An American Thing?

In its simplest definition, democracy is rule by the people — in Greek, the demos. On the face of it, you’d think that this would be not only a very good thing, but also a very American thing. The famous first three words of the Preamble to the United States Constitution are a statement of the people’s authority to establish a government and its Constitution. “We the People” sounds very democratic.

Then there’s that short, most celebrated speech by President Abraham Lincoln. In the last sentence of the Gettysburg Address, delivered at the famous battlefield on November 19, 1863, he speaks of “a new birth of freedom,” and the desire “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” That sounds pretty democratic too, doesn’t it, especially the words “by the people”?

So democracy must be a good thing. Or maybe not . . .

Practically anyone who has studied the American founding carefully understands that democracy was something the founders feared and tried to avoid. Lately, there’s a movement afoot — notably but not exclusively in Utah and its Alpine School District — which is horrified that the word democracy is sometimes mentioned as a desirable thing in a school district’s official statement of goals and values. And let’s not forget those German communists. They called their country the German Democratic Republic, and they did it with a straight face.

Obviously, the word democracy means different things to different people. In fact, it means different things to me — some of which I ardently support, and some of which I vehemently oppose.

Some folks try to exploit this wide range of definitions to sell the people something substantially different from what the people envision when they hear the word democracy. Some people are simply confused by or oblivious to the differences. The distinctions don’t seem very subtle to me, but I’ve been steeped in political theory for decades. Maybe they seem small and insignificant to others.

Some other folks are incensed by the differences. For them, democracy is a byword, in the most negative sense of that word, and has one clear, precise meaning, not more. Anyone who speaks of it in serious discourse without hissing or snarling sufficiently is at least an opponent, and quite possibly an enemy, of freedom.

All of these responses are understandable to a degree, and all of them suggest the need to understand clearly the word’s range of actual, legitimate meanings. That’s where we’re headed here today.

Before we set off, let’s pause for a moment to celebrate the fact that I may be about to offend every faction with an opinion on the subject. Then we’ll venture into the fire swamp. Truly, “it’s not that bad. . . . I’m not saying I’d like to build a summer home [there], but the trees are actually quite lovely.” (Credit where credit is due.)

Ahem.

An Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Thing

The ancient Athenian democracy is the most famous, perhaps, but may not have been the first. There is evidence of earlier democratic institutions among the Sumerians, in India, and elsewhere. But the Western democratic tradition begins in Athens.

About 380 BC Plato described democracy as rule by those who are governed. He also described three other, contrasting types of government: monarchy (rule by one person), oligarchy or aristocracy (rule by a small elite class), and timocracy (rule by property owners). Other thinkers often omitted the last of those and spoke of only three general types of government, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. (I confess I myself haven’t used the work timocracy since I studied Plato at college.) In any case, for Plato democracy was already a little more than simply popular rule. It allowed individuals to live in the freedom nature intended. And, while he did not belabor the point in Republic, he conceived of democracy as involving the election of magistrates.

This brings us to a crucial point: The word democracy is commonly used to describe two different kinds of democratic system. One is direct democracy, in which citizens vote on all issues directly. Athenian democracy is often said to have been direct democracy, but it was not completely so. There was a governing assembly of all citizens, but there were also government and court officials selected from among the citizens by lot, which is edging in the general direction of democratic representation. Similar, mostly-direct democracy recurred for some centuries in the Roman Republic and later in medieval Swiss towns, among other places. A degree of direct democracy exists in most of the states of the United States and in local governments, where laws can be made and overturned by referendum. There is no direct referendum in the US national government.

The second form, representative democracy, is much more widely observed both in history and in the modern world. It generally — sometimes completely — avoids direct democracy, preferring the rule of democratically elected representatives. Some such governments preceded the American representative democracy by centuries, in places as diverse as Iceland and medieval Russia. In most of these earlier cases, only a small minority had a voice or vote in the “democracy.” Another form, parliamentary democracy, as practiced in England and elsewhere, might be considered a variation of representative democracy.

A Multifaceted Thing

There are kinds of democracy we have yet to name here, and other useful adjectives to attach to the noun, but the existence of direct democracy and representative democracy is sufficient to raise some questions about the current debate. Is one of these forms the  true or real democracy, and the other a distortion or a fraud? More precisely, is it legitimate to use the word democracy to refer to a representative democracy, or must the word be reserved by all right-thinking people for direct democracies only? Should every patriotic American bristle at the use of the word democracy to describe our republic? Is every American who thinks we live in a democracy either a part of, or duped by, a conspiracy to overthrow our republic?

Hold that thought. We still need to add a few more adjectives. As we do so, let’s keep assuming something we haven’t yet asserted, that the definition of democracy includes rule by a majority of those participating (that is, of actual votes). A particularly important modern variant of democracy lacks that feature, but we can assume it for the moment.

A host of thinkers, from Plato to to Montesquieu to James Madison, have prudently shied away from direct democracy, in the sense of direct majority rule. Popular majorities can be exceedingly fickle. They tend to be swayed by passion more than reason. Worst of all, they are prone to tyranny. In representative democracy, the democratic election of legislators and other leaders to fixed terms of office partially addresses the first two of these problems, by providing some stability and some insulation against inflamed but fleeting public passions. The third problem, the opportunity for democratic tyranny, brings us to the idea of liberal democracy, where individual rights — especially the minority’s rights — are protected. A partial synonym of liberal democracy is constitutional democracy, because those protections tend to be secured by constitutions, as in the United States. However, it is only a partial synonym, because it is easy to conceive of a constitution which describes and establishes a representative democracy, but does not protect the individual rights of the minority.

There are another two dozen or so adjectives which are commonly and reasonably applied to the noun democracy. Life is really too short for us to belabor most of the rest of them. We’ll add one or two more later, but we have enough now to allow us to address the questions I mentioned.

Overlapping Things

The United States government is a republic, as I discussed in the previous article in this series, but it is a particular sort of republic, a constitutional, democratic republic. This might be the best kind of republic, but would it make any sense for someone arbitrarily to declare that only the constitutional, democratic republic is truly a republic, and that all other republics are perversions or abuses of that concept and should not be called republics? I can’t speak for you, but I don’t claim the right to erase large pieces of political thought accumulated over 24 centuries, just because I want to use its vocabulary in my own narrow way.

In that same spirit, try this on for size: The United States government is also a democracy. It is not a direct democracy, but that’s not the only kind or the most common kind. It is a liberal, constitutional, representative democracy. To insist that it is not a democracy, because it is not a direct democracy, is, again, to assert the right to erase large bodies of political thought, in the name of using that discipline’s careful vocabulary in an unjustifiably narrow way. It’s still a relatively free country, so I suppose people have the right to invent their own language in this manner. But they haven’t the authority to declare every other proper and long-established usage of a word invalid, because it isn’t their preferred usage. To the extent that they insist on detaching themselves in this way from millennia of serious discussion, they abdicate what might otherwise be their influential role in the public discourse.

Republic and democracy are not opposites. They mostly overlap. In their American incarnations (and some others), they are the institutionalization of Abraham Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people.” In these words, note first that government of the people is no distinction; every sort of regime governs the people. But government by the people — that’s a democracy, whether the people govern themselves directly (as in some states’ referenda) or indirectly, through democratically-elected representatives.

I drive an aging Japanese four-door sedan, which is only a little bit sporty. A friend drives a late-model Corvette, an American sportscar. Would it advance our occasional discussion of cars at all, if I insisted that only sedans are really cars, and we must therefore find another word for all other motor vehicles, including his Corvette? Would his views on automobiles be any more persuasive if he insisted that I cannot be allowed to call my Honda a car, because only sportscars are really cars? If you think this would be silly, imagine forbidding people to use the word car in referring to cattle cars and box cars. Yet this is essentially the argument that some presumably well-meaning zealots are making, when they insist that only direct democracy should be called democracy, and that the United States cannot be a representative democracy and a democratic republic at the same time.

A Mostly Modern Thing

You’ve noted, perhaps, that I’ve said nothing so far of equality or, for that matter, of the third part of Lincoln’s formula, government for the people. A central feature of the American liberal, constitutional democracy is that all voters have an equal vote, and all citizens are, at least in a legal sense, equal before the law. This formal equality is an essential feature of the liberal democracy, but it is not a point of consensus, and it is not a feature of every sort of democracy.

I suspect, but have not tried to prove, that a major reason some people are so upset by the suggestion that the American government is a democracy is not their very sensible conviction of the perils of direct democracy. I suspect that it is their sense — fed by instinct or analysis or both — that the term democracy is not always used to describe a system which values individual freedom and self-determination. This instinct or analysis, whichever it is, is spot on.

There is a type of democracy which values government of the people and for the people, but studiously avoids being government by the people in any practical and ongoing sense. In some types of socialism and communism, the departure from Lincoln is quite overt. These are governments of the people and for the people, but by a revolutionary, aristocratic, meritocratic, or bureaucratic elite — not by the people as a whole. Equality of some outcomes (such as wealth) is enforced at the price of freedom; sometimes this is called social justice. In this usage, democracy emphasizes two things. First, the system exists essentially for the benefit of the people — so it claims, and so the revolutionaries or voters who chose it believed. Second, a premium is placed on equality, and unequal outcomes — such as in education or in economics — are considered to be undemocratic. Notably, freedom and self-government, which breed inequality, are largely absent in such systems. There may be elections and some other choices to make, but they rarely are allowed to include alternatives which are hostile to the prevailing philosophy, power, or interests of the state.

On an emotional level I would be tempted to declare that this usage of democracy is illegitimate, a perversion. But I cannot. It is a long-established, much-discussed, and legitimate branch of political thought. (Please understand, I did not just say that tyrannical government is fine with me.) To reject the usage of the word democracy in this context would accomplish no useful end, and it would detach me, to some degree, from serious discussion of political theory. This doesn’t mean that I have to embrace this sort of democracy and declare that it is just as good as any other. It does mean that I have to qualify my usage of the term democracy, so it is clear that, when I advocate democracy, I don’t mean that sort; and, when I decry the evils of that sort of democracy, or even of direct democracy, I don’t mean every sort.

In short, both democratic and republic are properly used when we speak of the German Democratic Republic or of the American democratic republic. But one refers to a great tyranny, and the other names the best thing going in the real political world.

One More Adjective

Governments which profess to be democratic, but which do not value individual rights and do not allow for self-government, are the the subject of the fourth and last article in this series, in which I will describe three theoretical routes to socialism: Marxism, democratic socialism, and — are you ready? — social democracy.

As heavily as the word democracy relies on context and clarification, when you put the adjective social in front of it, as the Alpine School District has done in official statements of its mission, goals, and values, you have nailed down the concept quite precisely. Social democracy is an enemy of liberal democracy and deserves all the hostility local partisans have directed at the term democracy generally. Anyone who has studied it seriously for at least a few minutes, and who loves freedom, knows that social democracy it is a soft road to socialism, not a desirable advance or refinement in the government of a free people.

. . . Of which more .

The post What Is a Democracy? appeared first on The Freedom Habit.

My readers may know two things about me, based on statements in public meetings, private conversations, or what I wrote at this blog’s predecessor, LocalCommentary.com.

First, for a long time I have supported local and state legislation to prohibit discrimination in housing and employment based on actual or perceived gender identity or sexual orientation.

Second, the level of my confidence in the Utah legislature is perennially low.

These two themes came together last year at about this time, as the Utah legislature sat on its hands and refused even to debate last year’s version of a non-discrimination law (SB 100). I wrote:

It’s an extraordinarily discerning litmus test, where Mormon Utah Republicans are concerned. It tells us where people land on the freedom-versus-using-my-power-to-compel-universal-righteousness spectrum, which sometimes seems to be the primary axis of Utah politics.

Beyond the moral principles on which society generally agrees, and finds suitable for regulation by law, I believe that sinners as I define them and sinners as you define them deserve political, economic, and religious freedom. I believe that a person’s violation of someone else’s sectarian principles (or his own) should not jeopardize the roof over his head or his means of earning his daily bread, assuming he doesn’t work for an organization with a primary mission to promote those principles. . . .

I . . . believe that the greatest and most constant threat to free and healthy society and good government in Utah is the subset of Mormons who think the law is a suitable tool for imposing their principles on all people — and who think that this is somehow a proper exercise of their religious freedom. (“I Am Unfit for the Utah Legislature,” February 5, 2014. See also “Rights and Rites and Right and the Rights” and “Tonight in American Fork.”)

When the Utah Legislature took up the topics of nondiscrimination and religious freedom this year, I was skeptical of their competence to produce wise legislation on such a topic, and skeptical of their good will, too.

Then — this week — I finally had a chance to read SB 296, a bill entitled “Antidiscrimination and Religious Freedom Amendments.” It passed the Utah Senate the other day by a large majority. Reportedly, the Utah House will vote on it today. Yesterday it cleared the House Judiciary Committee with a 9-2 vote.

My initial suspicions notwithstanding, this is a fine bill. I will note some highlights here, then look briefly at the subject of a related bill, SB 297, “Protections for Religious Expression and Beliefs about Marriage, Family, or Sexuality.” Some form of it may pass in the few days which remain in this year’s legislative session. With apologies for the spoiler, it’s more sensible than I expected, too.

Notes on SB 296

What It Prohibits: This bill adds sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of characteristics on the basis of which discrimination is prohibited in matters of housing and employment. The rest of that list is familiar: race, sex, color, national origin, religion, age, and disability. Large portions of this 35-page bill simply add the two new categories to that list in various parts of the Utah Code. The interesting part is elsewhere, mostly in the definitions and exceptions.

Exceptions: If views at one extreme are offended by adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the list at all, views at the other extreme are equally unsettled by the idea that anyone should be allowed to treat the subjects of sexual orientation and gender identity with anything less than demonstrative, public acceptance of everything.

To judge by recent arguments by a few (not nearly all) LGBT advocates, considerations of citizens’ religious freedom should be wholly subordinated to the LGBT community’s desire to be and to feel fully accepted by all people in all places.

To judge by a few (not nearly all) opponents of all things LGBT, the law is the arm of the Lord, and we know what the Lord wants, and it’s not you people.

Fortunately, cooler heads seem to be prevailing on both sides. The proposed legislation exempts the following as to employment:

• religious associations, religious societies, religious educational institutions, and religious leaders when acting in the capacity of religious leaders;
• affiliates, wholly-owned subsidiaries, and agencies of religious organizations;
• the Boy Scouts of America;
• businesses with fewer than 15 employees within Utah; and
• any business where a particular sexual identity or gender identity is “necessary to the operation” of or is “the essence of the employer’s business.”

As to housing, the exemptions are more complex, but include approximately the following:

• buildings with fewer than four units, if one unit is owner-occupied, as opposed to simply being rented as a business venture;
• dwellings owned or operated by, or under contract with, nonprofit or charitable organizations, or religious organizations or their affiliates;
• dwellings where “discrimination is by sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or familial status for reasons of personal modesty or privacy, or in the furtherance of a religious institution’s free exercise of religious rights under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution or the Utah Constitution”; and
• private clubs not open to the public, including fraternities and sororities associated with institutions of higher education, provided the housing facility is not operated for a commercial purpose.

Definitions: According to the proposed statute:

“Gender identity” has the meaning provided in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5). A person’s gender identity can be shown by providing evidence, including, but not limited to, medical history, care or treatment of the gender identity, consistent and uniform assertion of the gender identity, or other evidence that the gender identity is sincerely held, part of a person’s core identity, and not being asserted for improper purposes.

So Max Klinger wouldn’t qualify, and the last clause excludes men who just want to hang out in women’s restrooms (and vice versa), which apparently concerned some legislators.

(Fortunately, the legislation doesn’t try to list the genders, unlike Facebook, which now offers over 50 choices, including many synonyms, not to mention fill-in-the-blank.)

Here’s another key definition from the statute:

“Sexual orientation” means an individual’s actual or perceived orientation as heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual.

I take “perceived” to mean that I cannot be fired simply because I like Broadway tunes and have a boss who thinks that means I’m gay (which I do — and he doesn’t — and I’m not).

Dress and Grooming Standards: The bill explicitly states than it may not be interpreted as prohibiting employers from adopting “reasonable dress and grooming standards” which are otherwise legal, “provided that the employer’s dress and grooming standards afford reasonable accommodations based on gender identity to all employees.”

Sex-Specific Facilities: Concern over restroom, shower, and locker room facilities ranges, depending on the person, from a legitimate concern to a scare tactic employed to discourage consideration of this and similar legislation. It is a complex problem, which I suspect will require further attention. Here is what this statue says:

This chapter may not be interpreted to prohibit an employer from adopting reasonable rules and policies that designate sex-specific facilities, including restrooms, shower facilities, and dressing facilities, provided that the employer’s rules and policies adopted under this section afford reasonable accommodations based on gender identity to all employees.

That doesn’t fit all possible situations or resolve all possible concerns, and the interpretation of “reasonable” leaves room for differing opinions and judgments, which will make some uncomfortable. But this seems . . . reasonable.

Free Expression: There is in the statute some enforced tolerance for expression on related themes in the workplace, including “religious or moral beliefs and commitments,” provided that expression is “reasonable, non-disruptive, and non-harassing,” and allowed by the employer on equal terms with similar types of expression, unless the expression is in direct conflict with the essential business-related interests of the employer. Again, this seems . . . reasonable.

Free Expression II Employers are prohibited from discharging, demoting, terminating, or refusing to hire, or retaliating against any person “for lawful expression outside of the workplace regarding the person’s religious political, or personal convictions, including convictions about marriage, family, or sexuality, unless the expression or expressive activity is in direct conflict with the essential business-related interests of the employer.” Reasonable.

Protected Class: One common argument against this sort of legislation is that it will create a “protected class” of people who have special rights not available to the rest of us. On one hand, the nature of constitutional law is such that we cannot dismiss this thought out of hand — though it is a topic for another day. On the other hand, I’m not sure how much force an appellate court might give the bill’s declaration that it is not to be construed as creating a protected class for any purpose other than housing or employment.

On the face of it, the idea that this legislation would create a protected class seems inverted. I see it as acknowledging that individuals who are or may be perceived as L, G, B, or T actually already belong to the universal protected class in our political philosophy and jurisprudence: humans. Or, if you prefer, citizens. The Declaration of Independence declares us to be created equal (before the law), and endowed by our Creator with certain rights which are inalienable (look it up — and yes, Jefferson spelled it “unalienable”). Its language does not include exceptions for gays or others whose very existence offends some folks.

Nonseverability: Most legislation includes a severability clause, declaring that if some portion of the bill is overturned by a “court of last resort” (i.e. the US Supreme Court, or a lower court if SCOTUS refuses to hear an appeal), the rest of the statute remains in force. This bill does exactly the opposite, for an explicit reason:

This bill is the result of the Legislature’s balancing of competing interests. Accordingly, if any phrase, clause, sentence, provision, or subsection enacted or amended in this chapter is held invalid in a final judgment by a court of last resort, the remainder of the enactments and amendments of this bill affecting this chapter shall be thereby rendered without effect and void.

Note that “this chapter” refers either to employment or housing — each separate from the other, because they are in separate chapters of the Utah Code — so the housing part of the statute could theoretically be invalidated while the employment part remained intact, and vice versa.

This is the nature of political compromise: We agree in advance that, if what you wanted is struck down but what I wanted isn’t, neither of us gets what we wanted. In context, it makes sense.

However, individuals and factions on both sides who cannot bear compromise will find in this nonseverability clause an invitation to challenge any provision which offers the slightest hope of being overturned, in order to invalidate the whole. This, too, is the nature of things, and in this case I don’t see any way around it.

There are more details we could discuss, but I set out to write a long blog post, not a book.

I earnestly hope that SB 296 passes and becomes state law. It’s not just an adequate bill; it’s a fine one.

Notes on SB 297

I intended briefly to analyze SB 297, a much shorter bill, which focuses on public and religious officials officiating at weddings. It passed the Senate earlier this week, but the House substituted a different bill (a common and generally appropriate step in legislation), which I have not yet had time to compare carefully to what the Senate passed (which was itself a substitute for the bill originally proposed). So I’ll offer some general comments instead.

While I have opposed same-sex marriage on the grounds that it simply isn’t marriage — a much larger discussion I have attempted elsewhere — it is presently the law of the land and, for good or ill (perhaps both), is becoming part of the generally accepted morality of the nation, based on our only formal means for measuring such things, our political and judicial processes. Therefore:

I believe that public officials whose primary duties include officiating at weddings should do so, regarding of their personal beliefs — and yes, I include same-sex weddings. If they cannot or will not fulfill the duties of their offices, they should resign or be dismissed.

That said, we are in a period of difficult and complex transition. I can see the merits of some of these possible compromises:

• If their office is elective, and same-sex marriage was not one of the office’s duties when they ran and were elected for their current term, they might be excused from performing same-sex marriage ceremonies until the end of their terms. Their successors will not be thus excused, and in the meantime the county must provide someone who can and will officiate.
• If there are multiple officials at a county clerk’s office (for example) who can officiate at weddings, and one who is willing in the case of same-sex weddings can always be made available, I could see not requiring others to participate against their consciences — either in perpetuity or for a transitional year or two.

There are other public officials, including mayors and the governor, who are permitted by law to officiate at weddings, but for whom it is not a primary duty. I would be comfortable with a range of possible compromises here:

• If they choose not to officiate in some (e.g. same-sex) marriages, they may not officiate in any marriage. This is the approach of SB 297, as passed by the Senate, but with this exception: they would still be allowed officiate at the weddings of family members.
• Because it is not a primary duty, they may freely elect to perform or not to perform any marriage ceremony they wish, for any reason or no reason at all.
• Anything reasonable between these two positions.

Each of these possible compromise positions will sorely displease someone, whether it’s the ideologue who naively believes that public officials’ first or only duty is to their own views, not to the people at large, or the tyrant who is not satisfied simply to be able to marry the person of his or her choice, but feels compelled to force someone to officiate who does not wish to — precisely because he or she does not wish to.

We have been speaking of public officials, who have a direct and statutory duty to the public. Where religious officials (acting as such) are concerned, I simply believe that no member of the clergy should ever be required by law to officiate at any marriage ceremony to which he or she is opposed for any reason — whether it’s same-sex marriage, or thinking a properly licensed bride or groom is too young to marry, or (regrettably) one or both of the parties’ race or other attributes. Nor should a church be compelled to provide a venue or an officiator.

When a couple is licensed to marry, they have a right to expect the county to provide someone to officiate. There is no right to compel a specific official, for whom solemnizing marriages is not a primary duty, to do so against his or her will. And there is certainly no legal right to compel a member of the clergy to do so — or to force a religious organization to provide an officiator or a venue.

We’ll talk more about larger issues, such as competing notions of freedom, another time. Meanwhile, SB 296 is currently awaiting floor time in the Utah House . . .

The post SB 296, SB 297, Religious Freedom, and Nondiscrimination appeared first on The Freedom Habit.

Drawing freely from the Declaration of Independence and the passing scene, and dividing roughly by topic, I hold these truths — these American ideals — to be self-evident:

Individual Worth and Dignity

• That all men and women should be equal before human law, as they are equal before the law and mercy of God.
• That each human individually is endowed by the Creator, not by earthly government, with certain inalienable rights.
• That among these rights (it’s a partial list) are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

This is the fundamental American ideal: we should be free to live our lives according to our own individual senses of happiness, as far as that is compatible with a free society which credibly attempts to balance the competing, legitimate rights of all individuals and to defend itself from enemies foreign and domestic.

• That to secure these rights for all individuals, governments are instituted among humanity, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. (Unjust powers may or may not issue from the active consent of the governed.)

Real, Imperfect Heroes

• That those who conquered the obstacles necessary to arrive at these ideals in their hearts and minds, and worked to advance them by honorable means, should be remembered and revered for their efforts and successes – not condemned, cancelled, or erased because their reality fell short of their ideals.
• That these heroes and heroines and their work should not be written out of history because they were unable in their times and circumstances to satisfy a later generation’s sense of moral and civic perfection, or because history does not record them advocating a particular cause loudly enough to satisfy later partisans who never met or knew them.

Not every worthy battle can be fought and won at once. Not everyone is equipped to fight or even comprehend every battle. And some crucial battles cannot be fought until others are won, lest the earlier battles be lost.

We cannot plausibly demand ex post facto that historical figures be shining examples of a present stage of advancement, when they gave their all to achieve an earlier stage. If, in opposing the evils they could oppose, among the evils they saw, and advancing the good they envisioned, they did not see and fight and vanquish every evil which history has assigned to their time, or promote every good we claim for our own … well, neither will we in our time, in the eyes of proud future judges.

It Flowed from American Ideals

• That it was these and similar principles which eventually led more and more Americans to fight against racism, slavery, and other evils, before, during, and after our (first) Civil War.

For a long time, American principles were enshrined (not undermined) in the hearts of Americans at large, persistently taught (not ridiculed or deconstructed) in homes and classrooms, and extolled (not derided) in public settings far and wide. They were embodied in the Constitution of the United States, a founding national document which changed the world, yet also acknowledges its own imperfection and has seen numerous improvements by the formal will of the people.

(We did not originate most of our principles, but our discovered means of establishing principles of freedom in long-lasting civil government may be America’s greatest gift to the world so far, and that’s saying something. We also did not invent the evils found in past or present American society, notably including slavery and racism, which are common across ages and hemispheres – but each society must conquer them for itself.)

Individual Worth and Dignity Revisited

A crucial part of the American vision, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, is that inalienable rights and related responsibilities belong to individuals, not groups or tribes. This largely Western view grows from the Judeo-Christian tradition, which values (in theory if not always in practice) each person as a unique and valuable creation in the image of God. “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father…. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows” (Luke 12:29-31).

So my list continues:

• That the victims of great and small injustices are individual persons, however numerous they may be or have been. Offenses are fundamentally against individual persons (fellow children of God!) – again, however numerous – not against classes.
• That injustice is done by persons (however numerous or few), not by all members of some broadly defined racial, economic, or other class containing those persons.
• That it is unjust and destructive to punish living individuals for historical wrongs in which they did not participate.
• That we must avoid victimizing innocent individuals in our efforts to offer individual victims some redress.
• That we must wisely, carefully, and persistently help the victims of injustice and their descendants to reject victimhood as a pillar of their identity (which only perpetuates the injustice), even as we labor to help them lift themselves.

I realize that this individual, American vision of justice clashes with trendy notions of social justice, which value group identity above the individual, but that’s a topic for another day.

To bind the lingering wounds of the past is profoundly difficult even now, a century and a half after the atrocities of formal, legalized slavery in America; after the slightly more recent horrors of Reconstruction (which itself was practically a holocaust); and in the wake of the ensuing century’s laundry list of intentional abuses we often summarize as Jim Crow. Just as former slave owners and carpetbaggers threw up barriers to this healing in the past, so there are factions in the present with vested economic and political interests in perpetuating the oppression and nurturing every possible division.

Neighbor, God, and Family

• That each human soul individually is morally obligated to lift suffering and needy individuals as wisely and effectively as we can, no matter the origins of their suffering and need (which may include historic oppression and a host of multigenerational ills).
• That this is a personal duty, for which we answer ultimately to God, not to government, political party, or torch-wielding mob.
• That government, though inarguably necessary in its legitimate roles, is a poor substitute for God and for families, and is evil when it attempts to supplant them.

In the present as in the past, God and family are the two great rivals which the hard Left and other tyrannical movements and philosophies most hate and most consistently seek to corrupt, coopt, and destroy.

Loving and Healing Our Country

There is much to love, beginning with its people, about every country I have visited, from Saint Lucia to then-Soviet Russia. But these American principles give us even more to love about the United States of America. Small wonder that people have flocked here from around the globe, for generations, to make a better life.

In our time, strident voices shout that Americans who embrace the ideals and principles I’ve listed here are racists, among other nasty things. To the contrary, these convictions and pursuits make us Americans – philosophically, not just legally or geographically. They have united a vast and diverse people, despite disagreement about many things. They can unite us again — if we still want them to.

Finally, I believe:

• That we can use American principles to find American solutions to our problems, arrived at from a love of our own and others’ welfare and freedom, not a lust for power – as a humane alternative to Leftist solutions and other species of tyranny, violence, and folly.

When I say I love my country – which I do – and when I salute the flag or stand for the national anthem, I honor these ideals; the countless people of all races and religions who have sacrificed mightily to pursue them, however imperfectly; and the high American calling of preserving and advancing them.

When others kneel instead, which is their right (unless they’re on the job and their employer says otherwise), it’s these ideals and good people, living and dead, whom I feel they defy and dishonor. Is it wrong to wonder if these discontented souls had enough wise teachers who knew and could tell them who these people in history really were, what they really did and against what opposition, and why they did it, and why it matters? In any case, these things can still be learned by any who will labor to know them.

The worthiest American project is to keep building what past generations started and advanced for us at immeasurable cost, to live our ideals ever more broadly and deeply. We cannot claim that we are or ever were the perfect embodiment of any ideal, but we must not take what past generations built for us and burn it down, figuratively or literally, in the historically-recurring delusion of replacing messy reality with an impossible paradise.

A quick survey, let alone deep study, of history reveals that the zealous, power-crazed pursuit of that illusory paradise routinely becomes a bloodbath and tends to settle to a condition which looks a lot like slavery. This is no surprise, because, despite their seductive words about liberation and justice, the leaders of such movements typically seek to wield comprehensive power over entire nations, not to advance the freedom and welfare of all individuals.

I believe that most or all of the views and ideals I’ve listed here are still matters of majority agreement in the United States of America. I hear them from people of every economic level and every ethnic, racial, and religious background – including harried, hardworking people who are now beginning to realize that in AD 2020 merely voting is not speaking loudly enough as citizens, and that they should find their own ways to stand and speak for American principles while they still can, despite the angry mob which is now hell-bent on silencing anyone caught in the act.

I could be wrong about it being a majority. We’ll know soon.

What Shall We Do?

Meanwhile, many people I know have been asking, What are we to do?

We’ll speak more of this. For now, this weekend brings the most American of holidays, Independence Day. It’s the 244^th birthday of a great and good nation. I suggest we enjoy and celebrate that.

It wouldn’t hurt to find time to ponder and reaffirm these American principles in our hearts and minds. Those of us who believe in God will want to thank him – you don’t need me to say for what and whom – and to pray for his continued blessings and mercy on our troubled nation and world, and our troubled hearts and minds. We may want to ask him a more personal version of our common question: What am I to do?

Here are two readings which can help our pondering: the Declaration of Independence itself and President Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. To my mind the latter is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing in the English language. You might try reading it aloud, despite the insufficient punctuation by modern standards. It’s well less than half the length of this blog post.

Let’s put off to another day, as much as we’re able, the anger and despair which seem to be the overarching temptations of our time.

Have a happy, hopeful Independence Day.

Thanks for reading!

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