A friend of mine, the late John Brandl, a former Minnesota legislator and dean of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, demonstrated in his life and his career in politics how to incorporate moral ideals with self-interest and differences in religion to create a common good for citizens.
John demonstrated, with tact and grace and through personal perseverance, that we can collaborate in good faith with others who are not our intellectual or cultural clones to instantiate in our lives a common good.
We have included in a special issue of Pegasus some essays written in honor of John’s example.
I am reminded, when thinking about John and others like him who I have met around our world, that it is individuals who create moral outcomes. Such happenings are not of natural design. Nor do they come about by accident or from thoughtless, uncaring, selfishness. They demand human agency and invention.
Principles – for moral capitalism, moral government and moral society – can easily and elegantly be proposed, but only individuals can bring them as a living presence into the reality that philosopher Jurgen Habermas called “facticity.”
Therefore, I hope I am not being overly provincial in bringing to your attention the example of an American politician from one of our 50 states.