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Reviving the Spirit of American Democracy
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15848 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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1 / 1989 |
2,107 Words |
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Richard H. Ichord and Bob Wilson
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Our greatest presidents, from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson through Abraham Lincoln down to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, have understood that America is great not because she is rich and powerful but because she is just and honorable. In times of crisis, they have relied upon our moral values, not our material resources, to pull the nation through. In war or peace, expansion or depression, they have always brought out the best in us by appealing to the good in us. Now it is President-elect Bush's turn.
Does he truly understand what lies at the core of America's greatness? Will he be able to forge an effective coalition of Democrats and Republicans to solve the nation's pressing problems at home and abroad? Or are we fated to suffer through four years of divided government, of partisan squabbling about the direction of foreign policy and the size of domestic entitlements?
The Parties: A Noble Tradition
The Democrats and Republicans are two parties with truly great traditions. The Democratic Party is the party of Jefferson; the Republican Party is the party of Lincoln. Thus, the two parties represent two of America's most profound political leaders and thinkers. When we think of Lincoln and Jefferson, Americans do not think of contrasts but of continuity. Yet when we think of Democrats and Republicans today, we think of opposition.
Thus, the first thing the parties need to do is to remember that the principles they hold in common are much more important than what separates them. In a nutshell, these principles can be found in Jefferson's language in the Declaration of Independence and Lincoln's language in the Gettysburg Address. Jefferson's immortal words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights," are poignantly echoed in Lincoln's battlefield question as to whether "any nation so conceived [in liberty] and so dedicated [to the proposition that all men are created equal] can long endure." Lincoln, leading a nation torn by a bloody civil war, answered the question as Jefferson would have hoped he would: "These dead shall not have died in vain: that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
The language has resonated down through the years, first because it was noble in tone, and second because it was born of the struggle of great men to give expression to profound political thoughts at crucial historical junctures. Perhaps it is the age we live in, in which photo opportunities and verbal gaffes play such an important role in political campaigns, but language such as Lincoln's and Jefferson's seems remarkably absent from our political life today.
But it is not the level of our political rhetoric alone that must improve: so must the quality of our political philosophy. The Founding Fathers took their political philosophy seriously. They had to, because they were embarking on a course that no other people had traveled. But in the second half of the twentieth century we seem to have lost touch with the profundity of American revolutionary principles. In short, we need to devote ourselves once again to the principles of the Founding Fathers and determine to finish that
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