Two thoughts tugging at each other in my mind and heart today

The first is my deep, and I hope shared, commitment to democracy.  

“We are of different opinions at different hours but we always may be said to be at the heart on the side of truth.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson
 

As an approach to politics that allows us all to work to be the authors of our own stories together.  Democracy depends on more than a little transparency so we have at least some reliable information.  A democratic society must cultivate citizens and leaders skilled at engaging in open-minded exchanges with those who hold opposing views, and hold in the highest regard those who are humble and thoughtful needed to collaborate (honoring our opponents even when we disagree with them) to solve problems. 

The second and related idea is limited government.

 

The cartoon captures a challenge we face today on the question of limited government.  Not a new challenge and not a challenge where one side is right and the other side silly.  Our framers were deeply suspicious of centralize political authority, based on their experience as a colony of England.  The Articles of Confederation is the most striking illustration of just how suspicious they really were, but even they soon realized that a confederation would likely be too weak to protect property rights, pay back revolutionary war debts, or provide an adequate national defense (which, to be honest was less honorable at that time than my phrasing here suggests, since it meant an army adequate for exterminating Native Americans). 

So, our current (and second) constitution was a compromise on limited government.  It was a collaboration between those, like Jefferson, who passionately believed that energetic state governments would be the best mechanism for ensuring our collective prosperity as a national community and those, like Hamilton, who believed that a loose confederation of states will be too weak to survive and unprepared to prosper in the coming industrial era when (as we saw) we will need a strong centralized authority to work with the private sector to build railroads, a modern financial sector, roads and highways, public schools and courts, a shared system of weights and measures and an adequate national defense.

My point here is that we have always agreed that limited government is one of our core shared values and we have long disagreed about the nature of limited government.  That disagreement pushed us into a war among the states.  That disagreement animates many current political, economic and cultural conflicts.  Both (of the two major) positions have deep roots in American political thinking.  And this cartoon highlights for me the ways that both (of the two major) sides today confuse the conversation by suggesting the other sides is unAmerican, irrational, or both.

While I certainly have my own view on this complex question, I encourage us all to work as our framers did to ‘be the change’ and make real the democratic promise of collaboration to solve problems…collaboration with those who hold opposing views. 

The cartoon makes liberals laugh because it suggests, simplistically, that conservatives are only interested in preserving traditions or smaller government to perpetuate patriarchy and advance their own private interests.  But there are as many good and democratic reasons to remain suspicious of centralized political authority today as there were in 1781.  The cartoon also point out (once the ridicule in it is put aside) that conservatives suggest, simplistically, that liberal programs to regulate corporate misconduct or preserve our air and water are driven by a desire to reduce liberty in favor of equality, rather than work to preserve both.  But there are as many good and democratic reasons to remain worried that a weak central government will be unable to keep us safe as there were in 1781. 

By focusing on the other side being unAmerican or irrational, we make it a lot more difficult to see (or create) common ground upon which we might collaborate to solve problems.