(Editor’s note: Jim Lees attorney and former candidate for Governor of West Virginia submitted this thoughtul commentary. We are pleased to publish.)
Twenty-six years ago I was running for Governor of West Virginia. My wife
and I had four children and I truly wanted to make West Virginia a better place for
people to work and live and love. I did not want my kids to grow up and, like
thousands before them, leave West Virginia for greener pastures elsewhere. I knew
running for office was hard, and I knew politics is a brutal business. But to say I
was unprepared for the depth of that brutality would be a gross understatement.
I was at the time an ordained Elder in the Teays Valley Presbyterian Church.
Our family regularly attended church each Sunday morning as did thousands of
people all across West Virginia. As my family left the church that Sunday morning
in May we noticed all the cars in the parking lot had flyers stuck under the
windshield wipers of the cars. I pulled one out from under my wipers as my family
piled into our mini-van and saw in bold print the message: JIM LEES WANTS
TO KILL BABIES.
The Flyer of course was referencing my support for the then law of the land as
expressed in Roe v. Wade of giving women the right to terminate a pregnancy
during the first trimester. I believed then as I believe now that the Supreme Court
had fashioned an imperfect but workable solution to an extremely difficult issue
that divided Americans almost exactly in half, balancing a woman’s right to control
her own body with the beliefs of many that life begins at conception. Recognizing
that there is no middle ground in deciding this issue based upon faith and belief,
the Supreme Court nevertheless created a middle ground predicated upon the
realities of keeping a civilization from tearing itself apart on such an issue.
I knew from having attended and spoken at hundreds of fire halls and picnics
and church socials the strength of conviction West Virginians held in their positions
on this issue, and as a candidate I did my best to recognize those differing views
while at the same time honestly articulating my own views on the issue. But on
that Sunday morning, with my four children climbing into the family van after
leaving church and seeing hundreds of flyers all saying that Dad wanted to kill
babies, I had an epiphany: we are killing ourselves over our differences to the point
where no rational person with any sense of sanity would ever subject themselves to
this process. It simply is not worth it.
Which brings me to last week. Two different men, in two different places,
spoke to us. One was Ben Sasse, former Republican Senator from Nebraska. The
other was Victor Glover, NASA astronaut and pilot of the Artemis II spacecraft that
flew around the moon. One of the men, Ben Sasse, was speaking in an interview
with a New York Times podcaster. The other, Victor Glover, was speaking in an
interview from his spacecraft on national TV.
One of the men, Mr. Sasse, is dying from terminal cancer. The other, Mr.
Glover, was living the adventure of his lifetime. And what each had to say is worth
revisiting. Senator Sasse, his face actively bleeding from experimental chemo
treatments he is undergoing to attempt to add a few months to his life, said:
“We’re all on the clock, and I wanted to have prioritized better. Whether I really
only have three or four months left, or if I get nine to twelve months left, I want to
prioritize better…”
And then reflecting upon human frailty he said, “I can’t keep the planets in
orbit. I can’t even grow skin on my face.”
Mr. Glover, speaking from his tiny spacecraft deep in space, said, “I think these
observances are important, as we are so far from Earth and looking back at the
beauty of creation. I think for me, one of the really important personal
perspectives that I have up here is I can really see Earth as one thing.”
He then went on to say, “You guys are talking to us because we’re in a
spaceship really far from Earth. But you’re on a spaceship called Earth that was
created to give us a place to live in the universe, in the cosmos…..in all of this
emptiness-this whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe-you have
this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together.”
Finally, in noting that we were about to go into Easter Sunday, Astronaut Glover
said, “…this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and
that we are the same thing, and that we got to get through this together.”
Two men, each at very different places in their lives, speaking to us from
perspectives that provide each man unique insight into the human condition. We
will never have the perspective of being out in space seeing the Earth from a tiny
spaceship as has Mr. Glover, yet we understand completely his point: everyone on
this planet is in this together, living on Spaceship Earth, and we are unique.
Surrounded by the vast nothingness of space we have somehow been given this
lifeboat, a lifeboat that we must share to survive.
Mr. Sasse speaks from a perspective all of us will experience: being at the end
of his life on this planet. From his perspective is a realization that all the things we
spend so much time fretting about and worrying about and thinking about because
we believe we can control them; that we can somehow shape and control the things
that happen around us, is illusory. At the end we control nothing except our own
thoughts and feelings.
I do not want to kill babies. I never have wanted to kill babies. Today I do not
want to kill people living in Iran, and I certainly do not want them to kill me or
people I love. I have no control over either. My children all grew up and now live
somewhere other than West Virginia. I did not make West Virginia a better place
for them to grow up, and I now make my home somewhere other than West
Virginia.
Mr. Glover has reminded me of the uniqueness of what we share as human
beings: Spaceship Earth. Mr. Sasse has reminded me that at the end we have little
to no control over the behavior of other people and other events. But what each of
us as human beings do have is the ability to control one thing: ourselves. Perhaps
if everyone on our Spaceship paid more attention to controlling ourselves and less
time trying to control the behavior and thoughts of others we might just have a
much better ride on the lifeboat we call Earth.