New Name - Same Mission

I suddenly have become aware, duh!, that the name I originally created for this blog, Preserving American Greatness, is not really appropriate to its mission statement.  That’s pretty bad for a writer.  But better that realization later than never. 

One problem with the original name is its connotation.  It sounds like the blog is a proponent of American exceptionalism, which it certainly is not, or that it promotes a right wing “America right or wrong” perspective, which also clearly does not apply.  Beyond being misleading, this connotation would naturally be offensive to many people around the world for whom we have long ceased being regarded as “the beacon on the hill.”

The other problem is that although the seeds of greatness are in the American story, our country has unfortunately not fulfilled the promise shown in the Declaration of Independence.  We are certainly a powerful country, the biggest economy in the world, the strongest, or at least biggest, military force in the world.  We have made huge advancements in many different areas.

But on a human level, we have failed rather miserably.  The curse of slavery that was embedded in our founding documents remains with us despite the Civil War, despite all the laws that guarantee equality.  While women have had full rights (well, almost) now for a century, and they have advanced far in the work world, their position vis a vie men is still very unequal in fundamental ways.  People’s attitudes have changed, but only by degree, not fundamentally.  

We live in a most unequal and divided society … not just between black and white Americans, men and women, the rich and most everyone else, but in ways without end.  The promise of “success” (as defined by our culture) is tantalizingly held out to everyone by the marketing media, but for the majority in this country the Declaration’s guarantee of the unalienable right to the “pursuit of happiness” remains a cruel joke.

So just what are America’s values?  To me they are encapsulated in the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .”

Greed, a consuming self-interest, and a lack of concern for others may be the values of our contemporary culture, but they are not the values that our Founding Fathers gave America at its birth.  While the words of the Declaration may seem on the surface to champion self-interest and the right to do whatever one wishes, they are tempered by the spiritual statement that we are all created equal and that we all were endowed by the Creator with unalienable rights.  Thus, if the exercise of one person’s right harms another or inhibits his right, then there needs to be a check.  The Declaration does not proclaim an unfettered right to anything.  That would be anarchy.

This is why I wrote the book, We Still Hold These Truths in 2004 (years before the conservative author Matthew Spaulding wrote his take on things under the same title, oddly fulfilling the statement I made on the book’s first page that “in [the Declaration’s] interpretation lies the core of both the Liberal and Conservative ideologies that have run through American political life and the tension between them).  This is why I started this blog several years ago.

This blog is a celebration of those profoundly liberal American values.  It is dedicated to insuring that the promise of the Declaration becomes a reality for all Americans and beyond that, that these values impact our dealings with other nations.  Let me repeat here the mission statement that was my first blog post:

Our nation stands under attack … not from without, but from within.  Both our politics and our culture have been corrupted.

Politics on both the right and left are ever more polarized.  We cannot be a great or strong country if the people and their politicians view fellow Americans who happen to have opposing points of view in an us v them mode, as the enemy; we can only progress if we are united, albeit with differing perspectives on how to go about things.  And our culture caters to the worst aspects of capitalism with ethics and concern for the common good falling to the demands of greed and competition.  The same issues are present throughout much of the world today.

One central aspect of the problem is that our country and much of the world is bereft of spiritual values.  Now right here we have a definitional problem.  I am not referring to the values hawked by born-again Christians in this country, or Islamists in Muslim countries, or the ultra-Orthodox in Israel.   Because interestingly, in almost all cases, the “spiritual” or “moral” positions taken by these self-righteous people go against core tenets of their own religion.  

On the other hand, you have the majority of people, at least in the United States, who claim to believe in God but are not spiritual in any meaningful sense; their lives are totally a creature of contemporary culture.  Their spiritual core is if not empty sorely depleted.

It will be the mission of this blog to look at current events, be they political or cultural, from a spiritual, not religious, perspective, with relevant support from our founding documents, the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.   Remember when it was popular for Christians to wear bracelets that said, “What would Jesus do?”  That’s basically the question that this blog asks, but from a larger spiritual perspective.

I will take as my perspective the common teachings that are at the core of the spiritual/moral constructs of all the world’s great religions … Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Greed is the root of all evil.

Put away lying; speak every man truth.

Only when these maxims are followed will we achieve “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” and realize the goals set forth in the Declaration of Independence, that “governments are instituted to secure” the equality of all men and their “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

The Rise and Fall of the American Republic

Over the past 30 years, we have been witnessing the slow demise of the American Republic.  I don’t mean that the United States will cease to exist, or that we will be conquered by some external power.  What I mean is that the principles on which this nation was founded and the philosophy that fostered the continued betterment of life for its citizens ... those things that made this country great and a beacon to the world ... have been and are now being weakened at an accelerating pace, to the detriment of our democratic principles and the common good.

The fundamental underpinning of the great American experiment is found in the Declaration of Independence.  It exists in two parts.  The first is the well-known phrase that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”  The second equally essential part of the experiment is the statement “That to secure these Rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

These were radical, indeed revolutionary, concepts and they sparked not just the American revolution, but revolutions first in Europe, and ultimately throughout the world.  Even though America did not always live up to its founding credos, it was these credos and the strength and prosperity that flowed from them that made the United States the envy of the world.

When our nation was founded and for much of its history, it goes without saying that all men and women were not equal, under the law or otherwise.  Slavery existed as a legal enterprise until 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Lincoln.  But as then Vice-President Lyndon Johnson stated in 1963, “Emancipation was a Proclamation but not a fact.”  It would take another 90 years till the Supreme Court finally declared that segregated education was unconstitutional and a further 10 years before Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which provided a statutory basis for blacks being treated equally under the law.  

Women ... the wives of the founders and the mothers of their children ... were legally chattel at the time.  Women had no rights at all, and whatever property they had prior to marriage (as the result of inheritance or otherwise) became the property of their husbands.  Though the legal rights of women were expanded during the 19th century, it was not until 1920 that women were finally given the right to vote.

These are the two most prominently cited examples of historic inequality in this country.  The other obvious, though less spoken of historically, inequality is one of wealth.  There  have always been masses of poor among the few rich, and that is indeed a fact of life in every society, regardless the nature of its government.  But over the decades, and especially since the beginning of the 20th century, government has passed laws which have both protected the common man from the power of the mighty (e.g. the Taft-Hartley labor law) and sought to at least partially ameliorate the economic inequality and its impact through programs that support the financially vulnerable.  The funds for such programs were made available by our system of progressive taxation, under which those who are more able contribute more to the betterment of the common good.

In each of these examples, while we are still a long way from a nation where “all men are created equal” or have equality of opportunity, government has over the years increasingly met its obligation as stated in the Declaration to “secure these rights” and to insure that every adult has the right to vote so that government does draw its powers justly “from the consent of the governed.”

But on all of these fronts, government and the nation as a whole has begun to disassemble these credos.  President Reagan famously said, “Government is not the solution, government is the problem.”  Over the next 30 years and continuing at an accelerated pace in the present, the Republican Party’s concept of government has been less government, less regulation (don’t interfere with business), smaller government, let people fend for themselves.  Their attitude is that if people don’t succeed, it’s their own fault.

This is a major shift in attitude from that contained in the Declaration and in the way our modern progressive government, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, developed during most of the 20th century.  And since the Republican Party has been the majority party in Congress for most of the past 30+ years, that has resulted in a major shift in government itself.  The result, together with the huge influence of big business in policy-making through lobbying, fundraising, and PACs, is that corporations pretty much rule our government and set policy.  It is no longer there to secure everyone’s rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  This has affected policy in all areas of government ... from clean air to mining on federal lands to social security to elections.

At the same time, Reagan’s introduction of the “me” generation has resulted in a major shift in cultural attitudes.  Everyone is now out for him- or herself.  The idea behind the American social contract that we all share a responsibility for the common good, and that those with more ability have a responsibility to contribute more to insure the common good is fast becoming out of date.  This is especially prevalent among the elite rich.  Indeed, not only have they little concern for the welfare of their fellow Americans; they have little concern for the welfare of the country because as citizens with a global range of business activity, they see no place as their “home.”  For the first time in our history, the rich are not committed to the United States.

The combined change in the attitude of government and the public has resulted in a retrenchment on the advances in equality that had been achieved over the previous century.  Over the past 30-40 years, the income of the working class or middle class has remained stagnant in real dollar terms while the top 5% have just gotten richer and richer.  The result is that income inequality is greater now than it has been since before the depression.

While people of color (primarily blacks and hispanics) have not become less equal during this period, they have made no progress in the march to equality.  They still lack equal opportunity because inner city schools remain subpar (and there are enough success stories now that we know that this failure is not a function of the students’ background) and because subtle discrimination is still rampant despite its having been illegal for decades.  There has been no push, except marginally, to do anything to change this situation.

Finally, there is the issue of ethics.  While ethics has never been part of America’s credo or ethos, based as it is on capitalism, during the middle of the 20th century ethics in government and business came to be expected and certainly was the culturally correct position.  But as the importance of money and business together with egocentrism has increased again, so too has the attitude that the end justifies the means.  If doing something unethical provides an opportunity to make more money, then corporations and financial titans as well as workers in the cogs of those organizations will do so without barely a second thought or care for who might get hurt, whether the general public or even customers.  It’s back to the future. 

That was the primary cause for the recent financial debacle that we are still recovering from.  Yes, many point to the repeal of Glass-Steagall (the depression era law that separated commercial and investment banking) as well as deregulation as having caused the crisis.  And while that is true, it is only true because people in business cannot be counted on to act in an ethical, professional manner.  They must be monitored to enforce an ethical code that respects the common good.

One could go on and on about the ways in which the government’s protection of the common good, thereby securing the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all, has dramatically decreased over the past 30 years.  That there is less equality now than 30 or 40 years ago cannot be disputed (yes, women and gays/lesbians have more equality now than then, but that is mostly an upper class phenomenon).  

If this trend continues over the coming decades, the promise of the American Republic will have failed.  The concept of equality will be nothing but an illusion.  And government will not be there to secure rights for all and protect the common good.  Historically, our system struck a balance between private rights, the public good, and government.  That balance is on the tipping edge, if not already past it.