On this, we agree: The Founding Fathers
As a general rule of thumb, when we find ourselves at a point of contentious disagreement (like on about everything nowadays), it’s time to back up a little, to zoom out.
Abandoning a narrow perspective, taking a wider one, we often find things we agree on, sometimes enthusiastically. There are times when we’re spinning in our own little mental circles, all the while just a few short measurements from others spinning in theirs, with much mutual agreement no one has bothered to unearth for all the darn spinning.
I think our Founding Fathers’ opus – our Constitution – is just such a wider view, a plumb line in this country. . . left, right, whatever. That’s part of why The Village Square will pay attention to those old dead guys with quill pens. In our time, we are charged with stretching to answer the questions raised in the conversation they started.
In part, our mutual reverence for the Constitution is a bit of a Rorschach test – we see in it what we want or expect to see. So perhaps our agreement is somewhat illusory, but isn’t that still a miracle? Isn’t that nearly the best we can hope for, where the consent of the governed keeps hanging on, 230 years after?
“A Republic, if you can keep it” in the words of Founding Father Franklin.
But beyond the Rorschach test-ness of it, part of the beauty of what they built is in the very tightrope they walked in the building. Their agreement was tenuous, as is ours, as it will likely always be. And yet, still today this unlikely mix of people moves forward together. Ugly and uncivil sometimes, yep. But still together.
Tightrope walking is pretty tense, but we’d better get back on it.
You will find considerable evidence in Washington's farewell address as Presidnet, of the great danger to our Republic by what he termed …"the spirit of party' By this term he meant the attitude that one's own faction or part was more important than the whole: or what came to the same thing, that one's own party's interest were the same as the interests of the whole. The "spirit of party" … "meant the commitment to fight for one's own interests and to overcome, or even destroy, rather than learn from the opposition". We would all be well advised to read Dr Jacob Needleman's book "The American Soul" His scholarly extensive research and illuminating analysis should be required reading for any person and/or group attenpting to bring a mediating force to the Amercian political system, as practiced today
Thanks, Ed. I will put this book on my personal reading list right away and I went ahead and started a new list of Village Square community recommended books here: http://tothevillagesquare.org/reading-room (page down to the bottom). It looked too good not to share.
PS – I've never heard that Washington quote. It's great, I'll write it down to use it! Thanks.