By Edwin Cooney
At the outset, there are three factors we might keep in mind.
(1.) Every country's story ultimately is a history of crises. Foreign wars, domestic conflicts (religious and racial), economic woes, and political uncertainties are all inevitable.
(2.) I'm convinced that countries founded on principles, rather than on circumstances and conditions, generally maintain those basic principles although in modified form. I can't think of a single instance when a democracy became a dictatorship. (Note: England in 1509 when Henry VIII took the throne was vastly different than in 1953 when Elizabeth II was crowned, but England was still England.)
(3.) Most Communist states were originally monarchies as were Russia, China and the Slavic offshoots of the Hapsburg and Hohenzollern Empires. Cuba is the only possible exception to this trend and that was tied to the “cold war.” Communist societies generally come out of monarchal dictatorships rather than what too many believe are the result of failed socialist democracies.
Thus, whatever political and legal changes take place here will be more than likely to have a genuinely democratic flavor. Here's a thumbnail example of what I mean.
Despite its Republican Democratic form of government, America, without realizing it, was subject at birth to regional conflicts (North vs. South, Protestant vs. Catholic, rural vs. urban clashes, as well as institutional needs and demands vs. personal and moral expectations.) Had King George rather than President George Washington assumed office these conflicts would have affected our growth and development although measures for the solutions of these problems would have been different.
As for our 21st Century dilemmas, beyond the possibilities of Trump vs. Biden, of oligarchy vs. progressivism, countering social forces and legal demands are likely to keep our national leaders sufficiently off balance thus minimizing the ultimate destructive effects of either progressivism or oligarchy. Although we Americans will continue to do all of those things, good and bad, that past generations have done to one another, we hope that Abraham Lincoln’s characterization of “the better angels of our nature” will prevail over all of our political and social limitations. There are even signs that we're ready to tackle challenges such as climate change. I'm convinced that the electrification of gas-driven vehicles will clean the environment as corporations realize that there is money in electric, nuclear, and solar sources of energy. (Someday, former President Jimmy Carter will get the credit to which he is entitled for adopting solar energy at the White House in the late 1970s.)
Ultimately, there is some but not a lot of uniformity in the American body politic. Back in the early 1900s, progressives Theodore Roosevelt and Robert La Follette called for voter initiative, voter referendum, and voter recall to regulate corporate and generally anti-labor, pro business trends in American government and society. Today, initiative, referendum, and recall have become powerful tools even by conservatives to get a grip on liberal state governments. We older folks are less likely to be optimistic about the future than our children and grandchildren. After all, following sixty or eighty plus years of fears brought about by the Great Depression, the cold war, racial and political unrest, corrupt politicians and threatening foreign leaders, we've had enough conflict and we have a tendency to be tired of it all!
Even as our world becomes our children's world, there will remain elements of our best mores and methods of problem-solving which is a good thing because, even with the documentation of all our human failures, America has given more of what's good for people all over the world than has any other nation.
So long as we're conscientiously respectful of our past glories, what has meant the most to us will ultimately prevail to the benefit of all humankind!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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