Give Symbols their Meaning.

There is a bit of grumbling going on about some of Barack Obama'a selections of people and things for his inaugural. I commented about one aspect the other day: the evangelical minister who will give an invocation. Many now are complaining about him being sworn in on the Lincoln Bible. "It's only a symbolic gesture", one friend lamented to me yesterday over Christmas dinner.

What the President-elect is doing may well be little more than gestures, sops tossed towards the right in a perhaps overwrought attempt to make us feel comfortable with him, to make us feel 'included'. Indeed if I were a betting man I would be inclined to agree. Liberals generally don't care what conservatives think or feel: they do what they want. Regardless, let's play fair: maybe he does mean it. He surely recognizes that we will agree on little; perhaps this is his way of saying that he nonetheless recognizes our part in the culture, our contributions to our nation.

When all gets said and done, it is at least arguably unfair to say (as we have) that he doesn't care about us and then decry any attempts he makes towards our affinity. But what concerns me more is the idea that he's only 'using' symbols. Again, yes, he may only be using them; but we must be careful about dismissing symbols as 'only' symbolic. We risk putting our own respect and admiration for symbols onto the dustbin.

Old Glory, statues of war heroes, elephants and donkeys even: only symbols, but they represent very real and true people, things, and ideals. Hasn't it been the left, generally, who show no respect for symbols? Do we want to be like that? Once we are, the symbols themselves will grow meaningless. Do we want that?

If you want to be upset at all, be upset that perhaps he is employing symbols wrongly or selfishly. I don't know that such is the case, but that type of concern would at the worst be anger better spent. Don't dismiss his use of symbols lest you dismiss the symbols. At that point, it truly would not matter.