~a column by Colleen O’Brien
In the 1980s, one of President Reagan’s speech writers had him say, “Government is not a solution to our problems, government is the problem.”
The rhetoric from that statement has ballooned over the past 35 years. The non-partisan, non-profit Pew Research Center poll figures say that in late 1950s and early 1960s 75 percent of the American people trusted the government. Now, Pew’s poll numbers say that trust in the government ranges from 3 percent to 15 percent.
We cannot operate without a government. At its best in a democracy, government does the people’s bidding rather than bowing to corporate or political persuasion. It is a constant battle to keep oligarchs and partisans out of government, but in a country with a population of 331,161,077, we need someone to herd us. If for nothing else, for roads and air traffic control and regulation of banks and big business.
The problem with dissing the government is that eventually everybody’s on the bandwagon of dis-respecting everybody from dogcatcher to president. The result of all this disrespect is a populace that can’t trust anyone to lead; it becomes a citizenry at war with one another over the wearing of a face mask.
Not a good place for us to be during a worldwide virus invasion.
An elected representative who had a lot to say about respect died on July 17. Congressman John Lewis, 33 years in the House of Representatives, respected all souls, all humans as he worked for equality across the board. He sent a letter to the editor of the New York Times that was published the day of his funeral, July 30, 2020. In it, Lewis said, “Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build…a nation…at peace.”
“An act” meant to John Lewis that it is the people who protect and promote a democracy by any means non-violent. A democracy is a living thing, preserved only by the diligence and goodwill of the people who have the will and the guts to save it.
In constantly tearing down the idea of our democracy, we dis-miss our critical role in keeping it alive. Who’s going to respect and work for a democracy that many, possibly including oneself, are tearing down, speech by speech, law by law, court decision by court decision – word by word – all that holds a democracy together?
Words are powerful. Once an idea is formed into words, we humans will act on them. The words we need to hang onto remain those that Lewis hung onto, the words of hope in the heart of the Declaration of Independence: “…all men are created equal…with certain unalienable rights…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness….”
We understand these words and have revered them for centuries. And to want them for all of us is what he worked all his life for. He died asking us to carry on this work in order to keep this democracy intact.
To work for the country is to work for the people, which means living up to the wordsthat make this country so great. Ours is the first constitution in the world that mentioned the possibility of “happiness” for the people. Our job is to do everything we can to promote the meaning and ideal of that word.
Government is not the problem; people are the problem, people governing us without respect – for us or the Constitution that protects us if we protect it. Our government, by its written words, is a government of, by and for us. It is not government for itself, or to make money, or to give favors to rich friends or to act as if one is above the law because of merely being in the government.
People who complain about the government are the problem. Let them complain about the people who run it into the ground, not about the institution itself. People who heed the noble words in the Constitution, in the Preamble, in the Declaration of Independence, like John Lewis did all of his life, are the people who will keep the government righteous, honest and moving us with hope toward the self-evident statement that all men are created equally.
If there is ill-governing, our job as “the people” is to elect the kind who actually understand the principle of government deriving its power by the consent of us.
Revolutionary?
Maybe at one time it was. But the idea’s been around awhile, and it’s the only one that’s fair. We can keep it if we vote, as Lewis said a million times. The only way to keep a democracy honest is to make sure all the people, all of us, get to vote.
