A Crisis of the Republic
Let me begin with a man who had it
right.
Four score and
seven years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation,
conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all man are created
equal.
Now we are engaged
in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived
and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that
war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is
altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not
dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground.
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far
above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long
remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for
us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they
who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here
dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored
dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full
measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that 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
bad thing about memorization is that, as a kid, it drained this of all meaning,
just as a ask to get the blocks all in a row--but the good thing is that, when
it finally comes to think about it, it's right there.
But listen to what he gets right:
Conceived in
liberty and
dedicated to the
proposition. Abraham Lincoln is not describing a
people, a race, or even a state as other nations thought of it. G.K. Chesterton
later observed that America is the only nation based on an idea, but that's only
halfway there. Lincoln's phrase, dedicated to the proposition, meant not only
that idealism was used in drawing up the floor plans--he was saying something
else.
America, according to Lincoln,is not a
place, it is not a people, it is not an organizational structure. America is
nothing static, and nothing
mechanical.
America is an
attempt.
He was constrained as well as
elevated here, because he could see that America had horrible running sores as
far as freedom went--and at that point The United States of America was not much
of a shining example of
anything.
Still, there's no better
expression of the nature of America. It was not a folk--it was trembling at the
prospect, north and south, of making dark strange African slaves part of the
family; it was not a plan of government--all of the grotesque compromises had
burst their boils and blood was running deep on the ground. It's not even an
idea--no, what America had, even in that thousand-mile slaugherhouse, what 'all
men are created equal' was to America, was a
goal.
And now we are engaged in a great
civil war, testing whether this nation, or any nation so conceived, can endure.
The crisis is not to actually, finally put 'all men are created equal' into our
framework of government, and it doesn't have hundreds of thousands of men
murdering each other in great armies across our lawns and parkways. But this
nation, this attempt, is at risk.
I'm
saying this not quite in the same way that the more vehement progressive voices
are saying. Where I differ from them is not in what is happening--it's as bad as
they say it is--but rather why and what's at stake. It's tempting to have them
go "Aaaach! Nassty bright light hurtss our eyes, yess it does.preciouss!" and
have them set out to destroy everything that decent in America. Makes a ripping
yarn.
But why, when you think about it,
would the plutocrats of America ally themselves with religious fanatics? Why
would large corporations and their remoras set about to ruin the middle
class--the basis for their prosperity? And why this full-bore, half-blind,
stumbling bellowing rush to seize the
reins?
The hinge of fate, here, was the
fall of the Soviet Union. For all our prosperity, for all our great futuristic
advances, for all our unbelievable might, we were bound by this great dark
presence. It was as big as us, it was as strong as us, as smart as us, and we
were grappling with them with all our might for a very long
time.
None of this was any fun: it
constrained what one could do and what one could refrain from doing, and living
on the edge of nuclear death forced on one the necessity to act, well, adult,
even when one didn't want to be.
But
then it all changed. Mikhail Gorbachev opened up the gates to the Emerald
Palace, turned off the flashpots and the smoke machines and the back-projection
of the big round face--the gas bill alone was bankrupting them!--and made his
genial way in his faded L. Frank Baum frock coat into the magnificent balloon
that he didn't know how to pilot.
And history
ended.
It's what Francis Fukuyama said,
and even he was being sardonic--but I think, though a conservative, he was far
too scrupulous to credit what was
arising.
Upon due consideration, i
really don't think that the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Newt
Gingrich were coincidental. I think that the coarsening of the discourse, the
savagery of the aggression, and the disregard for even the appearance of
moderation was a direct result of 'the end of
history.'
Plain and simple, what was at
stake now was now, as it wasn't before, ruling the
world.
"The only superpower left in the
world."
"Again, the devil taketh him up
into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world,
and the glory of them;"
This is what
was suddenly at stake, and it was more than the White House, more than luscious
defense contracts for their buddies--this was it. The brass ring. The
One.
Now I admit that I'm drawn to
dramatic pictures, but I don't think I'm wrong here. Because things did become
different after Gorbachev went into the blue and the Newt raised his slimy head.
The Contract on Bill Clinton and the astounding falling into line of the 'even
the liberal media' in its support was not something we'd seen before. The
ferocity with which they tried to drive Clinton from office, and the savaging of
Al Gore in the 2000 election by the mainstream media are without precedent. Bob
Somerby (to whom all honor) is convinced that the decadence of the Beltway Press
Corps and their class-based dislike for Gore is sufficient explanation, and he
may be right. Frankly, We don't know one way or the other. But I'm beginning to
think that all this firehose and pit bull technique since history ended is due
to the fact that the stakes for the control of the United States Government hst
gone up immensely--and that a great many of those greedy and ambitious people
could feel the ring on their finger. World Rule. Pax Americana. And when that is
in view, does reasonableness matter?, does truth matter?
"All
these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship
me."
Now I may be wrong about ascribing
motivations to a large number of people.I may be over-dramatizing. But there's
one thing I see clearly out of all of this, and that we are going through a
crisis of the Republic if not as huge, than as significant as the Civil
War.
We have gone through a lot of them.
Our great attempt faced the challenges of whether we'd get going at all; whether
we'd throw off our bad bargain and actually become true to our ideals; whether
we could expand into a powerful industrialized nation; whether we could function
in the world as a Great Power.
Some of
these we succeeded in, some of these we won through at a terrible price, and
some we failed in ugly fashion.
Now
America is facing the crisis of whether we can function as the preeminent
country in the world.
And the answer so
far is, no.
It looked good there for a
while: indeed most of the structures and mechanisms were there to make a go of
it (built upon the bitter lessons of Europe's miserable failure). But it turned
out we could not stop the power we held so carefully to be snatched by those who
hated all restrictions on American power, foreign and domestic, and with
dazzling speed and on flimsy pretext set out on a war of conquest to control
Middle East OIl and start the American Super-powered Empire. And they started
swaggering around like the Lords of
Creation.
And of course the American
Empire lasted about three weeks and began to fall apart. That, though in the
eyes of history and anent the challenge the Republic faces, is scarcely the
point. The fact is we let the power of America slide into the hands of people
who dismantled the checks and balances, spat on the multilateral structures the
modern world was defining itself by, and set out on a course of invasion and
conquest. And, even if it was because they also gained enough control of the
electoral process, we re-elected
them.
Now perhaps we should not be so
devastated at this failure: Rome failed, and in an analogous way: a dignified
Republic, in the face of great power, collapses into a corrupt empire, decadent
practically from its birthing. Imperialist Europe lasted less than one man's
long lifetime. And others died with their monstrous
progenitors.
But we still failed in our
project, and we failed ugly. We didn't fail like broken Woodrow Wilson and his
sad League of Nations--we're failing like Mussolini hung feet first from a
lamppost.
Unlike the crisis that was
Abraham Lincoln's to wrestle with, it's not the hideous internal contradiction
that imperils our project, but we're still imperiled as to whether this nation,
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. (Three men's long
lifetimes: it's not a lot.)
There's a
large number of us who were never fooled by this, and who saw it for what it
was. But that, also, is not the point. And an awful lot of us have been working
to throw the rascals out. And we may be learning to be as protective of our
information structures as of our power
structures.
All of that's good. But if
there's one thing that could make us lose this challenge, it'll be the idea that
the Bush crew were this unbelievable bunch of fuckups, and that 9/11 just made
us go a little bit crazy. Whew! What a
nightmare.
Because ultimately I think our
responses to this crisis are two: 1) We will learn that the only way we can
retain pre-eminent power is by not using it, and that the world is better off
not being ruled; or 2)We will make the same mistake again and again until we
lose the power altogether.)
Me. I'm
hoping (and working falteringly) for a new birth of freedom, because, after all
is said and done, it would bee a shame to see a great project working for a
government of the people, by the people and for the people perish from the
earth.
Posted: Saturday - October 27, 2007 at 02:59 AM