The Hijacking of America (Alleged)

If one term could describe America, the word "democracy" would be apt. The United States was the first country to begin its nationhood with a constitution authored by men who intended to end tyranny by making the people sovereign. Sadly, many public figures of our generation have a warped idea of what our founding fathers envisioned for the infant nation--on two counts: their definition of freedom, and definiton of socialsm.

1. Freedom

If you give attention to the current pronouncements of certain politicians and hopeful candidates, you might suppose that our democratic heritage is uniquely endangered. It seems that the unwashed masses are trying to capture the fruits of our blessed land without earning the rewards, which creates a new tyranny. I hear repeatedly that only those who have enough energy and ambition to make it on their own should enjoy the prosperity of a free country. Freedom, then, is apparently not a universal right; it is only for those who have made it on their own, and thus deserve to enjoy their self-investments without disturbance. In this picture of democracy, there is no community spirit, little sense of public responsibility, and a general dissing of those in difficult circumstances. Liberty is the freedom to make waves at will. Small boats had better stay out of the water.

In contrast, our nation's founders never intended for "the people" to mean an exclusive group of worthies. Certainly, most of the leaders of that early generation were succesful men of accomplishment, but they, in deliberation and compromise, made room for tolerance and respect, and limited the terms of elective office to enable frequent, potential turnover to keep the government in touch with the common "people"--the populace of the democracy. They had much more than private freedom on their minds. George Washington set an important example of trust in the general public by retiring when he could have been elected repeatedly for life.

The recently evolved Tea Party movement is an example of a different, artless simpleness. These critics pick up nimbly on the "tyranny" part of our history. They are certain of where tyranny exists today. They discover it where individual rights are violated --pointedly, the right to make money without government regulation, the right to mine tax loopholes, the right to exclude large groups from benefiting from our national prosperity, the right to rape the environment, to buy politicians, and to increase the despair of an enlarging number of those in poverty. The revealing characteristic of these freedom lovers is whom they say should benefit from a democratic state. And anyone who objects to this understanding of tyranny's location is reminded that the ultimate right to own a gun is the true American way to quash the denial of these rights.

This past week Sharron Angle, a contender for the Nevada senate seat, referenced the Second Amendment's right to bear arms, and followed by saying we need "to take Harry Reid out." She probably did not mean it the way it sounded, but such irresponsible rhetoric clutters the airwaves. You will hear that our government has grown so big that our cherished freedoms are being choked. When the political process does not turn out the way we want, suddenly the President is a fascist and a socialist. Militia style groups are organizing and drilling, convinced they must begin preparation for defending themselves in street battles against federal troops, just as our forefathers did.

Yes, our ancestors shot at the British Redcoats and declared independence, but this was before they had the benefit of tranquility to set democracy in place. If we want to assure that our founders' hopes for the democratic experiment come to fruit, it would help to rediscover the bigger picture of what they had in mind. Our founders were not angels. Jefferson owned slaves, Franklin was a ladies man, Adams condoned the arrest of his critics, Hamilton leaned toward monarchism, and so on. But in their better moments, with the aid of Madison's scholarship and Washington's integrity, they gathered and sculpted our fundamental laws with popular sovereignty inseparable from individual rights. Unlike more recent objectors, our founders sought to assure that the most insignificant and insolvent, even irreligious, citizens could sit at the same table with the well-dressed. They defined the advantaged as those who merely had citizenship--an unmarketable commodity. We must acknowledge their hypocrisy toward slaves and Indians, but dividing the citizeny into haves and have nots was not their way of awarding "freedom."

Our Constitution was not contrived to inaugurate a membership club for the quick and the clever. The linchpin that holds democracy's wheel on its axle is the assurance, by ballot, that every citizen stands on the same footing, bearing the same responsibilities in community, each sharing alike the fruits of participatory, good government. Compassion, sharing, and tolerance are fundamental elements of democracy. When we shove these aside, we no longer have the same system that the Philadelphia 'Convention crafted.

What Jefferson considered inalienable and divinely secured was integrity of personhood, not mere personal advantage. The colonial revolutionists wanted the King off their backs, not their neighbor. The Constitution assures use of both the ballot and the bullet for protection of our individual liberties, but to assert "my" liberties to the exclusion of "yours" is not the race for happiness Jefferson had in mind. Today's bickering and bitching between elections is not where you will find enlightened exposition about our heritage. But it is a location for displaying embarrassing ignorance about the texture of genuine "democracy."


2. Socialism.

The mantra on some talk shows is that socialist liberals are hijacking America by soaking the hardworking businessman in order to give the indolent a free ride. The current socialist administration, they charge, is hacking away at the liberties our founders won in their battle against tyranny. The Obama critics support bailing out the financiers and industrialists, but vote against extending contracted unemployment benefits. They adeptly take the adage that says "my freedom ends where the next person's begins," and reverse it to say, "my freedom begins were the next person's ends." This rewrites democracy. In this sense, freedom is particularized, leaving no place for humanitarianism. Real democracy, then, is where no one gets in my way, and what I have gained shall not be taken away from me. By this line of reasoning, anyone who trys to thwart me, or puts claim on anything I have sequestered, is the enemy of our land, dressed in the costume of "socialism."

You may know the democracy ship is in shallow waters when you hear the word "socialism" sloshed around as the buzzword for complaints about government programs designed to restrain capitalist bullying. With a first-grader's command of vocabulary, those who cry "socialism" and warn that our country has lost its way, do not understand the democracy jewel our founders handed us. They do not grasp what the word socialism means in ordinary dictionary parlance or philosophical usage (see my blog about socialism, last November). What they mean is that "social consciousness" is gaining ground. But that is too cerebral a concept for use in heated discussion on the stump and before TV cameras. So with dripping patriotic pose, they warn that socialism [social consciousness] is a threat to individual freedom. In case this word does not scare us sufficiently, they often couple it to "marxism" with the help of a slash or a dash, as if the two words are synonyms, which makes as much sense as pairing, for example, Lutheran/Catholicism. Synonyms? Hardly. But any confusion over the implications of socialism can easily be cleared up --we are to know that it is whatever the Democratic party promotes, and true democracy is simply the opposite of that. Anything social is socialism. In this manner these deep thinkers modify our heritage by brush-stroking community and social consciousness out of the picture, not admitting that in the process they have turned the Constitution into a chameleon capable of taking on whatever color advances their particular group's interests.

The intellectual insolvency of critics who have to use vacuous word-tandems cluelessly to score points against "the enemy" in our midst is nothing but pitiful paranoia. The real compelling element of the founders' revolt was why they did it, not just what they did. They did not just "fight" (a visceral response), they "resisted" (a cognitive term). One fights to "win"; one resists to "take control" --a more complicated task that employs an encompassing vision. Fighting off tyranny becomes easily untracked without a polestar for guidance. Our Founders knew they wanted a democracy, and they knew what that entailed. As Lincoln phrased it, democracy is government of, by, and for the people. The absence of social consciousness is what marks the betrayal of democracy.

Pummeling the public with narcissistic claims, thin history, and empty adjectives about democracy provides a model that the unstable and slow-witted can rally around. This is the background for what happened in San Francisco, East Bay yesterday. A man loaded his car with guns, then, with intent "to start a revolution," headed to kill people at a couple of selected organizations that personally offended him. The Highway Patrol stopped him for a traffic violation, and a shootout began. Not everyone afflicted with a faded image of democracy is about to go berserk, but the reasoning is just as juvenile. When Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty, or give me death," he was talking about self sacrifice for a greater cause. He did not say, "Give me liberty, or I will go kill someone."

One might respond that there is no hijacking going on; primal screams about tyranny and playground notions about democracy represent harmless rhetoric in political party rivalry. Indeed, the Republican canards thrown at Obama were preceded by equally damning charges the Democrats made against the Bush administration. Venting and complaining can be therapeutic; our Constitution guarantees our right to do this. But let's try to match our founders' maturity and recognize that community was as important to them as personal happiness. If we can not recognize when pronouncements are historically improvised and academically challenged, then our founders' hopes for democracy may wither on the vine.