“Law speaks of what is authoritative in society. Like travelers consulting a road map we consult the law. Or like players in a game consulting the rule book in order to settle a dispute. We usually look at the road map when we are lost and at the rule book when we have a dispute. With respect to the law, however, we are map makers as well as map followers; we ask not only what the rule is but also what the rule ought to be. In a democracy we participate in the drawing of the maps and the making of the rules. Or so it is said.”

- Father Richard John Neuhaus – “The Naked Public Square” (1984)

A couple of months ago I stopped by our polling place at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church here in Emporia to vote in the Kansas primary. It wasn’t very complicated at all. The only snag, if it could be called that, was declaring myself, in writing, as a Republican for the day in order to vote in the Republican half of the primary. Having grown up in Tip O’Neill’s congressional district in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I felt a twinge of guilt as I signed the small slip of paper declaring me a one day member of the Party of Alf Landon, as it’s known in Kansas. I was also tempted to cast a Democratic ballot, but all the Party’s candidates, from state representative to dog catcher, were un-opposed. That just seemed to me to be un-democratic, too much like what it must have felt like to vote for Saddam Hussein or Josef Stalin. I decided to resist the temptation. There just wasn’t much sense in voting so that some party official could report that “the great leader received a plurality of ninety-nine point two percent of the popular vote, an overwhelming victory for truth and justice.”

For any fellow Democrats who may have taken offense at my comparison, all I can say is relax; I haven’t completely abandoned the Party. While I now live in the heartland, I still have roots in the neon and broken glass of Boston’s housing projects and tenements and the clatter of subway steel coursing through my veins.

The voting process here in small-town America has a populist strain to it. The volunteers are all senior citizens, which gives us a great sense of comfort. Some are a bit hard of hearing, some seem to have short memory spans (“What was your address again, young man?”), some report for duty leaning on canes and walkers, and some, like one silver-haired old saint, had problems spelling the names. And, wouldn’t you know, my name just happened to be in her roll book. “Dillon,” I said, announcing my presence and intentions. She gently lifted her head toward me and peered intently through her bi-focals. “Can you spell that, please?” she asked.

“D…I…L…L…O…N.”

“D…I…L…L…I…O…N?”

“No,” I said indignantly. “It’s DILLON…D…I…L…L…O…N, with no I between the L and the O.”

“That’s an unusual name.”

“Well, it’s a pretty common name in County Westmeath. We Irish like it a lot.”

“I’ve got it,” she proudly announced. “Nine nineteen Neosho, right?”

“That’s me.”

“Philip, it says. P…H…I…L…I…P…Only one L?”

“Yes indeed.”

“That’s unusual too.”

It all took about ten minutes, with about two or three spent working interactively with the Diebold voting machine. After a final review of my ballot, I waved my finger in the air several times as it descended onto the touch screen, one last dramatic gesture as I cast my vote. With that simple gesture I made my feelings known about everything here in Kansas from who the next governor should be to the composition of the school boards.

Tip O’Neill was believed to have coined the term “all politics is local.” From where I sit in peaceful Kansas it seems to be such an extraordinarily good idea. The people decide. It works so well when a fella’ knows that the folks in Kansas have no axes to grind with the citizens of Nebraska or Oklahoma and vice versa. And, knowing that my polling place is manned by grey panthers and not armed guards is more reassuring than I can express in words. It all makes me feel like going upstairs and hitting the old “that was easy” button one more time for good measure.

Of course, it really isn’t all that easy. This country has had to sacrifice a lot so that it would just all seem so transparently easy. Behind the scenes, though, once you get past the silver haired seniors and the electronic wizardry, there’s the unseen, yet still remembered trauma and pain of democracy. It’s there in the deprivation of Valley Forge. It’s there in the agony of Antietam, Tarawa, Khe Sanh, and Fallujah. No, it isn’t easy at all. It just looks that way now.

Half a world away the Middle-East is in flames. It’s not easy there, either, as the now daily images vividly demonstrate. Some in the region, like modern Israel, have known this for three generations, and probably will for generations more. It seems that there in the Cradle of Civilization there are axes to grind, scores to settle, and blood to let. In the midst of all this, Israel, Lebanon, and Iraq, unlike Kansas, has neighbors not at all like ours in Nebraska. The local politics of their enemies has little to do with school boards. It has everything to do with the destruction of the Jewish people. Hezbollah, for example, was recently given the political capital in Lebanon to bring about a far different agenda than the local candidates here in Kansas. They have told everyone what they want and what they’re about:

“We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine. Therefore we oppose and reject the Camp David Agreements, the proposals of King Fahd, the Fez and Reagan plan, Brezhnev's and the French-Egyptian proposals, and all other programs that include the recognition (even the implied recognition) of the Zionist entity.”

And so it goes. Hamas has gained the political upper hand in Palestine. In Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr and his band of thugs roam the streets pillaging and murdering while they maintain a stranglehold on the Iraqi national assembly.

Will it ever become easy? Will there ever come a day when all the polling places in the Middle-East will be manned by silver-haired seniors? Will there ever be a time when there, like here, the irritants will be the spelling of a name or party affiliation for a day rather than nationality and holy war? Will there ever come a time when the thugs and terrorists no longer hold millions of innocent people from Baghdad to Beirut to Nablus in their icy grip.

Thinking of this leaves me conflicted, grateful for the freedom I have, but despairing for those now in the cross-hairs of hate. It’s not so easy; there are no magic “that was easy” buttons to push. Unfortunately, peace and brotherhood cannot be legislated, nor can they be mandated. Until hearts and agendas change, until the scourge of terror is finally defeated, nothing else will.