I haven’t meant to be a shirker, but can’t hide the fact that a lot has happened since my last blog. I was waiting for my friends in the MSM (that’s blog-talk for mainstream media) to follow-up on the timeline I posted about African Americans in theWhite House. The Associated Press has now done so—here is the link—meaning I’ve really got no excuse for not updating this blog. So here goes.
This dispatch comes to you from Key West, Florida, where I’m attending a conference hosted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and moderated by Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Times are tough in the economy, and non-profits are hit hard, too, but this bi-annual seminar is quite valuable, so I hope the folks at Pew stay the course. Twice each year, scholars in philosophy, religion, and politics come and discuss their academic findings with 24 selected journalists. We are liberal, conservative, and (like Loose Cannon) decidedly and moderately non-partisan. Although many of those who speak to us are college professors, the issues we explore are anything but academic: This year, our first sessions examined radicalism in the Shiite and Sunni communities in the Persian Gulf. Moreover, we discuss these subjects civilly and in a spirit of discovery.
I will blog on some of the highlights of this seminar later this week. My thought of the day occurred at dawn this morning, on a bicycle ride with two friends, to the southernmost point of the continental United States. Gazing out on the ocean, we were struck, as we often are, by the thought that Cuba is only 90 miles away. It’s open water, yes, but for the people living in poverty and tyranny on that lovely island, it must be so tempting to climb in a makeshift craft and try to sail to America.
It certainly was for Elizabet González. She set out for Florida at 4 a.m. on November 21, 1999 with her 6-year-old son Elián González, and 12 other people. She was lost at sea, as were ten other souls. The little boy himself, along with two other adults, survived by hanging on to an inner tube. They were rescued by fishermen, turned over to the Coast Guard and repatriated to Cuba after a lengthy stand-off that almost certainly cost Al Gore the state of Florida in the 2000 presidential election—and, with it, the presidency. I was thinking of this while looking at the waves in Key West, perhaps because Barack Obama is meeting with Gore today in Chicago. If Elián had also drowned, Al Gore might be leaving the White House in less than six weeks instead of George W. Bush. Perhaps Bush would be succeeding Gore. Or maybe it would be Joe Lieberman, who campaigned for John McCain this year.
If Al Gore had been president, he’d be leaving office without his Academy Award for his documentary on global warming, and probably without a Nobel Prize awarded for work on the same issue. Is he happier this way? Better off? Only God truly can answer such questions. There is an unknowable aspect to human affairs that make them sometimes terrifying, yet often hopeful. Maybe Elián González will grow up and be the leader of a free Cuba. The currents of the oceans—and of our lives on this Earth—are difficult to chart, for the Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways.
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