This was going to be a post about yesterday.
It was going to be about how I ate lunch downtown, in Philadelphia – how I ate a “Jewish Corned Beef†sandwich made by the Amish, and falafel sold by Italian-Americans, and how I talked to a public school teacher from West Virginia who was in town for the NEA convention.
It was going to be about the woman from LaRouche PAC, who told me in the same breath that Cheney was “a fat-ass Nazi†and that “there’s nothing more fun than political satire,†and how hard I tried not to laugh.
But instead I’m going to write about something else.
Today is the fourth of July, and two hundred thirty one years ago, here in my city, a room full of clever men signed their names to an historic document. When in the course of human events – we all know the beginning. We all know that, to secure our unalienable rights, “Governments are instituted among Men†– that “supreme executive power derives from a mandate of the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony.†(That may not be a direct quotation from the Declaration, but I’m pretty sure it’s close.) The important stuff comes later.
The deist lip service to natural rights and natural law is irrelevant. No one sat down in 1776 and said, “Gee, our method of government is not perfect; let’s scrap everything and start over from our ideological principles.†They didn’t even say that in 1787, although they came a good deal closer.
The important part of the Declaration says not what we’re doing, but why. The British Empire had failed to honor its duties to its citizens, and the American colonists were having none of it. America was born out of the demand that government fulfill its promises. The Constitution was a revolutionary attempt at “establishing good government from reflection and choice.†The Declaration of Independence was an announcement that if Britain couldn’t establish good government then, by God, we would do it ourselves.
We’ve forgotten that. We’ve forgotten about duty and honor and accountability. We’ve forgotten about protecting Americans, about doing the best thing for the country we love. We’ve forgotten all of that because politics isn’t about public service any more. It’s about winning.
The constant pull of partisanship at the expense of good government cripples a nation that has the resources, the power, and the will to do wonders in the world. We could move mountains.
This is my country, right or wrong.
But oh, how I want it to be right.
But don’t you think that the confidence to make that break came from Locke, and at least some of the natural-rights/natural-law baggage that requires? While I understand that seeing it as some sort of Enlightenment lab test is simplistic, I feel there might be a lesson to be learned in the view that this was a battle that couldn’t be fought without the proper ideological preconditions…
I was marvelling today about the fact that we date our independence to the notarization of a speech act. Not a battle or surrender, not even the day a government formed–just the signing of a piece of well-written rhetoric and argument!! Kind of makes me think we need to shift arguments made against those who “talk big but don’t have any real ideas” (Obama et al.), because the real danger is not having the authority to make those words matter.
Certainly a lot of the language comes from Locke and other Enlightenment/natural law thinkers, but ultimately I don’t think it was a kind of Lockean overthrow of a state that didn’t represent its people; it began as an (armed) insistence that the government honor its promises, and only later turned into a fight for political independence once it became clear that Britain wouldn’t.
As for Obama… Good rhetoric is important, but real ideas are, I think, more so. Not necessarily specific policies — those depend hugely on circumstance and a lot of data you probably can’t crunch on the campaign trail — but evidence that you’re thinking about things rather than spouting empty sound-bites. I would rather have an intelligent, thoughtful, and committed person with no firm policies than someone who agreed exactly with what I thought ought to be done but didn’t have the intellectual framework to branch out. The former, I could trust to govern; there’s a reason I’m not running for president. Someone else could do a better job. Well, and also I’m too young.