What are the factions that make up America today?  That would depend upon whom you ask but as a generality on one side of the spectrum we have the anarchists, the progressives, the Marxists and the blame America crowd and on the opposite side we have the Tea Party movement, the religious right and constitutional conservatives.  Flitting around the edges and belonging to no one we have racists and skin heads, Klan members, New Black Panthers, secessionists, domestic enemies, conspiracy theorists and other assorted fringe groups.

Then we have the 80% of the country that just want to live their lives in peace, raise and educate their children as they see fit and partake equally in the opportunities and blessings which accompany liberty.  They may have differing views on the role of government but are not insistent on forcing those views on others.  They may look at activists on the right or the left and see some areas of agreement or none at all but it is not in their nature to praise or condemn.  They don’t join in marches or protest on the steps of City Hall.  They attend church and worship quietly and place their faith in a just God.  And, increasingly, they vote.

What binds Americans together – and we speak here of the vast majority of Americans, leaving out those who wish fervently for the destruction of this nation – is an instinctive and emotional love for country.  They may not all love everything about America and they may not all love the same things, but like the love a parent has for a child or a child for a parent, it is deep and unwavering.  We recognize the flaws but accept them as our flaws.  We see and feel the wisdom that has emerged from our sins.  We are one and we are many.

When you go to a sporting event and stand along with 30,000 others at the playing of the national anthem, as you look around and see people with their hands over their hearts mouthing the words, you can’t tell if they are Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, advocates of big government programs or desirers of limited government.  Many, quite frankly, may not even dwell on such issues.  But as you stand there, with your hand on your own heart, you know you will experience a certain feeling at the end when you and 30,000 others raise your voices and start applauding at the words, “O’er the land of the free and then home of the brave.”  That feeling is called love.

What is this love Americans feel for their country?  Is it any different than the love an Englishman has for England or an Italian has for Italy?   Before we can begin to heal America, before we can start the process of renewal, we have to rediscover what it is that we love.

At a recent event a former presidential candidate for a well-known third party told the story of how a number of years ago he was in London and the conversation turned to how Americans were fortunate to have a benevolent government while that of England (presumably under Thatcher) was so corrupt and venal.  He said, “I said to them, are you kidding me?  I hate my government.  My government is evil.  It is responsible for so much misery and injustice in the world.  I love my country but hate my government.” 

It was an extraordinary statement coming from a man considered to be a Constitutional scholar.  While it may be expected that a citizen of Myanmar would hate that government or an unfortunate soul in Iran might hate that government, is it reasonable to expect a citizen of this country to literally hate the government?  We may disagree from time to time on matters of policy or priority or process but in a nation with a government of, by and for the people, to hate the government is to hate the people and to hate the people is to hate the country.  To separate oneself from the body of the whole, to willingly enjoy the fruit but shun the tree is a form of moral and intellectual cowardice.  To condition ones love or hate based upon which political party is in power is worse.

Just as one cannot conditionally love ones country, one cannot unconditionally love it either.  Yes, America has sinned and we must always be open to recognizing where we err and where we sin.  It is inconceivable to any American today that there was a time, only 50 years ago, when black Americans were prohibited from staying in certain hotels or eating in certain restaurants.  It is painful to consider that our childhood heroes like Willie Mays or entertainers like Nat King Cole were so shamefully treated.  And yet the beauty of the American experience is the capacity for her people to recognize and admit to injustice and sin and no matter how wrenching or difficult it might be, to call on the resources of the American soul and absorb the sins of others, often generations removed, to right the wrongs of the past. 

Thus the first thing we must consider as we rediscover what it is we love about America is the amazing capacity of her people to seek and receive redemption.  Perhaps it is this inherent striving for perfection – in the eyes of man and in the eyes of God – which has nurtured the enormous generosity of the American people, this intrinsic need to share the rewards of our bountiful harvest, in part because many of us know we are Americans by fortune of luck.

We can define this first virtue in several ways – charity, generosity, kindness – but the word most encompassing is compassion.  Compassion is America’s greatest virtue because it enables all the others to blossom. At the news of any tragedy, manmade or natural, it is the instinctive reaction of the American people to give – to give blood, to give money, to give food or clothing or shelter or to simply offer prayer.  American compassion is unique in the world in that we instinctively expect to give it but have no expectation of ever receiving it.  We will take care of the world and take care of our own.

We must learn to recognize that compassion knows no ideology.  It is simply an innate American characteristic, a part of our DNA as a people.  We must take care, however, not to confuse compassion with government largesse.

From the earliest days of colonial America until just fairly recently, compassion and its byproduct charity were considered to be the responsibility of individuals and organizations such as the church.  In his seminal work on the subject, The Tragedy of American Compassion, Dr. Marvin Olasky argues that government “programs are ineffective because they are disconnected from the poor, while private charity has the power to change lives because it allows for a personal connection between the giver and the recipient.”

The further away the personal connection is, the greater the risk that the social and moral compact between society as a whole and its individual members will fail.  By turning the needs of individuals and communities over to a government entity – by, in essence, out-sourcing our compassion – we invite the competing forces of either Social Darwinism or Social Universalism to hold sway.  Darwinistic approaches to the unfortunates in society involve “survival of the fittest” policies and fixes.  Herbert Spencer, the mid-19th century “Father of Social Darwinism”, held that the strong should be allowed to flourish and the weak should be left to die.  “The unfit must be eliminated as nature intended,” he wrote, “for the principle of natural selection must not be violated by the artificial preservation of those least able to care for themselves.”  The opposite belief is Universalism.  According to Horace Greely, an early proponent, man is essentially good and the way to end evil is to redistribute wealth so that all receive an equal share. 

Early Americans, immersed as they were in the teachings of Christianity, believed no person was beyond redemption and so rejected Social Darwinism on the one hand while also rejecting Social Universalism on the other because they believed that individuals – not government – had a duty to be compassionate to their fellow human beings.  To remove the individual from the equation and look to the government to provide charity was immoral.  In their view, one does not do the Lord’s work by consigning it to others.  Government should be dispassionate.

Because of the Christian example which prevailed in those early days of America’s settlement, it was expected that the better off would know the poor on a personal basis and offer charity when needed – what Olasky termed “hard –headed but warm-hearted” compassion.  We don’t need to restate all of the “teach a man to fish” analogies to understand the philosophy of the time, but suffice to say that these early Americans recognized the pervasive evil of an excess of compassion. 

This viewpoint held well into the 19th century: it was not only the responsibility of society to take care of its own, it was a duty.  It was accepted that government would only exacerbate the scourge of poverty by making it too easy and comfortable to be poor.  In 1845, Charles Fenton Mercer, writing in An Exposition of the Weakness and Inefficiency of Government, presaged an American welfare system.  Having studied the fall of the Roman Empire, Fenton predicted that by keeping large swaths of the public poor and dependent on government, politicians would increase their power and popularity by distributing relief to the masses – at least until such time as the government collapsed.  It was a given that “idleness and improvidence” were the natural step-children of excess government compassion.

The notion that the government as the provider of first resort is the sign of a compassionate nation is a somewhat modern phenomenon.  In fact, it’s the antithesis of one of the great guiding principles of America and has done much to alter American society from one of hard work, thrift and independence to one of reliance.  Perversely, our own capacity for charity and compassion has been diminished as we increasingly develop an attitude of “let the government take care of it.”  “After all, I give weekly out of my paycheck as it is, why should I give more?” has become a growing and worrisome sentiment in our society today.

The more our welfare state grows, the less compassionate we are as a nation.  Excess government compassion removes from society the responsibility of caring for our fellow citizens and transfers that responsibility to an uncaring, unseen bureaucracy.  Who can deny that one day Social Darwinism may actually prevail?  It was George Washington who warned, “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master.  Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”

We are a generous and compassionate people.  Concerns for the welfare of others, the welfare of our communities or the environment in general are not the exclusive domains of any political dogma.   Unfortunately, our political and social environments are so polluted today, due either to the cynical manipulations of politicians or the laziness of the media, we have accepted and endorsed the prevailing stereotypes of each other.  In the midst of such a rancorous air one is either a bleeding heart or one has no heart.  There is no room given for a middle ground.  Epithets such as Rethuglican and Demonrat might display a questionable cleverness but do little to advance a thoughtful dialogue.

We are better than that.  Perhaps the first step in healing our nation and moving forward to achieve the great things that great nations achieve is to recognize and acknowledge our own greatness.  We must de-politicize compassion.  We cannot keep repeating the claim that America is the greatest nation on earth while looking around and viewing our fellow citizens with contempt.  We are either great or we are not.

It is our responsibility as citizens to complete the American destiny, to set aside the childishness and name-calling, to fulfill the myth of our creation and become the America that our founders envisioned we would become but for which they themselves lacked the wherewithal.  They gave us the means and the method to achieve what they themselves could not achieve but knew that with the right spark would one day ignite in the hearts of men all that they believed. 

That is our destiny.  We must become aware enough so that we may re-mythologize the truth

Could Hamilton and his allies in the State House in Philadelphia have envisioned that creating a federal legislative system with two masters – one for the people and one for the states – would produce a schizophrenic government that would one day implode?  Perhaps.  But they knew as well that if they had not made that compromise there would be no government at all, which would be a far worse outcome. 

But they knew as well that they were creating a legislative process with which to pass all laws deemed “necessary and proper” and that through this legislative process such inequities could be addressed.  They knew the final product was not perfect but, despite Thomas Jefferson’s hyperbole that the convention was an assemblage of “demigods”, they themselves were imperfect and could not expect a perfect result.  They had to depend upon the wisdom of future generations to complete their vision.

Writing of the delicate balance between government and freedom, James Wilson wrote, “Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression.  Without law, liberty loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness.”  Given the frailty of liberty and the nature of man, a free society must constantly guard against the twin forces of tyranny and capriciousness.  Justice, therefore, comes not only from law or a constitution but from the very heart of society.

The framers of the Constitution spent a considerable amount of time debating and designing the judiciary branch – the Supreme Court and the inferior courts with all their scope, power and limitations.  It was one of the ingenious checks and balances created to ensure that legislation was justly applied.  Their recent experience with tyranny left them wary of any government capacity to limit or infringe upon the natural rights of man. 

These men of the Enlightenment Age were well versed in natural law and the idea that the rights of men do not spring from government but are “endowed by their creator.”   This is a decidedly American view of justice:  that the supreme right resides with the individual, who then grants certain rights to the government so that it can adequately function and protect the rights of its citizens.  At the time of the country’s founding it was more common to find governments which instituted laws to protect the government from the people.  The new American system was intended to protect the people from the government.

The original Constitution that was ratified by the states in 1788 did not contain a Bill of Rights.  It was the contention of the framers that such a bill was not necessary as the Constitution explicitly defined the powers of the new government in such a way that a Bill of Rights would be redundant and possibly even dangerous to the people.  If a Bill of Rights was unintentionally not inclusive of all potential rights it could deny the people a specific right by omission.  Nevertheless, such bills were commonly found in the various state constitutions, it was something the people expected and so in order to ensure ratification Madison promised that a Bill of Rights would be inserted as soon as the new government was formed. 

Although justice is the second American virtue, it was not one that was easily arrived at and it is a virtue that will always be evolving.  No nation or people can hope to achieve perfect justice, a state of being reserved exclusively for God.  There is a natural tendency in man to give in to temptation, to detour from a godly path, making it is essential that all us seek guidance from the Creator to help us resist these temptations so that, as Lincoln said, we may be touched by “the better angels of our nature.”  What is unique to the American experience is that we as a people understand this imperative even though we may not always achieve it.  Innately, we are driven by our first virtue, compassion, to seek and apply our second virtue, justice.

Well, one might say, that certainly wasn’t true about America’s treatment of the Indians or the institution of slavery.  Those historical sins do not quite reconcile with compassion and justice – old Jim Crow may have something to say about that.  Yes, yes, yes, we say, but that was America then not America now and it is the very fact that those sins did occur, that America did rise up to confront them, often in ugly and violent ways, that America did evolve, that America has always been driven to perfect its society, to correct the inequities of the past and, yes, there are still inequities but what defines us is that we confront them.  We look around the world today and we see nations in which the basis of society is race or ethnicity or religious preference or accident of birth, prejudices and inequalities which stretch back generations, even centuries.  We see the institutionalized subjugation of women, the ruthless domination of minorities.  Yes, America has sinned but America has sought and continues to seek redemption.  As Frederick Douglass said, “There is consolation in the thought that America is young.”  There are members of our own society who have yet to receive all the blessings of liberty but because compassion and justice flow through our veins, we will get there.  We will get there. 

It is a great truth of the American system that all people are created equal.  Despite the presence of that central tenet in the Declaration of Independence, it wasn’t always so in America.  At the time of the Declaration’s writing, “all men are created equal” applied only to men, not women, and only to white men at that.  Little remembered is the Naturalization Act of 1790 which extended citizenship (and thus suffrage) only to white males.  It would take nearly two hundred years for the country to evolve into what it was always intended to be and it seems that while our founders must shoulder the reality of the inequalities of their day, they should also be credited for their aspirations of freedom and justice.  Had they not instilled in us the belief that “all men are created equal” we would not today have the foundations upon which to extend that belief to “all people.”

Where our founders would differ with the evolution of equality today is with the concept of social justice – that is, the imposition by force or persuasion of power of an unnatural equalization, the attempt to produce an equality of outcome rather than provide an equality of opportunity.  It was a given in early America that Paul’s admonition in 2 Thessalonians must be heeded: “If a man shall not work, he shall not eat.”

Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in Democracy in America in 1835, noted: “…(O)ne also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.”  The greatness of America, he wrote, was that inequality could be overcome because equality of opportunity provided a means and an incentive for the poor to become rich.  Such opportunity made America a unique and fascinating place.

Over the last century and a half the notion of social justice began percolating and went into hyper-drive over the last fifty years.  Some people today refer to this philosophy as Marxism and in certain aspects that’s true.  But the roots of social justice in this country go back to the mid-1800s and men such as Horace Greeley, owner of the New York Tribune, the most influential newspaper of its day.  Greeley, a Republican (my how things have changed) believed that man had been corrupted by capitalist society and preached that economic competition was evil.  He advocated forced redistribution of wealth as the moral solution to poverty.

By convoluting “justice” with social engineering and wealth redistribution and by portraying those who argue for less government intervention as heartless and cruel, the social justice advocates managed to accomplish little more than the enslavement of generations of Americans who have come to depend on the government for sustenance.  Today, 42 million people are on food stamps – 15% of the population.

No matter how much money is spent on eradicating poverty in the name of social justice, it can never be enough.  As James Davidson of the National Taxpayers Union said, “When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.”  Is it any surprise, then, that Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs were such dismal failures?  His economic team warned that without passage of legislation that would allocate hundreds of billions on the “war on poverty”, the unemployment rate could reach as high as 13%.  After sixteen years of Great Society spending the unemployment rate stood at, you guessed it, 13%.

Are we as a people capable of having an open and honest discussion about justice and its unpleasant rival, social justice?  True justice, as envisioned and practiced by early Americans, involved providing equal opportunity and rewarding hard work.  Forcibly taking from one party to give to another is the very antithesis of justice, social or not.  However noble the intentions, turning a person into a dependent of the state strips that person of human dignity.  Our aim as a society should be to reinforce the dignity of all the people, not relegate them to the status of ward.  Professor Ben O’Neill perhaps sums it up best: 

“The notion of “rights” is a mere term of entitlement, indicative of a claim for any possible desirable good, no matter how important or trivial, abstract or tangible, recent or ancient. It is merely an assertion of desire, and a declaration of intention to use the language of rights to acquire said desire.

“In fact, since the program of social justice inevitably involves claims for government provision of goods, paid for through the efforts of others, the term actually refers to an intention to use force to acquire one’s desires. Not to earn desirable goods by rational thought and action, production and voluntary exchange, but to go in there and forcibly take goods from those who can supply them!”

While we must never underestimate the need for the government to provide a safety net for those truly in need, we must also not absolve society of its most basic responsibilities.  To force society to be charitable through confiscatory polices breeds resentment and resistance.  The role of government should be to nurture, foster and encourage the American people’s natural instinct for compassion.

Tocqueville knew, of course, the legacy of democracy in France.  Like the American colonists, the French people had revolted against a despotic monarchy and written their own version of our Declaration of Independence called The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, only to have the whole thing degenerate into the Reign of Terror, the tyrannical rule of the Jacobins and the eventual rise of Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor and his resulting universe of war.  In the space of ten short years the French had gone from despotism to democracy to anarchy and back to despotism.  Tocqueville wanted to learn the lesson of America’s success and look out for any potential pitfalls.

Tocqueville was aware that simply having laws and a constitution was no guarantee of a functioning democracy and a free society.  France, after all, had created a constitutional republic and a bill of rights and rather quickly ended up with the guillotine and an emperor ensconced on an Imperial Throne.

While Democracy in America is exhaustive in its study of every aspect of American society and its government in the 1830s, there is a theme Tocqueville returns to again and again:

Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country.

Faith is the third great virtue in the American Trinity. While France and much of Europe had become increasingly secular, religion and faith were the lynchpins of American life.  The belief in European intellectual circles was that as liberty expanded and knowledge increased people would no longer need to cling to religious superstitions.  To the contrary, Tocqueville found that faith was integral to republican government.  “Despotism may govern without faith,” he said.  “But liberty cannot.”  Without the belief in a higher power, man must be ruled for he cannot rule himself.  We see in Europe today the net result of an irreligious society: nihilism, scientism, hedonism and a general sense of purposelessness.   Such faithless societies create a vacuum and vacuums are easily filled with unwelcome guests: totalitarianism, oppression, anarchy or the advancement of repressive religions.  Do we not see this occurring around our world today?  Tocqueville continues:

In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.

There are those today who claim, for purposes of their own and with motives we may certainly question, that religion leads to theocratic tyranny and that secularism is the path to true liberty.  This is patently false.  Because religion did not interfere with government and government did not interfere with religion there existed in early America complete religious and political freedom:

It may be asserted that in the United States no religious doctrine displays the slightest hostility to democratic and republican institutions. The clergy of all the different sects hold the same language, their opinions are consonant to the laws, and the human intellect flows onwards in one sole current….

As a member of the Roman Catholic Church I was more particularly brought into contact with several of its priests, with whom I became intimately acquainted. To each of these men I expressed my astonishment and I explained my doubts; I found that they differed upon matters of detail alone; and that they mainly attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country to the separation of Church and State. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet with a single individual, of the clergy or of the laity, who was not of the same opinion upon this point.

Earlier in his study he had explained that the governmental institutions in America, at the federal, state and township levels, were largely secular.  How then does religion play such an influential role in American society?

In the United States religion exercises but little influence upon the laws and upon the details of public opinion, but it directs the manners of the community, and by regulating domestic life it regulates the State.

“The manners of the community.”  Could we contemplate such a phrase today?  Later in Democracy in America, Tocqueville compares the other nations of the New World – Canada, Mexico and the nations of South America in an effort to determine why America is so abundant and prosperous while other nations which sprouted up at the same time as America, populated by Europeans with the same opportunities and the same resources were, in his word, “wretched.”  It is not because of the laws in those countries, he concluded, because all had similar laws but only in America were they working properly.  Mexico, located right next to America, could not maintain democratic institutions.  The Spaniards who settled in South America were constantly waging war with each other.  Why was America so prosperous and peaceful?  His conclusion:  “The laws contribute more to the maintenance of the democratic republic in the United States than the physical circumstances of the country and the manners more than the laws.”

Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must nevertheless be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of free institutions. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief. I do not know whether all the Americans have a sincere faith in their religion (for who can search the human heart?) but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation, and to every rank of society.

Contrast the following passage with today:

If the mind of the Americans were free from all trammels, they would very shortly become the most daring innovators and the most implacable disputants in the world. But the revolutionists of America are obliged to profess an ostensible respect for Christian morality and equity, which does not easily permit them to violate the laws that oppose their designs; nor would they find it easy to surmount the scruples of their partisans, even if they were able to get over their own. Hitherto no one in the United States has dared to advance the maxim, that everything is permissible with a view to the interests of society; an impious adage which seems to have been invented in an age of freedom to shelter all the tyrants of future ages. Thus whilst the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust.

Why must we contest today whether or not America is a Christian nation?  The very fabric of this nation is based upon Christian principles.  Arguments over the separation of church and state ignore the historical significance of faith in American society. While our government is intended to be secular in structure, our society is religious in nature.  One does not control or interfere with the other.  Sadly, today we see government – through the judicial system – attempting to regulate religion to temper its influence on society.  But what – other than force – does government have to offer to replace the dampening effect of religion on man’s baser instincts?

Seventy six percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians and just 15% espouse no religious beliefs at all.  In 2006 the University of Minnesota conducted a research study concluding that Americans attribute atheism or the lack of religious faith with criminal behavior and cultural elitism.  Lack of religious faith or acceptance of atheism is, unsurprisingly, more prevalent on America’s coasts than in her heartland.

Here once again we confront the myths of America.  The Myth of Denial asserts that the Founders, whatever their personal beliefs, were fresh victims of the Church of England and as such wanted to erect a wall between church and the government to prevent a theocratic tyranny.  The Myth of Veneration holds that the Founders wrote the Constitution with the active participation of God and that America was created through divine intervention.

America today is engaged in a monumental struggle with these competing myths.  There are those on the far left who wish to rid the nation of all vestiges of religion.  They consider, as did the European elitists in Tocqueville’s day, religion to be superstitious nonsense, this irrational devotion to a sky god who rules from some palatial alabaster city, complete with pearly gates and thrones.  There are also those on the far right who believe it is the role of government to impose their versions of morality derived from their religion on others, those who on one hand espouse beliefs in limited government and personal liberty while on the other hand champion government intervention and denial of liberty. Neither side, of course, is correct.

Wherein lies the Mythology of Truth?

The first step in achieving common ground as a nation is to recognize and acknowledge that these are shared virtues.  They are not the exclusive province of any political party, ethnic group, ideology or religion.  Does this mean it is un-American to be a non-believer and practice no religion?  No.  It’s simply means having respect for those who do.  Fifteen percent of the people should not negate the other 85%.

Making that first step requires one thing: respect.  The delegates in Philadelphia were intelligent and wise men but they were just that – men.  They possessed nothing that we ourselves do not possess – except, perhaps, an abundance of patience.  That summer in Philadelphia was oppressively hot as well as inordinately inclement.  To maintain secrecy and confidentiality, the doors and windows to the East Room at the State House remained shut throughout the convention.  Tank tops and Birkenstocks not having been invented yet, the delegates would have been encased in woolen or cotton leggings, jackets and scarves, not to mention powdered wigs.  Can you imagine the will it took to sit in that room for six hours a day, six days a week for over four months debating issues like delegated powers and interstate commerce?

Maybe it was just the tenor of the time, long before the 24-hour news cycle, the prepackaged sound bites, the well-heeled lobbyists, the special interest groups, the Internet, that enabled these men to patiently sift through every issue before them, debate those issues on the merits and accept the outcome of the votes, no matter how contentious the matter at hand.  Yes, there were occasional times when tempers would flare but that would certainly be expected considering the grave importance of the subject matter, the conditions under which the discussions took place and the fact that no one conceived in May that they would still be there in September.

Most importantly, the delegates would listen to each other, as difficult as it must have been for the gentrified delegates from Massachusetts to grant common ground to the slavery men from South Carolina.  But listen they did and little by little, piece by piece, compromise by compromise they cobbled together a nation that would soon advance the cause of liberty throughout the world.

For what if America had failed?  What if it all turned out as the British had predicted, “Leave them to themselves and their government will sure dissolve.”  As events would soon demonstrate, that could easily have happened.  In fact, the odds were highly in favor of collapse.  One of the reasons for the predominance of monarchies in the world was because democracies always eventually ended in anarchy.

The French Revolution of 1789-1799 is a case in point.  It began as the American Revolution had with a declaration which was remarkably like our own – the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.  Well, maybe not so remarkable in that Thomas Jefferson was in Paris when it was drafted.  Like our Declaration of Independence it stated that all men are born free and equal and have rights such as liberty, property and security.  It is a document which could serve as the platform for our Libertarian Party today as it proclaims for people the liberty to do whatever they please as long as it doesn’t hurt others.

Prior to the revolution there were essentially three classes in French society – the clergy, the nobility and everyone else.   “Everyone else” (collectively known as the Third Estate) carried the weight for the first two.  The long suffering people of France called for a National Assembly of just the Third Estate to draft a constitution.  Factions formed.  It took two years of bitter debate to finally pass a constitution in 1791, one which retained the monarchy and left much of the power in the hands of the king.  Within a year the constitution was in crisis followed by six years of mob rule.  During the infamous Reign of Terror in 1793 and 1794, bloodthirsty mobs cheered the execution by guillotine of as many as 40,000 people.  Heads, literally, rolled in the streets.

At the end of the day, in 1799, the people had tired of the bloodshed and anarchy of self-rule.  Napoleon Bonaparte seized the opportunity, staged a coup and eventually declared himself emperor.  France’s brief flirtation with democracy was over.  That Washington did not have similar ambitions is one of America’s greatest blessings.

Our Founders had been better students of history than the French, despite the presence of the illustrious Thomas Jefferson in Paris.  They knew well the dangers of democracy.  “Rule of the people” generally turned into “rule of the mob”.  Democracies can lead to tyranny of the majority, which Madison knew all too well.  He argued strenuously that a united majority, given the opportunity, would threaten the rights of the minority and since all in society have rights (and since the majority today could be the minority tomorrow) a properly constructed government would “enlarge the sphere and thereby divide the community into so great a number of interests and parties that in the first place a majority will not be likely at the same moment to have a common interest separate from that of the whole or of the minority and in the second place that in case they should have such an interest they may not be apt to unite in the pursuit of it.”  In other words, because of democracy’s inherent danger of degenerating into mob rule, make it as difficult as possible for majorities to form.

It was because of this legitimate fear of democracy that our founders created a Constitutional Republic, a government of laws, not men.  If the selection of representatives is solely left up to the people, they will only select representatives who will protect their own interests, not that of the nation as a whole.  This is why Madison argued that the Senate should be proportional to the populations of the states and should be selected by the membership of the House so as to remove the people from the direct selection of 100% of the national legislature, giving them only the lower chamber.  He got half a loaf with the decision to allow state legislatures to select senators but lost half of that with the Great Compromise making states equal in the upper house.

It was our friend Elbridge Gerry who said in the convention’s early days, “The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy.  The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots.”  We recently had occasion to bear witness to the truth of his words.

On February 15, 2011, thousands of protestors descended upon the statehouse in Madison, Wisconsin.  Their purpose was to protest a pending law which would take away collective bargaining rights from employee unions.  It is not our intent here to discuss the merits of the proposed legislation or to take sides in the dispute.  There is sufficient disinformation on the matter to make the subject un-discussable.  Our observations will be more fundamental.

Over the course of the next several weeks tens of thousands – some reports say over 100,000 – protesters laid siege to the Wisconsin state capitol.  The state senators who were opposed to the legislation fled the state in order to prevent there being a quorum necessary for a vote.  Protestors, shouting “Kill the Bill” and carrying signs comparing the Wisconsin governor to Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini crammed into the hallways and stairwells of the state house and essentially set up camp.  There were unsubstantiated reports of death threats against elected officials who, nevertheless, were forced to walk a gauntlet of jeering protestors in order enter their chamber.  The siege, with its phalanx of television news cameras and opportunities for aggrandizement, became a magnet for political activists and agitators and charlatans from around the country.  The wheels of government had essentially ground to a halt.

One peculiar scene repeated itself throughout the siege, however.  One could hear above the din and the clatter of the many thousands in the capitol building a strange chant.  One person, unseen, would call out:

“Tell me what democracy looks like.”

And the crowd would respond:

“This is what democracy looks like.”

And again, over and over:

“Tell me what democracy looks like.”

“This is what democracy looks like.”

Videos depicted mothers and fathers with their children, holding American flags, repeating the refrain again and again without seeing the bitter irony:

“Tell me what democracy looks like.  This is what democracy looks like.”

Indeed, as Madison and the Founders knew and feared, this is what democracy would look like if the people were given the ability to self-govern without the necessary systemic restraints to prevent mob rule.  What happened in Madison, Wisconsin was not democracy as it has come colloquially to be known.

It was anarchy.

What exactly was the dynamic at play here?  A majority of people in Wisconsin went to the polls in November and expressed their preference for representation in their state government.  Those legislators drafted a law.  The minority who opposed that law rose up in protest.  So far so good.  The tea partiers rose up in protest of the national health care law and various government policies.  Such actions are entirely appropriate and in keeping with our traditions and our liberties.

But to effectively take over and shut down a state government using coercion and threat and to attempt to subvert the will of the people?  That has not previously been part of the American dialogue and is a dangerous occurrence should it be considered a precedent.  While our Founders were legitimately concerned that the rights of the minority could be trampled on by the majority, there exists also the threat of a tyranny of the minority in which the rights and wishes of the many are subverted by the demands of the few.  There are legitimate avenues of redress available if the people feel abused.  If the people of Wisconsin feel their legislature has misjudged its mandate, they can recall the offending legislators, elect new ones and repeal any disagreeable laws.

If the minority representation in all of the state legislatures in the fifty states or in the U.S. Congress were to refuse to participate in the process because they disagreed with proposed legislation, representative democracy would cease to function.  Government would simply break down.  We may not always agree with legislation and may even vehemently protest it but to abandon the legislative process entirely and leave it to agitators, celebrities and professional anarchists is irresponsible at best and potentially highly destructive to the concept of self rule.  

It doesn’t matter if what happened in Madison occurred because of actions taken by the right or the left.  This is not a liberal/conservative issue.  What matters is that such actions foretell a dissolution of our social contract, the respect for law that binds us together as a society and a community.  John Adams may only have been speaking of the state of Massachusetts when he inserted into that state’s constitution that we are “a government of laws and not of men” but it also applies to the nation as a whole.

The protesters in Madison considered themselves soul mates with the protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in Egypt, a revolution which just a month before had been sparked by a popular appeal for democracy.   After 800 deaths and the resignation of that country’s president there are now great fears that Egypt will descend into its own Reign of Terror as the Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood jockeys for power and extends its tentacles throughout the whole of the Egyptian government and society. 

Should there be a next time, should there be the urge to replicate the Madison Siege in another state or in Washington DC itself, we would hope the perpetuators of such an action will temper the dangers therein by keeping in mind Adams’ admonition that we are a government of laws not men, remembering well the lessons of the French and Egyptian Revolutions and pausing just briefly before answering the chant, “Tell me what democracy looks like.”

When one contemplates the relationship between blacks and whites in America, one can’t help but wonder what things would be like if America had never tolerated the institution of slavery or if it had been banished by the Constitution.  What if slavery had never occurred, if no natives of Africa had ever been bound and confined in the bowels of slave ships and brought to these shores in chains?  What if The Middle Passage had not become so engrained in the psyche of one fifth of our citizens?   What if, instead, the stories of this enchanted land of liberty had made their way to Africa and the persons there, desiring the blessings of freedom, had made their own way here, to be welcomed upon their arrival as brothers in the land of the free?

How much more would the words of our Founders mean if they hadn’t been written with the ink and the stain of slavery?  What if we had never produced centuries of slavery, followed by segregation and lynchings and Jim Crow and riots and murders and the politically correct evils of Affirmative Action and welfare?  What if America’s original sin had never been committed?  What if….?

We will never know, will we?  It is what it is; the situation as it exists is what we are confronted with.  This is our labyrinth to navigate, our dilemma to solve.  The great question is: Do we have the strength of will to do so or, like the Three Fifths Clause, are we going to kick the can down the road?

Let’s say, just for the sake of discussion, that we consider this to be our generation’s Apollo program.  In 1961, President John Kennedy challenged this nation to send a man to the moon and return him safely to earth before the decade was out.  Is it more difficult to cross the quarter million miles from the earth to the moon than it is to bridge the divide between black and white?  It ought not to be.

The great challenge and opportunity before us today is to confront the issue of race head on and put that phase of America’s development as a true land of liberty behind us.  It will require two things from all of us: the desire and the will.  The desire, surely, is there.  Can we summon the will?  As a nation, let us once and for all commit ourselves to getting this done.  It shouldn’t be that difficult.

The first step we must make as a nation is admitting that there is a problem.  Too many people today, both black and white, want to dismiss race as either one-sided (“It’s all their fault”) or already solved (“Didn’t we outlaw that?”).  But it is still there, that giant pink elephant in the room, unmentioned and unmentionable.

To whites, the subject of America’s slave past too often is dismissed with something along the lines of, “Get over it.  You were never a slave and I never owned a slave and neither did my parents, so move on.”  One wonders if for centuries African kings had sent their warriors to plunder twelve million from the populations of Europe for enslavement on African plantations or in the bowels of African coal mines, subjected to degradation and humiliation, if their evil, twisted and inhumane minds had conceived of such an effrontery to all that is decent in humanity, if it was our ancestors who had been turned into beasts of burden by brutish black thugs, shackled and flogged all the days of their lives, sold like cattle on open markets, stripped of all human dignity and natural rights, one wonders if we were living today not in Texas or Ohio or Virginia with ancestral trees stretching back generations and centuries of familial histories but instead we found ourselves due to the crimes of history living in the Congo or Botswana or the Ivory Coast with no knowledge of who our ancestors were or whether we were Irish or German or Italian but instead were known as Euro-Africans, would we look upon the descendants of those brutes as benignly as we ourselves are asking now to be looked upon by the descendants of America’s slaves.  Would we find it in our hearts to be so charitable and forgiving?

Frederick Douglass, escaped slave – not freed, mind you, escaped; a fugitive hunted, stolen property with a bounty on his head – stood at a podium in Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York and said to an all white audience, “What does your 4th of July have to do with me?  With all your joyful celebrations and marching bands and fire works displays, what am I to celebrate?”

We cannot erase that, America.  We can wish it away but it will still be there.

As we have said, America is an idea, a belief.  America is the spirit of liberty come to life.  Yet America is also what we make her to be.  If we refuse to invest in the idea of America, to participate in the spirit of America, then America can never achieve the vision of our Founders.  America is not who we elect to office but who we are as a people, as a society, as a nation of communities joined for the common good.  We cannot change the past.  But we can learn the lessons of the past and dedicate ourselves to perfecting the future.

The black community in America today is subjected to the most subtle and vicious form of bigotry, what George W. Bush called “the soft bigotry of low expectations”.  Much of this stems from the policies of the not-so Great Society which were inflicted upon black America in the 1960s and 1970s.  In the name of the War on Homelessness, black families were rounded up and corralled into public housing projects where they were left to live in squalor and crime and drug abuse and thus millions became dependent on government for shelter.  In the name of the War on Hunger, food stamp programs were created and millions became dependent on government for food.  In the name the War on Poverty, welfare roles were expanded and millions became dependent on government for income.  And in the name of all that is unholy, the War on Drugs was launched to keep the whole thing under control and millions were swallowed up by the federal judicial system.

To be sure, whites and other American ethic groups also participate in these programs but it is blacks who have been stigmatized with the demeaning policy of affirmative action, the official stamp of inferiority and incompetence.  Black America, which had suffered so much during the slave trade and Jim Crow now had its fate consigned into the hands of social elitists.   As economist Walter Williams has said, “The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery could not have done, the harshest Jim Crow laws and racism could not have done, namely break up the black family.”  If they finally had the benefit of no longer being treated as slaves, they now had the ignoble detriment of being treated as pets.

The most infamous failure of social engineering and the fallacy of warehousing human beings based on skin color was a public housing project on Chicago’s North Side called Cabrini Green, one of thousands which had been erected around the country due to an excess of government compassion.  Infested with rats and cockroaches, littered with rotting garbage, ruled by ruthless drug gangs, terrorized by snipers, Cabrini Green housed as many as 15,000 poor souls at any given time in conditions which would have made the worst southern slave trader uneasy.  Vandalism and crime were rampant, maintenance virtually non-existent, death always a distinct possibility.  If there ever truly was a hell on earth, it was Cabrini Green, courtesy of the Chicago Housing Authority.

The elitists, of course, who can never admit to the failures of their experiments on human beings, be it eugenics or the ills of welfare, will forever try to hide the horrors of their misdeeds.  Just as New York Times reporter Will Durant whitewashed Stalin’s slaughter of thirty million Ukrainians in the 1930s (and was rewarded with a Pulitzer Prize for his efforts) leave it to Hollywood to paint a rosy picture of the crimes of excess government compassion.   In 1974, television producer Norman Lear debuted a sitcom on CBS starring Ester Rolle, John Amos and Jimmie “Dy-no-mite” Walker portraying the fun loving antics and everyday hilarity of the Evans family of apartment 17C in the never dull but hey-how-bad-can-it-be Cabrini Green.  The show was called Good Times.  They had turned the nightmare of Cabrini Green into a profitable situation comedy.

Lear, of course, is the socially liberal founder of People for the American Way.  Judging by Lear’s work, the American way apparently requires sympathetic, creatively intelligent and vastly superior white people either ridiculing black people or taking over the parenting of their children, a task they are seemingly incapable of doing themselves.  Lear’s other work – besides showcasing the hilarity of life provided by elitist whites to blacks in the Great Society – includes The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, What’s Happening? and Diff’rent Strokes.

All the good times notwithstanding, in 1999 it was finally decided that the residents of Cabrini Green were deserving of at least a modicum of human dignity from their elite overlords and the housing project was scheduled for demolition.  If only the same could be said of the rest of the Great Society programs.  Hundreds of billions of dollars and even the best of intentions cannot make a bad idea work.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a law creating a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Twenty two Senators and ninety Representatives opposed the new law, citing shallow economic hardship excuses. Others tried to name it something else – anything but a day in honor of King. Aptly demonstrating that old habits die hard, South Carolina – first to secede – was the last state to recognize the holiday in 2000.

Aside from government workers, to most Americans Martin Luther King Day is a day like any other, except their bank may be closed and the mail box will be empty.  By any standard, MLK Day is hardly a national day of celebration, although we are likely to see 30 seconds of coverage on the evening news showing a local black high school marching band on the MLK Boulevard in your city or town, complete with smiling politicians waving from convertibles.

In July 2008, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution apologizing for slavery.  A year later, the Senate unanimously did the same.  Did anything change?  More appropriately, does anyone even remember?  Neither body has ever mustered the resolve to pass a Joint Resolution.

It is painfully obvious that the United States government lacks the political will, beyond a few grandstanding resolutions, to address America’s legacy of slavery and the treatment of blacks in this country.  That history has been nothing short of disgraceful: enslave them, set them free, abuse their rights and dignity, warehouse them, round them up and throw them in jail.  Is it any wonder that Lyndon Johnson is alleged to have remarked after signing the Great Society legislation of the 1960s: “That’ll keep those nigras voting Democrat for another 200 years”?

It’s just as well that government has failed in this regard. Racial relations are a social issue, not a governmental one, and it’s high time the American people stopped turning to government to regulate social issues when we should be acting ourselves.  We as a people need to come to terms with the reality that there are some things for which we need government – defense, security, trade, foreign relations, etc. – while the rest is up to us.  As Madison noted in Federalist 52, “A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government.”  A people who abandon their role in the control of their own government by abdicating their responsibilities as citizens are deserving of whatever government they get.  A government which prescribes mandates telling the people how they must act towards one another may be tyrannical but it is also necessary if the citizenry refuse to control themselves.  In that light, a government which cannot even summon the political will to issue a Joint Resolution condemning slavery (of all things) is a pretty useless institution.

The American people can find common ground and do much to come together as a united front if we solve this on our own, without the intrusive coercion of government.

On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger stood on the balcony of the Ashton Villa in Galveston, TX and read General Order Number 3:

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with proclamation of the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.  This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.  The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages.  They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness there or elsewhere.”

Even though Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862 and it had been in effect since January 1, 1863, a full two and a half years later it was news to the slaves in Galveston.   The day of jubilee had arrived and the William Lloyd Garrison poem Douglass had ended his 4th of July speech thirteen years earlier had at last been fulfilled:

 God speed the year of jubilee,

The wide world o’er!

When from their galling chains set free,

Th’ oppressed shall vilely bend the knee,

And wear the yoke of tyranny,

Like brutes, no more : –

THAT YEAR WILL COME, and Freedom’s reign

To man his plundered rights again

Restore.

God speed the day when human blood

Shall cease to flow!

In every clime be understood

The claims of HUMAN BROTHERHOOD,

And each return for evil, good –

Not blow for blow : –

THAT DAY WILL COME, all feuds to end,

And change into a faithful friend

Each foe.

June 19 soon came to be known as Juneteenth across Texas and was celebrated annually for many years until forgotten in the Diaspora of the Great Depression sixty five years later.

Appropriately, Texas became the first U.S. state in the modern era to recognize Juneteenth as a state holiday in 1980.  While Juneteenth is recognized as an official holiday in thirty nine states, the day doesn’t amount to much more than a day off for state employees.  Juneteenth doesn’t register on the radar for most Americans, although we are subjected to pandering political statements and proclamations.  It is an occasion observed by blacks and largely ignored by whites.

Since 1994, Dr. Ronald Myers, Sr. has been chairman of the Modern Juneteenth Movement, an effort to have Congress recognize a National Juneteenth Holiday to celebrate America’s “second Independence Day.” The proposal is routinely ignored.  Yet who could be surprised at this when the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation received this letter from the United States Postal Service in response to a petition to have a commemorative Juneteenth stamp:

Mr. Gary Lawson

Chair, Stamp Commission

National Juneteenth Observance Foundation

P.O. Box 269

Belzoni. MS 39038-0269

Dear Mr. Lawson:

Thank you for your letter to the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee expressing support for the issuance of a stamp commemorating Juneteenth.

The Committee reviewed this nomination at a previous meeting. After careful deliberation, they decided not to recommend stamp issuance. The Committee is responsible for reviewing stamp proposals and making subject and design recommendations to the Postmaster General.

A limited number of stamp subjects are chosen for each yearly stamp program. Unfortunately, a vast majority of suggestions submitted, including many meritorious and meaningful subjects, cannot result in a stamp.

I would like to suggest the Postal Service’s pictorial cancellation service as another means to commemorate Juneteenth. An Application may be made with your local Postmaster for a pictorial or souvenir cancellation. Enclosed is Publication 186, Celebrating with Pictorial Postmarks, which explains our program and provides several examples of actual pictorial cancellation designs. Local postal managers would be pleased to assist in submitting the application and answer any questions concerning the use of pictorial.

We appreciate your interest in our stamp program.

Sincerely,

Layne D. Owens

Acting Manager

Stamp Development

475 L’Enfant Plaza SW Room 3300

Washington, DC 20260-3501

If they can’t even get the Post Office to approve a stamp how likely is it they will get Congress to approve a national holiday?

All of this begs the question: why is this even up for debate?  How can our government in good conscience refuse to recognize the liberation of one fifth of our population from the shackles of enslavement?  How can we joyously celebrate July 4th as our singular day of independence when it wasn’t until eighty nine years after the Declaration of Independence was signed that the vision of our Founders was finally and at long realized, after so much suffering and at the expense of so much national treasure and blood?  Not even a stamp?

If we wait for the government to do what is right it will never happen.  Besides, this is a societal issue, not a governmental one.  The American people should simply declare the third Sunday in June to be a National Day of Remembrance of our second independence, the first being independence from British tyranny and the second being independence from the sin and scourge of slavery.  Americans of all races and ethnicities should gather on the mall in Washington DC on Saturday, June 16, 2012 in America’s first display of national unity and renewal.

For it was only on June 19th or thereabouts as the word spread among the quarter million souls enslaved in Texas, that the promise of America – not the reality, the promise (but the promise at the very least) – could actually one day be realized and the vision of the Founders could finally be achieved:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident…”

Our government is broken. 

Don’t just take our word for it.  Just listen to our “leaders”:

Barack Obama: “Washington is broken….We need to fundamentally change how Washington works.”

Joe Biden: “Washington, right now, is broken….I’ve never seen it this dysfunctional.”

Evan Bayh: “Washington is dysfunctional….the system is broken.”

Mitt Romney, “Washington is fundamentally broken and incapable of dealing with the challenges we have.”

McClatchy-Ipsos Poll: “80% of Americans think Washington is broken.”

One can hardly go a week without hearing some politician or pundit use the words, “Washington is broken” or some version thereof.   The system does not work.  It’s not the fault of the current or any former president or any one man or woman.  It’s broken because the American people have abdicated their responsibilities in managing society and handed the reins to government.  One could make the argument that the government has usurped authority it does not have and has commandeered traditional societal roles but that’s a cop out.  It all goes back to the fact that in a government of, by and for the people, the people themselves have a significant role to play.  If they choose not to play that role, if they instead create a vacuum, government will fill that vacuum in the blink of an eye – not necessarily because it wants to but because it has to.

Yes, there are those who embrace government, who wrap themselves in government’s blanket of security and view government’s role as that of provider and caretaker.  But America is an exceptional country because its people traditionally have not looked to the government for solace or support.  The timber of the American people has long been one of self-reliance.  It is only recently that the federal government has asserted itself as benefactor-in-chief, creating the predictably unwieldy and dysfunctional bureaucracy with which we are now burdened.  We can argue all we want about the true meaning and intent of the General Welfare clause in the Constitution but that ship has already set sail and it’s not coming back to port.

We cannot rely upon government to solve the nation’s problems because government, to repeat George Washington’s warning “is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”  Government must be viewed for what it is: a voracious monster that feeds on chaos, an ever growing, ever expanding leviathan that left unchecked will consume everything in its path.  The natural tendency of any government is to increase its power, whether it be a group of eight castaways on a deserted island or a nation of 300 million people.  Government is a reactive, non-thinking, rampaging beast with an instinctive, compulsive need to increase its authority and control.  It can do so benignly or it can do so through force but you can be assured that without constraints placed upon it by the people it will do so unrelentingly.

Americans who enthusiastically go to the polls each election become increasingly frustrated when nothing ever seems to change, regardless of which party is in power.  Conservatives support and vote for political candidates who campaign on platforms of limited government, fiscal responsibility, pro-life and pro-border security yet government continues to grow, continues to spend recklessly, abortion on demand is still the law of the land (and now taxpayer funded!) and the borders are unprotected.  Liberals support and vote for political candidates who campaign on anti-war, pro gay marriage, tax the rich platforms yet the wars continue to rage, gay marriage is still unrecognized nationally and tax cuts are extended.  Nothing ever changes.

The reason is because candidates know how to present themselves to the voters in a given districts, understand the hot button issues, know what words to use and how to use them.  Being a pro-life, pro-gun, anti-illegal immigration candidate from most districts Texas is a no-brainer.  But after forty years of electing pro-life candidates (even presidents) to office, a million babies a year are still aborted and “partial birth abortion” is casually mentioned as if it were equivalent to a root canal.  One would think it would have sunk in by now that solving the issue of abortion legislatively just isn’t going to happen.

When the Founders created our system of government, they envisioned a body of legislators harmoniously debating how best to serve the common interest.  The people of the several states would elect representatives to the lower house to look out for their general welfare.  What we have today is a parody of that early vision.  While the people still get to vote, they are unconsciously voting for whomever will best serve the interests of either the Democratic or Republican parties and whichever constituencies they serve which, unfortunately, is seldom the people.

We perpetuate this broken system by continuing to operate within the parameters of the political parties.  While parties have played an important role in governance (mainly by checking and monitoring the party in power and preventing a tyranny of the majority) that they are essentially peddlers in hypocrisy can hardly be disputed.  Once ensconced on their congressional thrones, they exempt themselves from the laws they impose upon everyone else and proceed to play by their own set of rules.  They do as much as they possibly can to prohibit the ability of citizens to participate in the electoral process lest they be removed from their positions of authority and grandeur (hence the illegal and unconstitutional limit on campaign contributions from individuals) and blatantly ignore the Constitutional constraints on their delegated power.  Simply voting for one candidate over another, this Republican rather than that one based on his or her position on abortion or immigration will change absolutely nothing.  If that statement is in any doubt, review the past forty years.  The runaway freight train called the federal government hasn’t altered course a single degree or slowed down a notch.

Whether we like it or not, in America we have a two party system.  The dominant Democratic and Republican parties have joined forces and designed a structure in which minor parties do not have a chance.  “Single member districts” is a prime example of this unbalanced system.  If you live in a state with, say, thirty members in the House, you are only permitted to vote for one.  Even though the other twenty nine have as much affect on your life as your one representative, you have no say in who those other representatives are.  That is because the goal is not to give you fair representation and influence in Congress, it is to give the political parties representation and influence.  Since it takes at least 50% of the vote to win an election, it is very difficult for minor parties to compete.

You may recall the words of Roger Sherman at the Philadelphia Convention about permitting the people to elect their own representative. The people, he said, “immediately should have as little to do as may be about the Government.  They want information and are constantly liable to be misled.”  It would seem today that this dismissive tone, that the people are essentially too stupid to be trusted with a vote, is well served by the system currently in place.

The Constitution does not address the conducting of elections, leaving that power in the hands of the states.  It simply says that the number of representatives from each state will not exceed one for every thirty thousand people (a number which was capped at current levels in 1910, otherwise there would be over 10,000 members of the House of Representatives today).  This means that each representative has jurisdiction over approximately 800,000 people.

So one might reasonably ask if what we have today is truly representative government.  Potentially, fifty one percent of people in a given congressional district can elect a representative to Congress, essentially giving 800,000 people in that district half of a vote in our federal legislature or, looked at another way, 399,999 people no vote at all.  Add in the fact that the person is elected, despite campaign rhetoric, to represent the interests of a political party and not the residents of a state and you will get a good sense of why our government is broken.  You essentially are given the privilege of selecting your abuser.

True representative government would involve proportional representation – in other words, election of congressmen at large, rather than by district.  But proportional representation would make it easier for third parties to win elections, which is exactly why it will never be allowed.  The party machines which control the elections in each state have a vested interest in keeping third parties off the ballot so as to continue their domination of the political process.  They are not about to make it easier for them.

It is what it is.  We could pine eloquently until the sun extinguishes itself and we wouldn’t change two hundred years of entrenchment by political parties catering to narrow special interests in our system of government.  The key to our eventual emancipation from a system designed not to serve the people but to advance the power of government simply boils down to numbers: there are more of us than them.

We must first reclaim America’s three virtues: Compassion, Justice and Faith.  These rightfully belong to the people.  Government will be happy to exercise these virtues on our behalf but only at the expense of liberty.  In an excess of compassion the government has created a welfare state which has ensnared generations of Americans in the trap of dependency, subjecting millions to an unproductive life mired in hopelessness and poverty.  In a distortion of justice, government has become the principal confiscator and distributor of resources, removing incentive and initiative from the free market, the very engine of our economy.  As the self-proclaimed ultimate reservoir of hope, false though it may be, government has attempted to replace faith in God with faith in public policy.

Once again: government is not reason, it is not eloquent.  It is force and it is a dangerous and fearful master.  Government cannot be trusted as a dispenser of virtue.  An entrenched federal bureaucracy with one and a half million civilian employees is capable of enormous mischief.

By reclaiming compassion, justice and faith from the clutches of this federal Goliath we can begin the slow process of restoring America to its original foundations.  It will take an enormous commitment in time and resources by a great many people involved in a national movement but it can be done.  In fact, it must be done or all will be lost.  Do we wish to be the ones to leave as our legacy to the boys of Pointe du Hoc the message that their sacrifice was in vain, that their painful and bloody climb up those cliffs on the Normandy coast to take out the German guns would only buy this nation six short decades before we, due to apathy or fear, would simply throw it all away?

There are those who will dismiss this plan for American renewal as too difficult or too ambitious or simply unachievable.  It is not any of those things.  It is well within the scope of the American people if we find within ourselves the strength to summon the will to do what has to be done and to make the sacrifices which have to be made.  It will require a radical and revolutionary change in thought.  But isn’t that what America is, a revolutionary change in thought, an unprecedented reassessment of liberty and the rights of man and the role of government?  America and the world were not fully ready for the profound, sweeping changes envisioned by our Founders.  We have seen what occurred in France at precisely the same time and with precisely the same ideals and yet America flourished while France devolved into barbarism.

While any other nation in the world may and probably would break under the weight of the difficult challenges facing America today – the staggering debt, the nagging unemployment, the mounting bankruptcies and foreclosures, the acrid, rancid political environment, the incompetent and overbearing government, the domestic and foreign enemies – America is not any other nation.  Two hundred and twenty five years ago, America was granted a destiny.   Americans were given a vision of what the world could be.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”  That is our destiny which must be fulfilled.  That is the nation we were chartered to build.  That is our calling today.  America will not break. America will rise to the challenges before her because America is unique, America is special, America is exceptional and because above all else, America is a Christian nation.

Perhaps we can rationalize Mr. Jefferson’s words by assuming that he was proposing not an armed a revolution but a revolution of thought, a revolution of ideas.  While emotions run high in this country today and at times rhetoric escalates to disturbing levels, surely no reasoning person today envisions armed conflict in the streets of American cities.  Such inflammatory talk from either the right or the left ought to rightfully be condemned.

We are long overdue, however, for a revolution in our thinking. It’s an interesting exercise to go back to James Madison’s words about how to prevent a majority from emerging:

“Enlarge the sphere and thereby divide the community into so great a number of interests and parties that in the first place a majority will not be likely….”

Madison, of course, was thinking of the political community and how to prevent a majority from forming within government which would pose a threat to the liberty of the minority.  But ponder for moment: has such a strategy, consciously or not, in our day been successfully applied against the American people?  Are we now so sliced and diced as a nation, so skillfully divided into competing interests and constituencies that we have essentially been defeated as a counterweight to our own government?  We are divvied up into irreconcilable factions on issues for which there are truly no political solutions: pro-gun and anti-gun; pro-abortion and anti-abortion; pro-gay marriage and anti-gay marriage – the list goes on.  Even these issues have been sliced and diced into an infinity of subcategories: abortion, right to life, right to choose, reproductive rights, rights of the unborn, women’s rights, first trimester, partial birth, infanticide, life of the mother, incest, rape, taxpayer funded, gun control, second amendment rights, weapons bans, registration, waiting periods, licensing and so on.  If we keep electing legislators based on their positions on such social issues we will keep populating Congress and our state legislatures with incompetent, self-serving charlatans.

It is precisely because our community has been divided into special interests and parties that we need a new revolution in thought in America today.  While we squabble over insoluble issues, a majority is unable to emerge to wage battle with the piracy that is taking place on our governmental high seas.  We point and accuse and insult each other while our pockets are being picked clean.  Too many Americans – some estimates run as high as 75% – are living day to day, hour to hour, paycheck to paycheck after lifetimes of work and nothing to show for it in a $15 trillion economy, yet we choose to divide each other along ideological lines and hurl invectives based upon where we stand on immigration or gay marriage instead of working together to solve the very real problems the country faces.  What we must do is reverse what has been done to us. 

We must decrease the sphere.

If majorities are prevented from emerging because of “so great a number of interests or parties” then it stands to reason that reducing the number of interests will permit the emergence of a majority.  Accomplishing this will not be easy but it can be done if we together as a society will set aside those things which divide us and embrace those things which unite us.

The challenge will be how small we can make the sphere.  There are obviously social issues which inflame passions that will not be easily set aside.  So we will want a platform broad enough to include a majority of Americans without compromising principles.  The new American Revolution mustn’t launch with another Three Fifths Compromise.

Madison described the sphere as consisting of “interests and parties” and so the obvious place to begin is to no longer identify ourselves by political parties.  That might be a difficult leap for some but we must keep in mind that in 1787 there were no political parties.  In fact, the Founders believed political parties (what they called “factions”) were anathema to representative government.  George Washington warned that competition between political parties “agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another.”  It was, perhaps, naïve of the Founders to not anticipate the emergence of political alliances (they thought alliances would form among states, not parties.  It was actually Jefferson who in 1793 left Washington’s cabinet and formed the first opposition faction, the Republicans.) but they correctly predicted that parties would disintegrate into smaller groups putting self-interest above the common good, creating battles rather than consensus.  That is certainly the situation we find ourselves in today in which governance of the nation has become an eternal struggle by both the Democratic and Republican parties for supremacy, the common good be damned. As a result, the two parties have very nearly destroyed the country.

Once we have shed our political labels we can begin a dialogue which is cooperative and collaborative rather than competitive.  We cannot expect to agree on everything but we can create an atmosphere conducive to reasoned, rational debate that puts the interests of the whole above the interests of the few.

Can we do away with political parties?  No, we’re stuck with them but we can make the existing ones responsive to the general welfare of the entire community and in doing so we can return to the people of this nation what is rightfully ours: the government of the United States of America.

We can begin by breathing new life into some of the most famous words in American history:

WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in order to perfect the vision of our Founders to ensure justice and domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and posterity, do ordain and establish the institution known as Common Ground America.

How difficult could it be?

One would like to think the media is but as anyone on either the left or the right will tell you the media long ago abandoned its watchdog role over the machinations of government and has since reconstituted its mission and has metamorphosed itself from the guardians of democracy to the champions of stenography.  Oddly, both sides believe that the media is controlled by the other, which either is an indication of the media’s fairness in taking no sides, the overall blandness and innocuousness of what passes for news “product” these days or the general cluelessness of those making the complaint.  Whatever the case, the Fourth Estate is no more.

There are many fine, hardworking organizations who attempt to monitor and influence legislation at all levels but most of these are narrowly focused on specific issues to the exclusion of others or are ideologically driven.  While these efforts are important and encouraged, they are simply part of an institutionalized process which recognizes and rewards a broken system that suppresses the common good and the general welfare in favor of the status quo and attempts to sate the appetite of government.  Again, ask yourself: what has changed?  All these organizations simply become part of Madison’s enlarged sphere where they are effectively neutralized.

We rely way too much on government do what we as a society should be doing on our own.  For those who decry the growth and cost of government, it seems counterproductive to turn to the government to solve all our problems.  If we are going to avoid a state which manages our affairs from cradle to grave, we are going to need to declare independence from that government.

Again, we learn from our Founders and adapt to our time.  At the time of the Declaration of Independence when the signers declared their intentions to dissolve the political bands which connected them to Britain and to alter or abolish that government, they were thousands of miles away and an ocean apart from King George’s seat of power. However, our government is here, it is all around us, it is in control of ever increasing facets of our lives.  It has powers never envisioned or intended by the Founders.  (Many would argue the federal government has assumed the very powers which inspired the Declaration in the first place.)  So, we can no more declare independence from it as we can from our own bodies.  It is not as if we can set sail for new a new world.  We can, however, put it back into proper alignment.  We can declare our independence of the government.  We can breathe life into the words and intent of the Declaration and fulfill the original intent.

Consider:

When fully operational, Common Ground America will have 7,825 chapters across the nation, one for every state and federal elected official.  Broadly put, each chapter will have two overarching missions:

One: Monitor the legislative activities of the elected officials in the district and act as an ombudsman for the community and

Two: Work within the community to take back those social responsibilities traditionally belonging to the community which have been usurped by the government.

Within each of those broad missions are, of course, multitudes of tasks which will differ from community to community and which will be delineated in coming chapters. 

In essence, although it will not have the power of legislation, Common Ground America grow to become a parallel representative of the people in matters of governance as well as the proper and legitimate provider of compassion, just as the Founders had intended.

What choice do we have, really?  When the punditry and the politicians themselves revel in telling the people the government is broken, when that phrase is an accepted part of the lexicon, what exactly are “We The People” supposed to do?  Sit back and do nothing?  Keep voting for and electing robotic legislators to charge into the maelstrom of bureaucratic government, only to produce the same destructive results year after year after year?  Should we continually appeal those in power to please hear our voices, to please do a better job?  Should we compose our own “long train of abuses and usurpations”?  If our government officials already tell us what they are doing is not working, what more evidence do we need? The federal government is fourteen trillion dollars in debt and sinking fast and government’s answer is to keep printing and spending money until things get better?  Most of the states are on the verge of financial collapse.  The national mood is one of despair and doubt.  The America people are at each others’ throats.  A distressing amount has simply lost hope and has given up.

Is it the American way to simply give up, to surrender?  Or, more properly put, is it the American way to wait patiently and assign to others the responsibility to solve our problems and overcome our challenges?

One thing is certain: it is to the political and strategic advantage of those currently exercising the privileges of power to have Americans waging rhetorical war with one another.  By enlarging the sphere and making it impossible for a majority to emerge – a majority opposed to the excesses and abuses of power perpetrated by government – the political carnival we are witnessing today will continue indefinitely.

We are not proposing to violently overthrow the government of the United States for surely that fantasy is absurd.   It is the intent of Common Ground America not to overthrow the government of America but to supplant it, to show it how it is supposed to work, to return it to its foundations. The people retain the wisdom the government has lost.  The Founders have given us a road map.  We need only follow it.

When we hear chants along the lines of “Take our country back”, we have to seriously ask ourselves, “Take it back from whom?”  Are we saying that Democrats wish to take it back from Republicans and Republicans want to take it back from Democrats?”  Is that truly what we mean?  Over the course of the last forty years, under both Republican and Democratic presidents and under both Republican and Democratic congresses, this nation has been led to the very brink of disaster.  A fourteen trillion dollar debt is the height of arrogant incompetence.  It was not the American people who led us here.  While we were going about our lives, raising our families, building the businesses which employ our fellow citizens, lobbyists, special interests, domestic enemies, criminal elements and politicians all joined hands, sold their souls and systematically raped this nation.  The time has come for the American people to say “Enough” and for all Americans to join together to right that which is wrong, encourage that which is right and put this nation back on a course of freedom and prosperity.  No political ideology – left or right, liberal or conservative – has a monopoly on how to achieve that end.

It is time for a new American Revolution: a revolution of thought.  We must take ourselves out of the mindset of political parties and instead see in each other a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, a worker, a teacher, an entrepreneur, a patriot, a citizen, an American.

We continually see surveys indicating the majority of Americans believe the country is on the wrong course.  Well, it is on the wrong course but does anyone seriously believe things will get better by changing the political party in the majority?  Does anyone truly believe that shifting twenty or thirty seats in Congress from one party to the next is actually going to make any difference?  Is there any empirical evidence to support such a belief? How has that approach worked out these past forty years?  The politicians and pundits who say that Washington is broken are correct – it is broken.  Simply changing a few nameplates on the doors in the congressional office building will not result in a dime’s worth of difference.

If we the people want to see things function correctly, we are going to have to do it ourselves.  We cannot wait on politicians or political parties.  Ask yourself this: Is this the America you want to leave to your children?  Is this the world you want them to grow up in?  It doesn’t matter, truly, if you answer that question from a liberal mindset or a conservative one, a black, white or brown perspective, if the answer is “No” than you need to get involved.  You must get involved.

Common Ground America is not a partisan political organization.  It could not possibly be if it were to effectively serve and represent every legislative district in America.  Although it will have a political component, the purpose of that component will not be to espouse an ideology but to act as an advocate for the residents in those districts to ensure elected officials are attending to the interests of their constituents.

Common Ground America is not a religious organization, although it will have a spiritual component tasked with ensuring the church is fulfilling its commission to the community. Common Ground America’s spiritual component will usurp from the federal bureaucracy the virtues rightfully belonging to the people: Compassion, Justice and Faith.

James Madison took the lesson he had learned from the early republics and confederations and used their successes and failures, their correct actions and their mistakes, and used them to fashion his Virginia Plan which became the basis for our Constitution.   We shall build on that here, take the lessons of America’s founding, the compromises both brilliant and tragic, to craft the framework of Common Ground America, our blueprint for America’s renewal.

Each national election cycle, be it presidential or mid-term, we are told, “This is the most important election of our lives.”  No denying, these elections are vitally important.  But the most important of our lives?  Hardly.  If the most important vote you cast is for president, you are way late to the game.

The most important votes you will ever cast occur far from the glare of the national – and, sadly, in many cases – the local media.  No vote you ever cast will exceed in future importance how you vote in your local school board election.

Of course, early Americans knew this all too well.  Settlers in Wyoming or Colorado may not have known or cared who their senator or the president was as Washington was far removed from their lives.  But they had built the local school with the sweat of their own brow and the education of their children, something which many of them were denied, was of paramount importance and they darn well knew the curriculum and who was responsible for it.

Such focus on local rather than national governance is the bedrock of the American success story.  We were not governed; we governed ourselves.  It was only when we ceded local governing authority to others that one of the key founding principles of America was abandoned.

How did we cede this authority?  Simple: we just ignored it.  Turnout for local elections is – or at least should be – a national disgrace.  City councils are elected with only three to five percent of the populace bothering to participate.  Mid-term elections may bring out fifteen to twenty percent of eligible voters and barely half participate in presidential election years.

While voter apathy at the national level might be explained away by the daunting feeling of inadequacy in a vast national election, what can explain the indifference towards being able to, literally, take over the governance of a town, city or county with just a small percentage of eligible voters?

We hear the cry constantly, from both left and right, to “take our country back” from whatever leftwing or rightwing group de jour has now hijacked the nation and is taking it on a path of destruction and slavery, shredding the Constitution along the way.  We need to collectively come to the realization that our country has not been hijacked or stolen.  We surrendered it.

The greatest and most realistic opportunity to “take our country back” is to drop the flag of partisanship and work together at a local level to exert citizen control over government.  Local issues transcend ideology: streets and parks, libraries, property and sales taxes, transportation, development, education, crime and safety and basic infrastructure.

Common Ground seeks to be a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization bringing together disparate local groups such as HOAs, neighborhood coalitions, parents, small businesses and ordinary citizens regardless of political affiliation to return local government to local control with the eventual goal of restoring America to the self rule envisioned by our founders.