Conscience Always Comes Late, But Oh, So Welcome

Erica Newland, counsel at Protect Democracy, worked in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department from 2016-18. Counselor Newland is having an attack of conscience in this morning’s New York Times. Her inner Jiminy Cricket, whose watch-phrase is “Always let your conscience be your guide,” is activated.  

My friends at the OED tell me that conscience is “a person’s moral sense of right and wrong, viewed as acting as a guide to one’s behaviour.” The emotion most closely associated with conscience is guilt. 

The word comes to us from Middle English via Old French from Latin conscientia, from the verb conscire, from con-  = with + scire = know. Hence, conscience means with knowing. 

From 2016 to 2018, Ms. Newland, “remained committed to trying to uphold my oath even as the president refused to uphold his.” As Americans, one of the questions we famously ask repeatedly is, Who knew what? Followed immediately by, And when? 

Follow the story closely, please. Ms. Newland knew the President wasn’t upholding his oath because it was her task to pass legal judgment on his executive orders and tailor them so narrowly that the courts would not find a reason to overturn them. She also knew she had her own oath to uphold. She was determined to bear the standard of the rule of law from within the Justice Department, the highest institution charged with upholding the rule of law in our country.

She writes, “Even after I left, I advised others that they could do good by staying. News reports about meaningful pushback by Justice Department attorneys seemed to confirm this thinking. I was wrong.” 

Eventually, when Ms. Newland realized that she couldn’t uphold the rule of law, she acted upon her conscience, and left her job. The media love to tell the conscience story with a nefarious flourish, but I would argue that what happened to Ms. Newland is actually a much more accurate portrait of how conscience really works in a human psyche. 

She writes, “Watching the Trump campaign’s attacks on the election results, I now see what might have happened if, rather than nip and tuck the Trump agenda, responsible Justice Department attorneys had collectively—ethically, lawfully—refused to participate in President Trump’s systematic attacks on our democracy from the beginning. The attacks would have failed.” She’s probably right, but Justice Department attorneys didn’t do that either individually, no matter how Ms. Newland tried, or collectively. 

Here is a perfect, activated conscience statement. “Before the 2020 election, I was haunted by what I didn’t do. By all the ways I failed to push back enough. Now, after the 2020 election, I’m haunted by what I did. The trade-off wasn’t worth it.” 

Beloved, don’t you see? Very rarely do humans know at the start of the slippery slope that activates conscience that what they’re doing is wrong. Very, very rarely. Instead, the activation of conscience, unless deliberately invoked by Jiminy Cricket—out loud, with nouns, in song—is a slow, steady awareness that starts with a spark of light, a germ of an idea, a moment of clarity, and then slowly, steadily, sometimes even stealthily, builds its own case from within till the light pops on to stay on in the heart and soul of its human. Compare it to the task of driving: conscience is repeated glances in the rearview mirror till the picture becomes clear. 

Here is conscience speaking at the long stoplight, to carry the traffic metaphor forward. That’s when we have the luxury of staring into the rearview mirror and the dome light both flashes on and stays on. “We owe the country our honesty about that and about what we saw. We owe apologies. I offer mine here. And we owe our best efforts to restore our democracy and to share what we learned to help mobilize and enact reforms to remind future government lawyers that when asked to undermine our democracy, the right course is to refuse and hold your peers to the same standard. To lead by example and do everything in our power to ensure this never happens again. If we don’t, it will.” 

Conscience often tells a cautionary tale. Ms. Newland regrets what she did, but she didn’t regret it as she was doing it, or her sense of regret grew the more she did it, it didn’t spring full-blown from Ms. Newland’s forehead like Athena grew from the forehead of Zeus. Yes, Ms. Newland’s actions were wrong, but, Beloved, they are only wrong in retrospect. Life must be lived forward, but can only truly be understood backward. 

So I’m inclined to give Ms. Newland a complete te absolvo—I forgive you. Given what you knew at the time, you did the best you could, and now, God bless you, you’re doing what you can to make sure no one else is put in the same position you were.  

Contrast this judicial story with one I learned about operating in New York State these days. Because of a gubernatorial directive to cut multiple millions of dollars in costs from the state justice department, all but three of the most senior judges’ contracts are not being renewed. “As a practical matter, Judge DiFiore’s decision means the state courts in New York City are losing an enormous number of their most experienced jurists at a time when the system is already struggling with backlogs created by the pandemic.” Not so much conscience here. 

Conscience is a valuable portion of consciousness, Beloved. We all need one to help us mid-course correct as well as post-course correct like Ms. Newland is. She is to be celebrated for continuing to look in the rearview mirror of her conscience until she finally had to write an Opinion piece in The New York Times to help us all avoid a repeat of her dilemma. To that I say, Brava. 

And now, what about any issues of conscience the rest of us are having? From as simple as not wearing a mask and infecting a loved one of our own to insisting on going to church and singing full-out, knowing that such a behavior is a health risk to all of us. 

A church music director in Kentucky has done everything in his power to allow for safe Christmas music this year. He said, “It’s like the Whos are all gathered around, and the Grinch is looking down and he can’t figure out why they’re still singing. Of course, they could hold hands, and we can’t do that. But we can still sing, even through a mask.” What makes us still want to sing, Beloved Whos? I’ll tell you. Life isn’t ever fully lived looking in the rearview mirror. No, it’s lived—extended driving metaphor—looking through the windshield. Compare the sizes of the two. 

This is why nature essayist Margaret Renkl wrote in her essay today, “The day is coming when we will sit around tables together again and carelessly offer one another a taste of what’s on our plates. We will go to the movies again and read books among strangers in coffeehouses again and sing out loud at church services and concerts again. We will tell jokes in the break room at work again and blow out the candles on our birthday cakes again. We may even trust our government again.” She’s looking through the windshield, Beloved. 

“That’s the great promise of the solstice: Like steadfast friends who see us through everything a cold world can throw our way, the solstice reminds us, every year, that light is coming. It tells us that darkness is never here to stay.” A brief nod to the rearview mirror. 

Yes, we all have consciences, yes, we all have things we wish we’d done differently, yes, it’s part of the human condition to look back and learn, but both Ms. Newland and Ms. Renkl are gazing through the windshield, Beloved. Can we do any less? 

Good Solstice. 

Dr. Susan Corso is a spiritual teacher, the founder of iAmpersand, and the author of The Mex Mysteries, the Boots & Boas Books, and spiritual nonfiction. Her essays address the intersection of spirituality and culture. Her website is susancorso.com.