Keepers Of Our Republic
Americans Coming Together In One Nation, Never One Way
Keepers Of Our Republic
Americans Coming Together In One Nation, Never One Way
A Preramble around
a Declaration for Interdependence
Most thoughts about civics have already been thunk. Even our revolutionary Declaration of Independence is rooted in both Roman and Enlightenment ideas that were popular at the time. The following Declaration for Interdependence also includes ideas many people talk about these days, but our efforts to keep an interdependent connection don’t seem to be working. We’ve come to think that unity is hiding somewhere out of reach in the dangerous no-man’s-land between our hostile political trenches. The ever-changing balancing act that is our American Republic is getting way out of balance, and we’re becoming a very un-United States. Why? That’s a question we need to thunk more about.
In a letter between ex-presidents, John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson that our Revolutionary War wasn’t the start our revolution; it was the end of it. He saw that the revolution really started fifteen years earlier in the hearts and minds of people who, together, began to envision it. The Founders hoped we would keep their new Republic and preserve that vision. Today, though, that Republic is threatened by a political polarization that too often moves from self-righteous debates into arguments, fights, and even violent battles fought against supposedly subversive fellow citizens. Many people think interdependence isn’t possible any more. Other people are looking to overcome the disunity.
John Adams might say that before any solution to the problem is possible, citizens must first come together and, despite differences, envision a common cause. What might that cause be?
Civics is concerned with the rights and duties of citizens, and also with how government functions. The following Declaration is concerned mostly with civics, not with politics, and it makes a critical distinction between the two. Civics is how citizens and government behave; it’s about structure and the rules. Politics is all the hubbub that happens inside that structure; it’s about citizen causes, partisan opinions, lawmaking, etc. This Declaration isn’t a political statement. Instead, it suggests that our first step toward a common cause is to focus on the civic health of our citizens and our government, and to put politics second.
Here’s an example: some people are convinced there is voter fraud; other people are convinced there is voter suppression. Pick a side, it’s a civics problem that’s been turned into an all-out political brawl that only serves the few of us who gain something by dividing the most of us. But if we just ask each other this civics question, “Should the structure of our elections be updated so that there’s not even the possibility of fraud or suppression or any other kind of corruption?”, then the vast majority of us would say yes, of course, let’s do it.
Politics these days seem to intentionally divide and manipulate us. Citizens who are fed up with all the crippling political infighting need to join others who realize that getting along with each other is the most essential piece of our American Experiment. We can re-empower ourselves by working together to restore the civic health of the Republic.
Spoiler Alert: the following Declaration re-envisions our civic playing field and game rules by asserting, in part, that:
- our independence as a Republic depends upon our interdependence as citizens;
- the Constitution’s “more perfect Union” doesn’t exist in the past or the future, but is always evolving now, in the present;
- our Union is more process than content, and patriotism is more behavior than speeches or emotion or display;
- the bi-polar model of party politics we’ve adopted can alienate us from our neighbors and ourselves;
- our experiment in self-government requires us to both conserve what is good and progress toward what is better;
- collaborative cooperation serves and satisfies us far more than competitive opposition;
- and, most importantly, the civic every-man’s-land between our political trenches deserves our primary allegiance, because that’s where E Pluribus Unum happens.
Hopefully, this Declaration will be viewed with as unprejudiced and unpartisan an eye as the reader can manage. Sometimes, individuals can find it difficult to accept parts of their own nature. In the same way, citizens can find it difficult to tolerate the views of their fellow citizens. In both cases, though, this is exactly what healthy self-governance requires.
Keepers of our Republic can choose to become better citizens. We can resolve to learn more about the history, principles, virtues and challenges of this government we own. We can commit to actively protect the proper functioning and the continuous perfecting of our Union. Sharing this resolve and this commitment with each other is critical, because it can re-introduce us to ourselves.
Productive politics will come only after we remember that we need each other for this experiment to work…because working together is the American Experiment.
E Pluribus Unum
(From Many, One)
<-------
vs.
------->
Meus Modo Vel Via
(My Way or the Highway)
Which direction leads to
a more perfect Union?