With Malice Toward None

 The New York Times was quoting yesterday a Wisconsin progressive group that is very annoyed about the extent to which Charlie Sykes has been able to reinvent himself as a mainstream moderate, in the Trump era. A decade ago, they argue, he was a couple degrees to the right of Rush Limbaugh. He was promoting election denialism before the Kraken was even a glimmer in Sidney Powell's eye. But now, just because he's anti-Trump, everyone is suddenly cool with him?

They were particularly miffed that Harris was agreeing to an interview with him. For left-wing Wisconsinites, who remember him best for his role in the ugly Scott Walker–era fights over the so-called "right to work" law, the change is particularly jarring. As they remember him, Sykes "was the shrieking voice that there was voter fraud everywhere for 10 years," a Wisconsin progressive summarizes. "Now the mainstream Democratic apparatus has embraced him because he’s right on Trump."

I see why they're annoyed. But at the same time, Democrats' embrace of Sykes in the Trump era strikes me as exactly the sort of thing that should happen more often. Of course Democrats go further out of their way to court former Republicans who oppose Trump. It may annoy the good liberal son who was a proper progressive warrior all along. But, as the Scripture says, there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous who never needed repenting. 

The "lost sheep" phenomenon is a fact of moral psychology; but more than this, it's the only way we'll ever heal as a nation—or win this election.We need to make it possible for people to change their minds about Trump and not be forever blaming them for their past stances or mistakes. We need to give them off-ramps from MAGA. So, for strategic reasons alone, there has to be more time spent celebrating the retrieval of lost sheep than tending to the sheep who never needed retrieving. 

The only way there's going to be a post-Trump future for this country, after all, is if we broaden the tent. Democrats must go out of their way to show that conservatives are welcome too. Liberals, Never Trumpers, disappointed neocons, former Bush officials, disillusioned Trump voters, are going to have to get together on this. We're going to have to agree to put aside our differences for now, if only as a tactical measure. Those arguments will still be there when Trump has left the scene!

Hard as it may be for some progressives to stomach, then, we have to create a habit and structure of forgiveness. There has to be a way for people who were once on the "wrong side" of the debate to repent and rehabilitate. We have to approach the former right-wingers—or even the former Trump voters—"with malice toward none, with charity for all," as Lincoln put it. The past, after all, is the one thing that no one can change. But their future actions are something people might still alter. 

I repeat: we have to approach this "with malice toward none, with charity for all." In other words: we need "the forgiveness of millions toward millions"—as the great Midwestern poet Edgar Lee Masters encapsulated Lincoln's message. As a description of post–Civil War history, this will not do. But as a timeless aspiration for how our nation can overcome its divisions, it still rings true. "Forgiveness of millions toward millions": it's the only way we'll ever heal as a country.

That is why we need to rejoice over the lost sheep more than the sheep that never needed finding. We need to forgive people like Sykes for their past transgressions against the Left not only seven times, but seventy times seven times. Any conservative—indeed, any former MAGA-ite—who now wants to get off the Trump train—we have to say they are welcome on our side. "Let him receive the new knowledge and wait us," as Browning put it; "Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!"