MEET AMERICA—YA GOTTA LOVE IT!

By Edwin Cooney

I know it’s a little intimidating to admit love. To admit love for America is pretty hard these days for people at all points along the political spectrum. Conservatives, who are most vocal about their love for America, love it best when its military might and its economic engine are both well fueled. Liberals or progressives love America best when its leadership focuses on improving the lot of workers and minorities.

We’ve become used to the idea that America is “a government of laws and not of men.” That statement as well as a far more famous one, “all men are created equal,” aren’t so much statements of fact as they are statements of the ideal.

One of the most constant threads running through our history is that government “of and by the people,” is exactly what it’s all about.

The question therefore is what “people” -- rich or poor, successful or not successful -- is government by and about?

It seems to me that the answer to that question is suggested by your reading and experience. If you read the types of history books I read growing up, you learned that America’s government was about noble founding fathers, hardy pioneers, the freeing of the slaves, citizen soldiers who were brave and patriotic, and — just when we needed them the most —- wise statesmen named Washington, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Reagan and…and…and—you fill in the names I left out.

Although I am familiar with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, I didn’t fully realize until lately that the Declaration of Independence is the more idealistic and hence speaks more to morality than the Constitution. Throughout his entire career, Abraham Lincoln emphasized the equality of all the people far more than he did the sacredness of the legalistically constructed Constitution.

The Declaration of Independence addresses the stress of a people oppressed and outraged by the tyrannical Great Britain of George the III’s day as it lists our grievances and enunciates our determination to be a free and independent people.

On the other hand, the 1787 version of the Constitution is a document that primarily provides the structure for free government. Except for the Preamble (which acknowledges the welfare of the people and the importance of the blessings of liberty to the lives of its founders and their posterity), the Constitution has little to say about humanitarianism or morality. In fact, it allowed the slave trade to continue through 1808 and referred to Indians and those in servitude as “three fifths” of a human being for purposes of representation in the popularly elected House of Representatives.

It’s hard not to conclude that the people who run America aren’t primarily people with money and position. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, back in the 1790s, used to argue whether bankers and merchants or planters and farmers ought to run America. This debate eventually became the real root of the Civil War. The agricultural South depended on low tariffs and slave labor for its economic wellbeing. The North’s economy was largely dependent on high protective tariffs and paid (as cheap as possible, if you please!) labor. War occurred when the South lost all belief that the North was sympathetic to its economic security.

In FDR’s day, government became more directly involved in the day-to-day lives of Americans as a large proportion of its people became convinced that those in charge of commerce and industry (whom FDR called “economic royalists”) were determined to make money at their expense.

Most of us, most of the time are comfortable in this land of plenty and promise. The things that we fear most, economic dislocation and the terror of war, are the psychological weapons politicians and talk show hosts tease us with these days to make themselves important.

Just like our siblings, our spouses, our friends and even our children, America often worries and even disgusts us.

As President Richard Nixon told CBS news reporter Robert Pierpoint when he was asked if he was angry with the press during an October 1973 press conference, “one can only be angry with someone that he respects.”

Politics in America! Ya gotta love it—-sometimes, that is!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY