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If you examine the course of great nations and empires over time there is an obvious pattern of rise and fall. The Romans, The Greeks, The Mayans, Dynastic Egypt and China, The British Empire, all rose to dominance and then, for a variety of fiercely debated reasons, fell. No doubt the reasons for decline were multifaceted, but one assertion seems to maintain credibility in most, if not all, the cases: the government was insufficiently flexible to deal with evolving social, geological, and political changes. A military leader - like an Alexander the Great, or Kublai Khan - dies and there is no political process in place to provide for a transition of power. Or a ruling family is deposed through military or political means and what was once great is brought low.
There are those who assert that America stands on the brink of such a fall and there are disconcerting signs that point in that direction. Primary among those indications are a political system that seems paralyzed. The billionaire-backed radical right rants about an immigrant invasion that threatens to well-being of “real Americans,” while the hard core left, still seeking to be all things to all people, bemoans the aberrant autocratic behavior of the Trump dominated Executive and Judicial branches of government. Neither extreme is the disease, both are symptoms. The disease is that as a nation we have lost our way, stagnated, fractured our political will. Such observations do seem to give weight to the assertion that the time of America’s ascendancy is past and we will follow those other great nations of the past into decline and irrelevancy.
There is a significant difference. Unlike every other dominant culture that preceded us, America is a democracy. In previous dominant empires the power of the empire was seen as descending from God to the monarch, emperor, chief, whatever the title, of the supreme, often divine, ruler. That changed with the American Revolution. When exiting the Continental Congress of 1787 Benjamin Franklin was asked “What type of government have you given us?” His response “A republic, if you can keep it.” And the truth is that after 250 years the republic is still ours to keep or lose. And if we continue to support the extremists on both sides of the aisle who paralyze the government we will lose it.
The Declaration of Independence asserts that in a democracy government “derives its power from the consent of the governed.” That is us. We are the governed. Every elected official from school board to the county commissioner, to the mayor, to the White House derives their power from us - the governed. It is our most sacred duty to choose those upon whom we bestow power wisely. That wisdom has become increasingly questionable, for while we seek to blame the country’s ills on our political leaders the truth - to steal from the Bard - “the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” Somebody has to elect these people and - to steal again, this time from the comic strip Pogo - “we have met the enemy and he is us.” Or at least the enemy are the organizations that we often mistake for “us” - political parties.
It is interesting that about every political debate at every kitchen or dining room table often descends into accusations that “the democrats” want to do this or “the republicans” want to do that. It is true that one often finds greater comfort in one political party or the other, but it is foolish to assume that party membership in some way obligates us to support either an individual or a position advocated by a particular party. Objectively, there are no doubt sincere, patriotic, compassionate, thoughtful people in both parties. The problem in recent years has become prying those individuals free from the ideological purity demanded of the parties - a cohesion enforced by access to the billions of campaign finance dollars controlled by the national party bosses and the financiers who exert such power within those parties.
The nation would be best served by the abolishment of political parties, political action committees, and the electoral college. Despite the attractiveness of that daydream, I realize that that is not going to happen - certainly not within my lifetime. Rather, something that could happen within my lifetime is that we actually begin to consider the extent to which each candidate - again from the school board and the county commissioner to the White House - espouses opinions and programs that are consistent with our own beliefs and values.
And yes, you caught me, this post is really only the introduction to the four posts that will follow, each in their own good time, that will explore how each of the four tenets of Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm can be employed as a sort of political sieve to separate the gold from the dross as we consider the choices that will face us next year.
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