - let along public outrage - at this constitutional vandalism? How else can we explain that the press - our guardian of liberty - our source of information vital to democracy - has been AWOL?

What I fear most is not the next - or even the inevitable terrorist attack. I will fight. I will make sacrifices - I will defend freedom with strength and resolve. What I fear is the epitaph that says: The Revolution came in plain sight and we were too busy, too preoccupied, too selfish to notice. And so the ideals, the moral leadership, and the rule of law that have made us both proud and admired as a country will be gone. Democracy surrendered. And then 9/11 would be not just a national tragedy but a national disgrace - a lever used to pry the heart out of America.

The Cato Institute - hardly a bastion of liberal love-speak, said it best: "[under Bush's] sweeping theory of executive power, the liberty of every American rests on nothing more than the grace of the White House."

What does this have to do with art? Absolutely everything. When politicians don't speak truth to power, artists can and do. I have three examples:

The first comes from President Bush's 2002 National Security Strategy (p.5) in which he proclaims that America's "clear responsibility to history" is to "rid the world of evil." Well, that's a tall order. Let's start with Federalist 10 in which Madison says a republican form of government is necessary because humans are factious and the majority will trample the minority unless a single representative has to juggle the interests of many different factions.

Reinhold Niebuhr, the towering 20th century Theologian in his systematic theology The Nature and Destiny of Man describes us as both children of god and sinners; every person carries both the ability to do good, and the inevitability that he will do evil (otherwise, why Christ's sacrifice?)

Rid the world of evil? Shakespeare knew better. Lear destroys his family, his kingdom and his life over jealousy and megalomania. Shakespeare's Richard III explores the misuse of power and the nature of evil. Moliere's Tartuffe is about a man who pretends piety and generosity while trying to bed his host's wife and rip off the family. Evil is part of human nature. Artists know it and the President should, too.

Second example: The consequences of the misuse of power. A common description of the difference between a comedy and a tragedy is that the main character in a tragedy has power and in a comedy does not. Baron Lord Acton tells us that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So in The Crucible Arthur Miller's subject was the Salem witch trials, but it was written and produced during the McCarthy era. The witch hunts, abuses of power, fits and foibles of human nature are true for all history.

Similarly, Ibsen in An Enemy of the People recounts one man's struggle against official corruption and the will of the people (here, it's a health issue - unclean water in the spa.) And, for his efforts? He is destroyed.

Third example: truth telling. Machiavelli in The Prince says that "ordinary people will always be taken by appearances." But political speak today - from both parties - is so devoid of soul, so full of spin, so riddled with half truths, omissions and misrepresentations that we have come to expect to be lied to. In this context Shakespeare was both cynical and acerbic: "Every man has his fault and honesty is his." Timon of Athens.

The poet e.e. cummings put it this way:

nothing measurable can be alive,
nothing that isn't alive can be art,
nothing that isn't art can be true,
and anything that isn't true
doesn't amount to a very good goddamn.

In a recent speech in Corvallis, David Broder said that not only do we not trust our politicians - we don't trust each other. And that is where the arts, in addition to telling the truth to power, and unmasking the hypocrisy and vacuity of politics, play a vital role. The arts (and here I mean all of us who are engaged in any way in making, appreciating, promoting and enjoying the arts) can help our society to reestablish the connections between us as flawed but vital human beings.

Trust and trestle come from the same Latin root word. Trust is a bridge built with commonality. What is true about good art, enduring art, profound art is that it is true now, will be true tomorrow and was true yesterday. Art has a different way of keeping score than does politics, because art knows, in the words of Albert Einstein, that "not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

Art gives us both the permission and the vehicle for political rebellion. Art gives us the vision to recognize human glories and foibles and to deal honestly with them. And art tells us that we are all in this together and we had best stop the partisan bickering and, in the best theatrical sense, get our act together as a society.

We have allowed purloined Presidential power to fill a political vacuum of inattention and paralyzing caution. We have presumed rather than achieved greatness; we have made few sacrifices as a people, while expecting the ultimate sacrifice from our soldiers. We know, if we listen to our playwrights, our poets, our singers that no hero will come to save us because political salvation is by dedication and sweat and honest compromise.

So I leave you with the words of the American poet Sam Hazo:

I wish you what I wish myself:
Hard questions and the nights to answer them
And grace of disappointment
And the right to seem the fool for justice.
That's enough.
Cowards might ask for more
Heroes have died for less.