Sometimes when I speed read through the news and views of our national debate I am stricken with the religious experience of awe and ecstasy. There is God in governance, as in all things. Laws framed by principle and built on the geologic forms of precedent; the fluctuations of economic growth predicated on tens of millions of minds ordering and prioritizing work and the fulfillment of desire; the balance of nations weighing in perpetual struggle with our more noble nudge toward democracy; the bureaucracy of branches weaving the tattered web of an all too frail social net; the parties and partisans, dragging their concerns to the political arena, battling for a balance we seldom sense: to contemplate the American system is to contemplate the world. And through this world we might come to love all things.

Why is it we so often fail to grasp the majesty of the world as soon as we consider the world of human grasping? Why does it somehow seem that the sphere of political reason is a profane realm and that in order to preserve our purity we must remove ourselves from it?

Politics is a moral realm after all. Through the political process, we set the conditions which will impact all of the actions of all of the members of our society and through them the world. So, in a sense, we play God through politics. By asking how humans ought to live and working with others to attain to the conditions which will allow them to live that way, we play God in the act of creation. But before we can shape the world as a God would, we must look at the world through the eyes of God. Not only must we consider everything and how the great puzzle of human society is pieced together, but we must tend to everything. And if we are to act morally, we must tend to it all with care. To participate in a political democracy is to tend to all things. Of course, this is far too much to ask of mere mortals such as ourselves. The only problem is that once we enter the political realm, we can only escape from considering and caring for everything by denying our powers. After all, even if we choose to do nothing, it is a choice to let things be. And if we know how things are and know what they will become, the choice to let things be is really a choice to let things become. By letting the homeless person be, we are often letting them become despairing alcoholics. By letting business be, we are often letting it become monopolistic or exploitative or what have you. Of course, there are always problems involved in doing something as well. The point is that we cannot escape having an impact once we enter the political realm - whether we are activist or laisez faire.