NEEDED FOR DEMOCRACY TO SUCCEED: RESPECT FOR A DIVERSITY OF VIEWPOINTS
By.
ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
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Our
partisan political divisions are getting out of hand and threaten the
future of our Constitutional system and of democracy itself.
In
the recently concluded 2024 presidential campaign, one party’s
candidate called his opponent a “Marxist.” The other candidate called
her opponent a “Fascist.” I don’t remember Democratic and Republican
opponents using language like this about their opponents in the past.
Quite
to the contrary, I remember Republicans and Democrats working together
to end segregation, advance civil rights, and win the Cold War. Working
together, they established NATO which, until Moscow’s invasion of
Ukraine, maintained peace in Europe since the end of World War 11. I
remember the close friendship between Republican President Ronald Reagan
and Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill.
It
is time to remember the uniqueness of the American society. From its
earliest days, ours has been a country made up of men and women of every
conceivable background and a wide variety of political points of view.
Of colonial America, asked Thomas Paine, “Is there a country in the
world where concord, according to common calculation, would be least
experienced?” His response: “It is America, made up, as it is, of
people from different nations, accustomed to different forms and habits
of government, speaking different languages, and more different in their
modes of worship. It would appear that the Union of such a people was
impracticable. But by the simple operation of constructing government
on the principles of society and the rights of man, every difficulty
retires and the parts are brought into cordial unison.”
Oliver
Wendell Holmes pointed out that, “We are the Romans of the modern
world—-the great assimilating people.” America, F. Scott Fitzgerald
pointed out, was not simply just another country: “France was a land.
England was a people, but America, having about it still the quality of
the idea, was harder to utter—-it was the graves of Shiloh, and the
tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying
in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies
withered. It was a willingness of the heart.”
In
recent days, some have said that diversity is an American “weakness,”
not a strength. Any who hold this view simply do not understand our
history. Diversity is not a novel 21st century notion. It is the
reality of our society from its earliest days——long before we became an
independent nation. Visiting New Amsterdam in 1643, French Jesuit
missionary Isaac Jogues was surprised to discover that eighteen
languages were being spoken in this town of 8,000 people. j. Hector St.
John Crevecoeur wrote in 1782 in his Letter From An American Farmer,
that, “Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of
men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the
world.”
There was never a
time when the American society was not diverse. By the time of the
first census in 1790, people of English origin were already a minority.
Enslaved Africans and their American-born descendants made up 20 per
cent of the population. There were large clusters of Scotch-Irish,
German, Dutch and Scottish settlers, and smaller numbers of Swedes,
Finns, Huguenots and Sephardic Jews.
America,
many today do not understand, has been a nation much loved. Germans
have loved Germany, Frenchmen have loved France, Swedes have loved
Sweden. This, of course, is only natural. But America has been loved
not only by native Americans, but by men and women throughout the world
who have yearned for freedom. In the 1840s, Herman Melville wrote that,
“We are the heirs of all time and with all nations we divide our
inheritance. If you kill an American, you shed the blood of the whole
world.” America dreamed a bigger dream than any nation in history.
The dream remains alive, despite the efforts of those—-on both the right
and left—-who would diminish it. Hopefully, it will survive even the
tortured partisanship of the present time.
The
American tradition, long held dear by both liberals and conservatives,
is the one set forth by George Washington in his now famous letter to
the Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island in 1790: “The Citizens
of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for
having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a
policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and
immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that tolerance is spoken
of as if it were by the indulgence of one class of people that another
enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national rights. For happily the
Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to
persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its
protection should demean themselves as good citizens, giving it on all
occasions their effectual support.”
From
the beginning, America has represented hope for a better future to
people throughout the world. In a letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson in
1849, Thomas Carlyle wrote: “How beautiful to think of lean tough
Yankee settlers, tough as gutta-percha, with most occult unsubduable
fire in their belly, steering over the Western mountains to annihilate
the jungle, and bring bacon and corn out of it for the Posterity of
Adam. There is no Myth of Athene or Heracles to equal this fact.”
In
1866, Lord Acton, the British Liberal Party leader, said that, “America
was becoming the distant magnet. Apart from the millions who have
crossed the ocean, who should reckon the millions whose hearts and hopes
are in the United States, to whom the rising sun is in the West.”
We
are a young country, but we are also an old one. Our Constitution,
soon to commemorate its 250th anniversary, is the oldest in the world.
We have continuously maintained the freedoms to which we first paid
homage. There has been no period of an elimination of freedom of
religion, or of the press, or of assembly. We have weathered wars and
depressions. We will also, let us hope, weather the difficulties in
which we are now embroiled. Democracy cannot thrive if men and women
who disagree about public policy are unwilling to work together and
insist upon labeling those whom they disagree “enemies of the people,”
or worse. What happened to our view of the “loyal opposition?”
We
will move forward only if we fully understand the fragility of a free
and democratic society. It can be broken if its uniqueness is not
recognized and cherished.
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