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Rev. Mark Skrabacz
July 4, 2010
A Government by the People – Reflections on the responsibilities of our freedom
About patriotism George McGovern said, “The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one’s country deep enough to call her to a higher plain.” Thomas Paine’s plea to move beyond the pale of a Sunshine Patriot in “The Crisis” is about as eloquent as it gets. He wrote: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
What do we do with our freedom? Many of us question the influence of our liberty at any cost on the world stage. Who here has concerns about our covert and overt operations in our attempts to bring freedom and democracy to countries in areas where we stand to lose our access to natural resources and political clout?
Recent polls declaring our population’s dissatisfaction and distrust of our government are very interesting. I wonder how you feel about our present government and situations that have come to the fore in the last 18 months. How about the 8 years before? Did anyone poll you to ascertain your level of satisfaction and trust? Are you in agreement with these current polls? This distrust in government seems a bit odd given the evidence of people’s disinterest in and lack of knowledge about our system of government. A succession of opinion polls have revealed that a majority of Americans are unable to name a single branch of government – not legislative, not judicial, not executive. Nor can a majority describe the Bill of Rights, which helps explain why the Patriot Act was so easily swallowed by most Americans. More than two-thirds do not know the substance of that landmark Supreme Court case, Roe v. Wade – perhaps the most polarizing judicial decision of the last 40 years. Nearly half of all adult Americans do not know that states have two senators, and three quarters do not know the length of a senate term. More than 50 percent of Americans cannot name their representatives; 40 percent cannot name either of their senators.
American educator and author Mortimer Adler, wrote that citizenship is the highest office in our government. All other offices – president for instance, or chief justice of the Supreme Court – are the instruments by which we, the people, govern ourselves. The government of the United States resides in us, “we, the people.” What resides in Washington D.C. is merely the administration of the government. We recognize this fact when, after a presidential election, we say that we have changed one administration for another. When the administration changes, the government does not change. That’s because the principle rulers of our nation, the citizens, are the permanent rulers, whereas the administration of the government is only temporary.
This is the meaning of our freedom. That “we, the people” have become our own rulers, the power behind the administration of our government. I remember traveling in Europe in Autumn of 2004 at the time leading up to the Presidential election. My European friends continually questioned me as to why I and we Americans were keeping the federal administration in power. In answer to their queries as to how this could be, I could only retort with examples of our two party system gone awry and how politics and lobbying and money had their influences far beyond the pale of the single citizen and his or her one vote. I felt the frustration that perhaps some of you did, especially when November 2 rolled around and the administration was given another 4 years. That motivated me to work during the next few years, attending my precinct caucus in 2008 and personally contributing money and time to elect someone I felt more connected to and whose policies more closely reflected my own.
Regardless of our political preferences, it is sometimes difficult to remember that in our system of government the president is not a dictator, but actually works for the citizens and is limited by the Constitution. Today we must be reminded that we, the people are the ruling class! “Citizen” is the highest office under the U.S. Constitution. All other offices are secondary. Perhaps some of our citizenry are asleep at the wheel when it comes to accountability for what “our government” is doing.
This brings to mind the slogan, “My country right or wrong!” Remember seeing it on bumper stickers and hearing it shouted in the early 70s? This simple phrase was used to polarize a generation during the Vietnam Conflict. History reveals that it was probably first stated as a toast by Commodore Stephen Decatur, Jr., who was an American naval officer notable for his heroism in the Barbary Wars and in the War of 1812. He was the youngest man to reach the rank of captain in the history of the United States Navy, and the first American celebrated as a national military hero who had not played a role in the American Revolution. Decatur said, “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right, but right or wrong, our country!” There’s another saying from Carl Schurz, who was a Union Army general and later served as U.S. Senator from Missouri, and then as Secretary of the Interior. Schurz said, “My country right or wrong: When right to be kept right. When wrong, to be put right!”
As citizen-patriots we love our country, and when the administration is leading the country in the wrong direction, we need the humility to admit it, and the courage to put it right again! As citizens we have the duty to do so.
Citizens come in all shapes and sizes, colors and preferences. One complains that our government officials are proceeding along the worst course of action, flies a flag on all national holidays and sports a “Support Our Troops” ribbon on his car. Another donates to her political party, never passes up an opportunity to vote and sports a “Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism” bumper sticker on her car. The relative patriotism of either is pretty much dependent upon your sympathy with their points of view. They have equal claims to patriotismÉ up to a point.
If we hope to gain more out of being an American than patriotic fervor, and seek to be more active Unitarian Universalists, than we must step outside of the “club mentality” and engage in an endeavor Emmanuel Kant emphasized with his students two and a half centuries ago. It was absolutely integral to the development of his philosophical views. Kant said, “Think for yourselves!” “Have the courage to make use of your own understanding.” This speaks to our motivation, that quality which most of us have little ability to understand in others, much less in ourselves.
Let’s look at our two patriots again. Many of us might assume the first gentleman is the worst sort of patriot. But let’s assume he questions the course of action of our government officials because he has been following developments closely from a variety of sources, reading up on specific history and spent a great deal of time agonizing over what the right course of action is, and only after such reflection, he complains.
The second patriot supports her chosen political party and always votes along party lines because that’s the way she’s always done things. It doesn’t matter who is on the ballot so long as she checks off the right box concerning party affiliation. Voting to her is a privilege without any correlating responsibilities.
I don’t want to judge others without some understanding of their motivation. I want to look more deeply and ask what makes them tick.
Beloved community, we may celebrate our freedom today, but there is much to do to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. For example, we still have not achieved justice for the First Nations of our land. And we are in the midst of a passionate, yet unofficial, Immigration debate about people who are sometimes referred to as “undocumented workers,” and by others as “illegal aliens.”
And we face another threat – the power of corporations that have all of the rights of “citizens” but apparently none of the limitations. With massive wealth, they are able to purchase “free speech” through the media to such an extent that they have far more power to influence the outcome of elections than real citizens have. Now the Supreme Court, with newly appointed members, has decided that purchased speech is “free speech” and cannot be limited.
The promises of the Declaration of Independence – that all men are created equal, and possess certain inalienable rights – are difficult promises to fulfill. Yet this is the promise of our America. Our government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. We have, simply because we are human beings, the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As citizens, we are the rulers of our nation. We believe today that these promises are not just for white male property owners, as they were at the time of the early American republic. These are promises for all women and men. It is our hope that in time such rights will be seen as the natural rights of all people the world over. In the meantime, we still have work to do to fulfill these promises right here in our own land.
One last thought. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote that “the laws of nature and nature’s God” entitled people to these inalienable rights. Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Franklin, Adams all believed in God. The folks on the Religious Right are correct when they remind us of this fact. At the same time, they were not fundamentalist or even orthodox Christians. They were all deists, dissenters, or religious liberals of one sort or another, by the standards of most Americans of their time. A few, like Patrick Henry, were fairly orthodox; a few, like Thomas Paine, were so radical as to be anti-Christian. Jefferson, a deist, declared himself to be a Unitarian. John Adams was a member of a church that became Unitarian during his lifetime, and he is buried in that church, the First Parish Unitarian Universalist in Quincy, Massachusetts – as is his wife, First Lady Abigail Adams, and his son, President John Quincy Adams, and his wife, First Lady Louisa Catherine Adams. Two presidents and two first ladies all buried in a Unitarian Universalist Church – and no other church in the United States can say that. Likewise, Washington, Franklin and Madison also held deist views. They believed in God. But they often preferred terms like “providence,” or the term Jefferson used in the Declaration, “the laws of nature and nature’s God.” That is not a biblical phrase; it is a deist phrase.
Yet the Founders were not as secular as some on the left like to think, and they were not as orthodox as some on the right like to think. As a group its fair to say that they did believe that “the laws of nature and nature’s God” had endowed us with inalienable rights. They thought religious faith was important, that it gave us morals and ethics, and that these things were necessary for good government.
But they did not want a test of faith to be required to hold political office. The Constitution makes this clear. They did not want a national religion – the Bill of Rights makes that clear. And, as the Treaty of Tripoli clearly states – it was negotiated during the Washington administration, signed by President John Adams, and ratified without controversy by the Senate in 1797 – they did not intend the United States to be a Christian nation. Rather, they wanted our nation to be a land of religious liberty and tolerance.
And while they mentioned “the laws of nature and nature’s God” and the “Creator” in the Declaration of Independence, they left God out of the Constitution.
In one of the last letters of his life, Jefferson wrote of America’s hard-won freedom from kings who used church and state together to reign over others, acting as if only monarchs could draw strength from God. On June 24, 1826, 10 days before his death, he wrote, “All eyes are open, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”
For the Founding Fathers, God’s grace was universal, not limited to royal blood. We owe a great debt to our Founders. They were not gods. They were not perfect. They believed in liberty, but many kept slaves. They believed in virtue, but most lived very complex private lives. All believed in the general idea of religion as a force for stability, but most had unconventional faiths.
George Washington refused to kneel to pray, and was not known to take communion – in fact, when a clergyman admonished Washington for not taking communion, Washington responded by ceasing to attend church. Still, he explained the American victory in the Revolution as “the hand of Providence,” going on at great length about how God had defeated the British Empire.
These complex and self-contradictory people laid the groundwork for much good. We hold these truths to be self evident! We have many promises to live up to. May we have the wisdom to fulfill the promise of the Founders, to achieve the blessings of liberty, justice and peace; and may we have the strength to pass on these blessings to future generations.
Being an American can help us live our UU principles and being UU can help us achieve what James Bryce expresses so beautifully. “Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity. Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.”
