Friday, July 08, 2011
Refuge of Scoundrels
The recent annual July 4 patriotism uptick got me thinking. In particular, I’m thinking that the people most emphatically telling me what this nation is all about, don’t seem to have a clue. They keep hearkening back to the founders and their original intentions, but they’re far more often wrong than right. I can’t help but feel that a correction is in order.
It’s not just their errors in historical trivia that trouble me - embarrassing though they are for us all, they’re just symptomatic of the larger problem: this nation was built on a foundation entirely different than that they’re describing. We did not invent ourselves for the sake of our own rugged individualism and hatred of regulations. Quite the opposite, in fact. Independence was declared from a monarchy - not from each other. The Declaration of Independence recognized government as necessary to secure safety and happiness, and was not to be changed or discarded casually. The founders protested in the Declaration that the King failed to pass necessary laws, not that he imposed bad ones. They didn’t object to taxation - they just wanted representation if it was going to happen. They actually complained that foreigners were being discouraged from adding their strength to the general population through immigration.
And upon the sundering of their ties to England, the thirteen states mutually pledged to each other their lives, fortunes and honor in support of the declaration by the united states that they were free and independent. They did not each pledge to defend their own rights, but to stand up for those of their neighbors, from Vermont clear down to Georgia. Such genial socialism seems almost scandalous today, but truly is at the heart of what made this nation great at the moment of its birth.
The Declaration, as we all ought to know, was the voice of liberty, but its true embodiment is our Constitution. Adopted eleven years after the Declaration was signed, it reflects not only the genius of the founders but also their experience. After the Declaration’s citations of the social bonds that tie us together, and its expression of interest in increasing the number of laws and new citizens of this nation, the Constitution could well have proposed a return to individuality and freedom from regulation. Such was manifestly not what was done.
“We” - the first word, expressly plural and conjoining. “The People” - a reiteration of our inherently shared identity. “Of the United States” - a recognition that we have hung together and will continue to do so, living in unity rather than mere confederation. “In Order to Form a More Perfect Union” - a call to a higher purpose: incorporation and mutuality. Five advantages of unionization are then identified - justice, domestic tranquility, common defense, general welfare, and liberty. Liberty is an individual advantage; the other four that precede it clearly contemplate relations with others and joint action for communal benefit. While the rest of the document lays out the framework of our federal government in lucid detail, that famous Preamble explains the why and wherefore: Having declared independence from a tyrant who dictated, rather than justly ruled, we linked ourselves to each other so we could all be stronger together - not so we could each be free to do just as we pleased, each of us a tyrant in miniature ourselves.
The founders argued over many provisions of the Constitution and often reached uneasy compromise. They explicitly recognized that their work would likely need to be amended in time, and wisely provided for such eventualities. They did not see their work as final or immutable; in truth, amendments ensued swiftly, for good reason, and to salutary effect. Those amendments have consistently expanded the protection of personal liberty, but they still follow the Preamble’s articulation of inter-dependent incorporation. The Bill of Rights and the (surviving) amendments that followed were not intended to vitiate our linked identity and destiny, but to enhance its value to each of us. We are one nation; we are one people out of many. We are united. Or at least, we are supposed to be.
I am called to these thoughts by the rampant shrilling of those who who rail against any taxation as a usurpation of personal freedom, whose xenophobia has pretensions of origination in colonial purities and whose selfishness masquerades as traditional American self-reliance. They wrap themselves in flags and swear to be exponents of patriotic American values. This nation is made of multitudes and a dedicated scholar can find evidence of all their principles in the eighteenth century, but it is a farce to suggest that these were our core foundational values. Look, rather, to the documents that we used to create and define ourselves - that reflect the sum of our identities and, more importantly, our aspirations. Those seem clear enough to me: we are a people bound together by common interests and shared responsibility. Anyone who claims that we’re defined by our freedoms alone is forgetting that those freedoms are predicated on our duties. Anyone who claims that our joint welfare is subordinate to our individual liberty, just isn’t an American as far as I’m concerned.
Happy 8th of July, people. Hope you enjoyed your parade. Don’t forget to vote, pay your taxes, and fulfill the myriad other responsibilities you have as a member of this society. You owe it to your neighbors. Here’s hoping they remember that they owe it to you.
