“…the clamors of…factious men are often mistaken for patriotism.”
— Alexander Hamilton
Keepers Of Our Republic
Americans Coming Together In One Nation, Never One Way
A Declaration for Interdependence
I
“…there never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous task, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively and anxiously devoted to the object committed to them.”
— James Madison, 1778
In our Declaration of Independence, the Founders agreed that self-evident truths and inalienable rights allow people to reject oppressive authority and govern themselves. Eleven years and a war later, seeing that their first attempt at a Confederation wasn’t working, the Framers wrote our Constitution. This document was designed to be a flexible blueprint that reflected the principles of the Declaration and established the initial framework of our government. Together, these two founding documents create an apparent contradiction at the core of our Republic and expose our Nation’s greatest sin. They also help explain how our American Experiment has lasted so long.
The apparent contradiction is that the Declaration’s inalienable right of citizens to liberty seems to conflict with the Constitution’s authority to limit that right. The greatest sin is that the Constitution excluded so many people from participating, either by ignoring them or by considering them less human. In our time, we see that it ratified unjust and often brutal practices that betrayed the principles of both documents. In those times, the creation of our Nation could only be agreed upon because the Framers ignored these sins of omission and put off dealing with them. Their Constitution wasn’t perfect and, just like us, neither were they.
II
“…laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind…and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him as a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”
—Thomas Jefferson, 1816
Despite its imperfections, our Republic is among the longest lasting ever of this type of government. One reason is that the apparent contradiction between the Declaration and the Constitution is actually two essential counterparts working together. It’s like a car battery, and the car is the American Experiment. Look at it like this: the two poles of a battery (+ and -) may be contrary, but together they create a spark. Likewise, the current running between the Declaration’s “positive” right to liberty and the Constitution’s “grounding” of that liberty provides a spark that ignites the power driving us toward a more perfect Union. Our Republic needs both poles, and it continues unless we disconnect from either one of them.
Our Constitution doesn’t pretend to use that power to create a perfect result, but just to continuously pursue a more perfect one. It energizes a process that can adapt to the ever-changing balance between the individual and society, between our freedoms and our responsibilities to each other. Our Republic has never been and will never be perfect because things change. It will always be a work in progress or it dies; that’s what makes it so unique. It’s the American Process. Our duty as citizen/owners isn’t to just pledge allegiance to it, but to also acknowledge its flaws and make it better into the future. We do that by self-educating, working together, contributing our different perspectives and, above all, taking responsibility for what’s going on in our government. That’s how we continuously recharge the battery.
III
“There is nothing I dread so much, as a Division of the Republic into two great Parties, each arranged under its Leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”
— John Adams, 1780
The civic duty of the People is to conserve the best parts of American self-governance, while continually correcting our course toward what improves it. Individual citizens may lean more toward either conserving or correcting, but holding both conservative and progressive perspectives at the same time is vital. It’s vital not just for the continuing operation of our Experiment, but for the psychological balance of the individual citizen as well. Healthy citizens make a healthy republic. Blindly defending one perspective while blindly attacking the other isn’t healthy. It limits our vision and threatens our unity by disconnecting us from ourselves, from our fellow citizens, and from the power that enables our process of self-government.
More and more these days, our two major political parties sabotage our interdependence by using a common playbook against each other, with the same kinds of combative strategies, accusations and defenses. The parties simply switch tactics depending on which of them has control of the political football. With their never-ending electioneering, daily bickering and petty politicking, these parties are playing a game that controls our political and electoral arenas from start to finish. E Pluribus Unum has been turned into a partisan sports contest, funded by wealthy special interests and amplified by the media, with smug winners celebrating victory and sore losers plotting revenge. In fact, there are actually few winners in this sport, and usually the same few. The current rules of the game are a corruption of our Founders civic vision, and so our Republic of the People, by the People, for the People, begins to sputter and die.
IV
“When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend because I am the friend of happiness; when these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and government.” — Thomas Paine, 1792
Here’s the bottom line: it’s how we act civically, not what we think politically, that best defines the American Process. It’s the civic process itself—not any past, present or future result of the process—that we swear to defend against all threats, foreign and domestic. We need to identify and marginalize threats to that process, and domestic threats pose the far greater danger because they grow, unnoticed, inside our defenses. A few examples of domestic civic threats now endangering our Republic, our rights and our duties, might include:
- too many citizens' civic illiteracy, apathy or cynicism;
- too many citizens who are ill-fed, under-paid, over-drugged, or un-fulfilled;
- too many citizens or their entities who hoard or steal the wealth of the Nation and throttle the People's right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”;
- citizens, politicians and media who manipulate or ignore objective facts to promote partisan ideologies;
- uncompromising factional politics and self-serving agendas;
- uncontrolled commercialism and citizen tracking that violates our right to privacy;
- education, tax, and other systems, most critically the electoral system, that don't serve the People, but just the few;
- corporations, dark money and shadow activities that infect our civic structure and poison our politics;
- elected representatives who dare call themselves leaders yet bend to the will of powerful private interests, and the corrupt lobby and campaign finance systems that feed this racket;
- and, most shamefully, the low priority our government gives to keeping itself un-corrupted.
V
“At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reaches us, it must spring up among us. It cannot come from abroad…There is even now something of ill omen amongst us. I mean that increasing disregard for law which pervades the country…” — Abraham Lincoln, 1835
These kinds of domestic threats (and many others) have oppressed our citizens, exaggerated our differences and obscured what we have in common. Over time, they’ve first eroded and then created distrust of this system of self-government that’s designed to be our best defense against the rule of despotic authority. They’ve allowed unnecessary restrictions to curtail our liberties and manipulated the law to benefit the few. They’ve attacked what is good about our nation and blocked attempts to heal it. They’ve undermined our Union both now and in the past, both legally and illegally. They’ve made us enemies of ourselves.
Many of us look away from these threats or are indifferent to them. It’s always easier to let something fall apart than it is to maintain it. Ever since our Revolution, we’ve also had citizens who oppose our kind of self-government, undermine it, abuse it, or threaten it with violent and unpatriotic tantrums. But despite these obstacles, it’s always we, the People, who are ultimately responsible for our Republic’s condition. Even if it’s derelict, it’s still ours; we’re its landlords. If it’s not working, it’s because we’ve let it run down; we haven’t kept the battery charged.
Symptoms of the problem are all around us, but our efforts to deal with them politically can feel overwhelming or useless. Treating symptoms rather than the civic threats causing them doesn’t work. Our natural differences of opinion about which symptoms pose the greatest risk are just shamelessly exploited to fan flames of political passion, increase ratings, and create a confrontational stalemate in the American Process. The frustrating truth is: we’re both victims and accomplices in this exploitation.
VI
“There are seasons in every country when noise and impudence pass current for worth; and in popular commotions especially, the clamors of…factious men are often mistaken for patriotism.”
— Alexander Hamilton, 1778
In this current time of polarized paranoias, our political differences are also radicalized by true believers of every kind. These citizens race toward opposite extremes, demonizing each other and threatening to obliterate the center. They weaponize our opinions to attack rivals who share their codependent pathology, each side using the other side as their scapegoat. Such uncompromising fanatics may be found anywhere: in the streets or in the shadows, online or on talk shows, in business, churches or government. They hijack our concerns and use them as fuel for their fire. Feeling themselves righteous, they (and their supporters) don’t see or don’t care that the Republic fails if any extreme prevails.
Like an untreated cancer in the body, extremism in a self-governing Union is a vice that can easily metastasize. Our Founders warned us that unpatriotic citizens might even work their way into positions powerful enough to undermine our Constitution and our Republic. These bad actors are wolves in patriot’s clothing, despite their cynical use of revered symbols. Their intention is not to keep the Republic but to subvert or replace it. They consider their methods to be justified, no matter how unethical, if it achieves their ends. To borrow from new testament Matthew: these citizens may honor the Republic with their lips, but their hearts do not embrace it. Their allegiance is only vanity, and their teachings merely serve their own ends. We must learn to recognize these bad actors, no matter what colors they wear.
It’s always easier to spot the true believers in a faction that isn’t our own, but no faction is immune to the fever. That’s because extremism isn’t measured by the content or even the intensity of our convictions; it’s measured by how unwilling we are to co-exist with other people’s convictions. It’s also measured by whether our interactions with each other undermine or support the American Process. We can see our differences as a battlefield where we fight our fellow citizens, or we can see those differences as on-ramps onto the shared strait and narrow course of a self-governing Union. This is a choice we make. It’s also the challenge bequeathed to us by our Founders. Will we meet that challenge?
VII
“Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
A Republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”
— Benjamin Franklin, 1787
We must each decide if we’re willing to restore and advance the healthy civic functioning of both our Republic and ourselves. If we are, then we need to harness our love of country and use its power to reinforce the center. This mission will be accomplished by changing our focus and our behavior, not by abandoning our opinions, so we will rely on the respect and participation of fellow citizens who may or may not agree with us politically.
Our common cause is to give our primary allegiance to the civic integrity of the American Process and then, secondly, to our own political interests. This is just as true for us today as it was for the Founders. Their word for this most respected attribute of citizens was Virtue. Our fellow citizens who still value that virtue are our true compatriots, regardless of party, class, education or appearance. We need to re-learn how to recognize each other, and the time is now.
Fighting is easy, dramatic, exciting and addictive, but it creates nothing. It just adds fuel to the fire that consumes the fighters and endangers the rest of us. It only serves those few who, like pickpockets in a marketplace, incite and profit from all the distraction. Countering domestic threats to our Nation is absolutely essential, but fighting each other to do itsubverts the American Experiment in self-governance. We can reclaim and restore that Experiment by working together to identify and marginalize civic threats.
Those who choose to keep, fix and improve our Republic into the future—especially those we elect to serve us in this government we own—will take the more responsible path, reclaim the purpose of our Founders, and work to restore our Nation’s civic integrity. The solution is us. We need to calm down, sober up, get together and get to work. We need to trust the Process to moderate our excesses. We need to celebrate interdependence as the only way that allows the People to chart a common course.
In this Process, we will strive to make ourselves worthy of our citizenship. Like our Founders and our Constitution, we can never be perfect but we can always be better. We can maintain our own unique perspectives while allowing them to be flexible. We can find what is valid in other people’s opinions and acknowledge the limitations of our own. We can share our fears. We can choose collaborative rather than combative communication, focus on areas of agreement rather than conflict, and contribute productive support or loyal skepticism as needed. We can speak less and hear more.
Our common cause is hiding in plain sight: it is the preservation of this civic Process, our grand Experiment, this American Republic. Together, we can find the strength and the courage to heal it.
Our willingness to do so is the measure of the sincerity of our patriotism.
VIII
“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, is itself a frightful despotism. Disorders and miseries…gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”
— George Washington, 1796
Therefore, in this critical time, recognizing that it is only the power of our Interdependence that can preserve our Independence, we reaffirm our support of the American Way we hold in common by re-pledging our allegiance to this Republic, one Nation with liberty and justice for all, and we further resolve to “have a new birth of freedom”, so that “government of the People, by the People, for the People, shall not perish from the earth.”
– Lincoln, Gettysburg, 1863
E PLURIBUS UNUM