With tired eyes, tired minds, tired souls we slept

This post contains only one accusation. Reading the news recently has gotten me too tense for my own good. There is plenty more to say about the Occupy movement, which is still doing great things to raise consciousness and getting people to think critically, even if it is at great expense to the protestors. At the New York Times, Thomas Friedman oversimplifies serious issues. I've wanted to write something about H.R. 3261: the Stop Online Privacy Act. However, my good friend Carlos has it covered. Another writing resource has helped somewhat to ease the stress. But news and academics have left me exhausted.

In anticipation of the deficit panel's failure to come to a consensus tomorrow, I would like to offer a more heartening picture of interpersonal cooperation. Black, white, Democrat, Republican, serving in religious and secular capacities. This comes from President Barack Obama's remarks at the highly-contested 2009 Notre Dame Commencement:

After all, I stand here today, as President and as an African American, on the 55th anniversary of the day that the Supreme Court handed down the decision in Brown v. Board of Education.  Now, Brown was of course the first major step in dismantling the "separate but equal" doctrine, but it would take a number of years and a nationwide movement to fully realize the dream of civil rights for all of God’s children.  There were freedom rides and lunch counters and Billy clubs, and there was also a Civil Rights Commission appointed by President Eisenhower.  It was the 12 resolutions recommended by this commission that would ultimately become law in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

There were six members of this commission.  It included five whites and one African American; Democrats and Republicans; two Southern governors, the dean of a Southern law school, a Midwestern university president, and your own Father Ted Hesburgh, President of Notre Dame.  (Applause.)  So they worked for two years, and at times, President Eisenhower had to intervene personally since no hotel or restaurant in the South would serve the black and white members of the commission together.  And finally, when they reached an impasse in Louisiana, Father Ted flew them all to Notre Dame’s retreat in Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin -- (applause) -- where they eventually overcame their differences and hammered out a final deal.

And years later, President Eisenhower asked Father Ted how on Earth he was able to broker an agreement between men of such different backgrounds and beliefs.  And Father Ted simply said that during their first dinner in Wisconsin, they discovered they were all fishermen.  (Laughter.)  And so he quickly readied a boat for a twilight trip out on the lake.  They fished, and they talked, and they changed the course of history.

Amen.