Joy has been in the news quite a lot in recent days. The campaign of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz is making joy a centerpiece of their messaging, something that’s unusual in American politics. A word of just three letters, joy looks good on yard signs and bumper stickers, and probably polls better than government price controls and seizing private patents.
The media has dutifully picked up on the campaign’s messaging. The Associated Press reports that “Harris is pushing joy.” The New York Times claims “Joy is fueling” the Harris-Walz campaign. Even the financial newspaper Barron’s is paying attention to all the joy in Chicago. For regular consumers of news, it’s difficult to not see that Harris and her party are strongly in favor of joy.
I also spied an article in Rolling Stone with a jarring headline informing us that “joy is the best way to fight fascism.” It struck me as odd because 90 years ago, joy was the best way to promote fascism in Nazi Germany.
Within months of Adolf Hitler becoming chancellor in 1933, his Nazi Party launched its Strength Through Joy program. This cultural and athletic initiative was designed to, “improve the health and productivity of the German workforce while easing class tensions within the so-called ‘national community,’” according to the U.S. Holocaust Museum. National community was a euphemism for racial purity and sought to normalize Nazism in pursuit of political conformity to Hitler’s policies. Joy played a big part in achieving this end.
The Nazi Party also recognized the power of giving away free stuff and used the Strength Through Joy program as a vehicle for dispensing government largess. It began giving away free tickets to concerts and theater productions, along with “providing cheap vacation packages to German workers in 1934,” subsidizing the recreation of Aryans. The subsidies ended in 1939 so as to not siphon-off funds needed for Hitler's conquest of Europe.
Credit for this is owed to former journalist Joseph Goebbels, head of Germany’s Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Under his leadership, the Chamber of Culture was spawned a few weeks after Hitler assumed the chancellorship. Goebbels understood that Hitlerian policies could be promoted and entrenched across society through control of music, literature, art, leisure and other joyful aspects of ordinary life - strength through joy.
Many voters tend to be skeptical of politicians who emphasize emotions like joy rather than their vision for tax and economic policy, foreign affairs, national defense and other issues that affect their lives and pocketbooks. One should not be surprised if joy is emphasized by a politician because if people knew what their policies actually were, the electorate would recoil in horror, and I suspect Goebbels isn’t the only political operative who understood this.
But there’s another angle here, one that’s potentially more pernicious. Joy is a prevalent theme in Christianity. The word and its variants appear hundreds of times in the Bible, suggesting the campaign may be seeking a connection with people of faith. I can’t say whether this is deliberate but it would be a smart move by Democrats who would like Americans to forget how the Biden administration has prosecuted elderly Christians for the crime of praying.
There are many examples of sharp distinctions between the foibles of man and the inerrancy of scripture, and joy is a good one. The Apostle Paul wrote about joy throughout his letter to the church in Rome. He encouraged the Romans saying, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.” Paul reminded Christians that God’s kingdom is a matter of “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,” and counseled believers to “rejoice in hope.” One of my favorite references to joy comes from the 51st Psalm, which asks God to “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and uphold me with thy free spirit.” This verse is preceded by the powerful supplication, “Create in me a clean heart, oh God.”
There’s nothing wrong with a little joy in politics. I’ve always admired Happy Warriors - Ronald Reagan and former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour come to mind - but joy wasn’t a primary talking point for them. Instead, it was an underlying component of their personalities reflecting their attitude toward life and their worldview. I cannot say with absolute certainty whether it also reflected their faith, but I’d bet money it did.
The definition of joy is malleable; its inherent subjectivity makes it impossible to pin down, like nailing Jello to a wall. The best we can do is examine those going out of their way to promote it and look for clues. Knowing what I do about the policies promoted by Kamala Harris, I suspect her definition of joy is markedly different than what is taught through more authoritative sources.