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Friendship is a good model for healthy civic life

Commentary: My city held municipal elections last week, and this spectacle was felt more patriotic to me than the nauseous catastrophe of federal politics.

The candidates were people you might see at the grocery store. They had little need to raise money. The influence of what the founders called “factions,” the political parties and committees that deploy attack ads and divide people, is less pronounced here in town. A local election gives residents an opportunity to think about our city as an “us” and exert some civic participation.

Terence, a playwright during the Roman republic (not the empire), wrote, “He wanders far from the truth, in my opinion, who thinks that government more absolute and durable which is acquired by force than that which is attached to friendship.”

The notion of friendship as a model of leadership and civic life intrigues me. I am not convinced America’s working class has true friends in Washington but, with some civic engagement, friends of the community can prevail at City Hall.

One problem for us is that we use the same word to signify different relationships.

In a recent column, I posited that our choice of friends reflects on us – that selecting a deeply corrupt or unethical person for personal friendship gives others cause to wonder about us. Well, friendship is a broad topic and difficult to address adequately in around 600 words. Ancient philosophers wrote extended treatises on the subject, after all. The ancients regarded such relationships as measures of personal and communal resilience. My brief utterance on such a rich topic did not do it justice.

Judy Roitman of Lawrence, Kansas wrote in response, “Sometimes when a friend goes wrong, without approving of what they did, we do not abandon them. Because they are still human.”

Quite so, and indeed just the opposite. When I seemed to be going off the rails, I have been collared by old friends who said, “Hold up, what are you doing?” A strongly rooted commitment to a friend is not shaken by common foibles or even moral failure. Sometimes friendship is like fetching your buddy out of a mosh pit (which I have done more than once), even at the risk of getting roughed up or muddied yourself.

Andy Rooney once wrote of friends, “You don’t even like some of them, you just have them.” This sounds more like fellowship, as with acquaintances and familiar people against whom we brush regularly, like goldfish in a bowl. We may or may not feel affection for them. They are simply there. Other “friendships” are based on political gain, profit, and other payoffs. We may call any or all of these people friends.

More deeply, friendship is a commitment we make to a select few – and selection does take place, even if we aren’t paying attention to it.

True friendship is not only selective, it presumes judgment. A common sentiment in our culture is, “Don’t judge me,” because we fear harsh criticism or pre-judgment; but without some discernment, how do you trust or love anyone?

Choosing our friends does not preclude us from extending fellowship, generosity, and compassion to strangers. These are all important for a healthy civic life. They are qualities we need to see in those we elect to office because they are the qualities we need as citizens.

Thus, again, the choice matters. As with the company we choose to keep, our selection of civic leaders, where we still exercise choice, reflects on us.

Algernon D'Ammassa writes the Desert Sage column weekly for the Deming Headlight and Las Cruces Sun News. This piece is a revised version of a recent column.. Share your thoughts at adammassa@demingheadlight.com.