CULTURE WATCH: The Funeral-Rally - Paul Wellstone's funeral

National Review, Nov 25, 2002

Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone, who died in the homestretch of his re-election campaign in a plane crash that also killed his wife, his daughter, three aides, and two pilots, was a conviction politician. He called himself a "proud progressive." He voted against letting a Bush move against Saddam Hussein twice, in 1991 and 2002. His consistency was allied with a geniality, that made even his opposite numbers, such as Jesse Helms, consider themselves his friends.

Wellstone's supporters pushed his partisanship over the line at the senator's televised memorial service, turning it into a partisan pep rally. Non-Democratic mourners, such as Sen. Trent Lott and Gov. Jesse Ventura, were booed (Lott and Ventura ultimately walked out); liberal Democrats, such as Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy, and the Clintons, were lustily cheered. One eulogist, Richard Kahn, abused the privilege of the lectern by trying to bully Republicans into winning the election for Wellstone's replacement (Fritz Mondale). It was as couth as a political convention, as gross as a rock concert. Even the Minneapolis Star Tribune, one of the most liberal newspapers in the land, editorialized that Kahn's speech was "inappropriate" and "irrational."

A memorial should reflect the life of the deceased. The followers of a politician will properly take inspiration from his example, and calls to carry on his work are appropriate. Unless one thinks that the world is a snare and an illusion, one will believe that the struggle for liberty and justice here below is important work. But the presence of death should cause us to reflect on our transcience, our ignorance, our awe, our faith. "The glories of our blood and state / Are shadows, not substantial things," wrote the poet James Shirley. Karl Marx, the great atheist revolutionary, spoke for a different view when he said that the goal of philosophers is not to understand the world, but to change it.

The pumped-up Wellstone-ites may not have been Marxists, but how many of them were temporarily unhinged by emotion, and how many were modern men, with no emotions to spare from worldly pursuits? When we next feel the chill of the lonesome valley, at a friend's funeral, or on the eve of our own, may we behave differently.