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, 1835
In the Declaration of Independence, our Founders agreed that self-evident truths and inalienable rights allow people to reject oppressive authority and govern themselves. Eleven years and a war later, the Framers wrote our Constitution. This document was designed to be a flexible blueprint that reflected the principles of the Declaration and established the 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 why 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 Founders excluded so many people from participating, either by ignoring them or by considering them less human. In our present time, we see that the Constitution ratified unjust and even brutal practices that betrayed the principles of both documents. In their time, though, the initial 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
“Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be
beyond amendment…[but] 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 car battery (+ and -) may be contrary, but together they create a spark. Likewise, the connection between the Declaration’s “positive” right to liberty and the Constitution’s “grounding” of that liberty creates the 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.
The 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 are always changing. 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 that Process, but to also preserve its spirit, 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, paying attention to how our government is functioning. That’s how we 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 healthy 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.
Increasingly 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 has co-opted our political and electoral arenas from start to finish. E Pluribus Unum has been turned into a two-sided 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, continues 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. The civic process itself—not any past, present or future result of that process—is what 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. Some 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, over-drugged, under-paid, 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 that manipulate or ignore objective facts to promote partisan ideologies;
- education, tax, healthcare, and other systems, most critically the electoral system, that no longer serve the people but just the few;
- uncontrolled commercialism and pervasive citizen tracking in our techno-culture that violate our right to privacy, made even more dangerous by the growth of an artificial reality that can disguise fiction as fact;
- dark money, shadow activities, abuses of power and criminal activity that compromise our civic structure and poison our politics;
- the breakdown of the middle class, and the growth of anti-American forms of tyranny such as plutocracy (government by the rich), kleptocracy (by the greedy and corrupt), theocracy (by a religion), mobocracy (by the mob), etc.;
- elected representatives who dare call themselves leaders yet bend to the will of powerful private interests, and the corrupted campaign and lobbying systems that feed this racket;
- and, most shamefully, the low priority our government gives to keeping itself uncorrupted.
V
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new,
we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves,
and then we shall save our country.”
— Abraham Lincoln, 1862
The kinds of domestic threats listed above (and many others) have enthralled and oppressed the People, exaggerated our differences, and obscured what we have in common. Over time, they’ve first eroded and then created distrust of a 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 these threats have infected our Republic for so long that we accept them as normal, and look away from or become indifferent to them. It’s always easier to let something fall apart than it is to maintain it. Both before and 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 challenges, it’s always we, the People, who are ultimately responsible for our Republic’s condition. Even if it’s derelict, it’s still our job; we’re its landlords. If it’s not working, it’s because we’ve let it decay; we haven’t paid attention; we haven’t kept the battery charged.
Symptoms of these threats 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 exploited to fan flames of political passion, increase ratings, and maintain a confrontational stalemate in the American Process. The frustrating truth is: we’re both victims and accomplices in this exploitation. We need to acknowledge this dilemma before we can move through it.
VI
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 depending on an opposing side to be their scapegoat. Such uncompromising crusaders 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 to beware of extreme factions working their way into positions powerful enough to undermine our Constitution and our Republic. These bad actors may come waving patriotic symbols, but they are wolves in patriot’s clothing, They may rant loudly or speak softly and claim to be saving America, but their intention isn’t to keep the Republic. Their intention is 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 and unmask 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’ve come to yet another moment of truth for our American Experiment, testing whether this Nation can long endure. 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. Americans have done this many times before, and we can do it again.
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 for action 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 it subverts the American Experiment in self-governance. We can reclaim and restore that Experiment by working together to identify and marginalize civic threats.
Citizens who choose to keep 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 problem is ours, and the solution is us. We will calm down, sober up, get together and get to work. We will trust each other to moderate each other’s excesses. We will 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 preach less and listen more.
Our common cause is hiding in plain sight: it is the preservation of our civic Process, this great Experiment, the American Way. 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
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 further resolve that we shall “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 (exerpts)
E PLURIBUS UNUM