The father of one of my old friends from Vienna, Illinois passed away a couple of weeks ago at the age of 92. This man had held elective office in Johnson County as its sheriff and as its County clerk at a time when sheriffs could not succeed themselves in the state of Illinois.We remember him as a World War Two veteran and a Korean War soldier. We suppose that he might have been known as a staunch conservative in his politics and in his beliefs. He passed those things on to his only son who preaches them loudly on social media sites to this very day. We remember one particular statement that he liked to make. He liked to call moderates or liberals “bleeding hearts�. He would proclaim to all who would listen in a very sarcastic way that Liberals hearts just bled for you. That statement has stuck with us through the intervening years. At the time that we listened to his words, we tended to agree with him because we considered ourselves to be a conservative just as he was. Through the years, we have grown and he had simply grown old!

We saw this man at the nursing home a few weeks before he died. He lay there on his soon to be death bed away from his wife of over sixty years as he lamented the fact that, because of his diabetes, they would soon have to remove some of his toes. We have changed a great deal over the years since his statements about liberals and, we suppose, that our heart bled some for him that day. We did not think to question this old fellow about what he believed today but we still felt for him and we also added him to our prayer list. We saw his son a few days before his father died at a class reunion down in Vienna but we purposely stayed away from any talk of politics as we did with everyone that we met down there that night. Friendship should transcend politics but friendships are so often destroyed by differences in beliefs these days.

Politics has been defined as the art of compromise and the art of the possible . In 2011 as it has been for a very long time now, there is no compromise and nothing very positive seems possible. We remember our old friends father as a person who went through a great deal for both is country and because of his own vain, cocky, stupidity. It cost him his elective seat and very nearly a stint in prison. All of his family’s close friends stood by the family in their hour of need and, we thought that might count for something down the road. We were barely thanked for that and, as the years rolled along, estrangements have occurred and we have grown far apart. In the end, a few gathered along with our old friend at the graveside service over his father’s cremated remains on an early fall day out on a hill at the cemetery where so many lie at eternal rest awaiting the final call.

Others have died recently as well.

Former senator Charles H Percy, the one time boy wonder of Illinois politics, passed away a few days ago at 91. We remember senator Percy as a moderate who took stands that would bring the tea party down on his neck if he were in political office these days. It brings into question just what party the tea party really represents because Percy was a liberal Republican at a time when there were still liberal and conservative branches to both the Democrats and the Republicans. That is a part of the distant past these days. Percy was beaten in his fourth election for the senate in 1984 by a liberal Democrat named Paul Simon who benefited from a side campaign run against Percy by a now forgotten California activist who was upset at Percy for some sort of stand that he had taken that this very rich man disliked. The election commission found that the man was illegal in what he had done but it did not change Percy’s fate. The now small potatoes half a million dollars that he spend against Percy tilted the election in Simon’s favor. Now we have an unbridled post Citizens United supreme court decision world in which million upon millions are spend in each election cycle without any regulation on any of it. Our heart bleeds for all of it and for our beloved country that now seems so imperiled by the excesses that go on these days.

Another death that has lately occurred was that of Troy Davis. Davis was a black man who had avoided execution for twenty years as bleeding heart liberals and some conservatives alike had taken up his cause as a man possibly unjustly convicted in a southern state as has been sometimes known for doing such things. As we watched the last night of this man’s life ebb away, we remember that film of the Georgia pardons and parole board taking their seats with three of the five on that board also being black men. We really know nothing about this case except that the conservative community likes to roll out their often hard hearted blacks as evidence of how unbigoted and non racist that they are supposed to be. We remember the Republican party’s black presidential candidate Herman Cain and how he has accused blacks of being brainwashed by supposed bleeding heart liberals into voting the Democratic ticket and we wonder just how much blood Herman Cain and his ilk have ever bled for anything! As we saw the night that Troy Davis ended up dying wend its way along as the same supreme court that passed Citizen’s United supposedly agonized over his fate after they had previously asked the lower Georgia court to take another look at the case, we wondered if it was all just for show or if they really cared any at all that they had a man’s life with many questions surrounding it in their hands. It is all too easy to kill and we reflect on a nation that, in 2011, in Florida, could not convict a person such as Casey Anthony of a crime or some such thing that took the life of a lovely two year old child that a watching world came to posthumously love so very much. Pundits have said that the death penalty is fading across the United States. However, in Georgia, and in Washington D.C. on that night, it was very, very, much alive.

And, so, here we are at sixty two. We are a bleeding heart liberal, or, perhaps, a pragmatist just as well. It is a bad time for pragmatists because they believe in what works. It is a bad time for liberals because no one seems to care any longer for the blood that they bleed. And, we noticed and were affected by what we saw this morning out of the Michael Jackson/Conrad Murray trial out in California when someone testified that Jackson, when they finally saw him in the hospital, seemed to have a “dying heart�. Perhaps that might be a phrase that might fit this nation down to its very soul. We remember the story of the great painter who passed away who was so famous for his vivid reds. When they looked at his body they found that he had been opening an vein near his heart and supplementing the colors of his art. We never did ask our old friends father if he had ever shed any blood or had gotten a purple heart in his two stints in the military in time of war. It didn’t really matter anyway. We thank him for his service and for all those who did die with him and those like him so that those today might carry on their rights to their prejudices and to their beliefs. Our bleeding heart means nothing really in the face of all of that sacrifice and real blood that has meant so much to so many and now seems to count for so very little any more. We remember souls such as John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy, along with so many who died in the civil rights struggles, as we realize that very real beating hearts have bled and died for the very beliefs that they have espoused.

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe

To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.