Insurrectionists Storm the U.S. Capitol
January 6, 2021 (Credit: Prescott News)
Was the election of 2020 a rare instance of political anger and upheaval? Both candidates claimed they won critical states. Charges of voter fraud and faulty ballots were rampant. Threats of violence against voters and then efforts to get state officials to certify the electoral votes for a losing candidate were widespread. The final result was uncertain for weeks. Actually, that was the election of 1876, when Republican Rutherford B. Hayes eventually emerged the winner over Democrat Samuel Tilden. Yet, just eleven years after a murderous Civil War, the nation managed, fitfully, a peaceful transition of power. The union survived again. As Lincoln hoped at Gettysburg, our form of government did not “perish from the earth.”
Human Nature and Political Fights
American politics has always been divisive and intensely emotional for the simple reason that people have different values, needs, and opinions. As James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” wrote in 1787, “As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.” These differences will lead, he wrote, to forming “factions,” which today we call special interests. They’ contend with each other to gain power and government support. They’ align with political parties. They may also spread disinformation and encourage violent protests.
Yet there also have been many moments where reason has contained boisterous passions to maintain civility and solve problems. Thinking citizens, steeped in our values, history and the promise of our founding charters have rescued us many times. They even rescued us in 2020 when court cases applied the rule of law to uphold certified vote tallies and many officials at the state and federal level insisted, with fidelity to the Constitution, that their oath of office required they act in a nonpartisan way.
Let’s Talk
Is human nature basically selfish or caring? How does the answer impact government?
Passionate Politics at the Founding
The Constitutional Convention in 1787
(Credit: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)
The Constitutional Convention in 1787 is a great example of how productive things can happen despite contentious politics. Its only stated purpose was to amend the Articles of Confederation that guided what was then a very weak national government. The thirteen colonies that emerged victorious from the Revolutionary War were in 1787 sovereign states. The national government under the Articles had no separate executive, legislative and judicial branches, could not enforce efforts to collect money to run the country and required a unanimous vote of all thirteen states to make any changes. Seventy-three delegates were named to the Constitutional Convention, but only 55 ever showed up. Rhode Island refused to send anyone, fearing the convention would weaken the states. Virginia’s Patrick Henry (“Give me liberty or give me death.”) stayed home saying “I smelt a rat.” The delegates argued endlessly and often angrily. But they also were dedicated to building a better, more unified nation.
On September 17th, when it came time to sign the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin urged the delegates to put their differences aside, acknowledging they had created not a perfect form of government but a very good one:
“For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does.”
He urged unanimity. He didn’t get it. Three delegates left. The Constitution would ultimately be ratified after intense, bitter debate in state conventions. Those debates were often angry but also marked with brilliant oratory and logical argumentation. At the same time, the effort to inform and convince thinking citizens to lend their support, especially through the Federalist Papers mostly authored by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison and published in 1787-1788, produced perhaps the best explanation of our republican form of government ever written.
After states ratified the Constitution, national unity lasted about as long as it took to elect George Washington the first president. Washington’s two terms were far from civil. The 1794 Whiskey Rebellion of Western Pennsylvania farmers against a national excise tax on distilled spirits, infighting among members of his cabinet, and the much-reviled Jay Treaty with England showed that even Washington was not immune from nasty attacks. Political cartoons showed him being hung and toasts from even some of his own Virginians asked for his speedy death. Beleaguered, Washington wrote to Thomas Jefferson:
“I am accused of being the enemy of America, and subject to the influence of a foreign country … and every act of my administration is tortured, in such exaggerated and indecent terms, as could scarcely be applied to Nero, to a notorious defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket.”
John Jay Quipped He Could Travel at Night by the Light of Burning Effigies of Him
(Credit: New York Historical Society)
Washington knew that we’d always face the problem of balancing emotion with logic, of keeping wise thinking from being overtaken by dangerous passions. So in his 1796 Farewell Address, he offered advice to future generations. His chief concern: citizens would form factions vigorously if not violently opposed to each other, destroying the unity essential to maintain freedom. The “spirit of party,” he said “is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind”:
“It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection . . . A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.”
Fact Finder
What is on the Great Seal of the United States and why?
Did people listen to the Father of Our Country? You can guess the answer. By the election of 1800, political nastiness was in full swing as sitting president John Adams faced off against Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was accused of being an atheist. New England newspapers urged people to bury their Bibles in their wells lest Jefferson win and confiscate them. Jefferson won the electoral vote, but politics did not get more polite.
Let’s Talk
How are political parties a good thing? A bad thing?
Thinking Citizenship Makes a Difference
If politics in the 21st century politics looks a lot like it did in the 18th, that should be no surprise. Personal attacks, distortions of truth and other techniques come with the territory of human beings governing themselves. Disagreements on basic principles of what government should and should not do separated Americans at our founding and still do. Tensions persist: a strong national government or one that leaves most things to the states; how to balance freedom with equality; the need for taxes against the hatred of them; engagement in international affairs or isolation from foreign problems; the power of Congress vs. the power of the presidency; diversity vs. unity.
Yet, to quote the wording of the popular song from Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway play Follies, “We’re Still Here.” Washington’s Farewell Address is still here too; it’s read aloud every February in the Senate near his birthday as a reminder of his plea for reason and unity.
So, yes, American politics has always been passionate and often nasty – and, yes, we can survive it. Not all passions are dangerous. They may reflect core values and deeply held beliefs that a democratic society must acknowledge. Enduring, passionate arguments about government are healthy. They make sure all views are heard. Hard-fought and thoughtful debates about who we are and where we should be going is what free government should entail.
What we need is a proper balance among passion and reason. That’s what our founders achieved – and that’s what we should expect of each other. Logical, contentious reasoning created the Constitution amidst swirling passions about what a government for the United States should be. Such reasoning also gave us the Bill of Rights and 17 other amendments to expand freedom to more Americans. It guided us through recessions, depressions and World Wars. When historians were asked to rank the most significant achievements of the national government in the last half of the twentieth century, the top five all reflected passionate beliefs balanced with careful, logical reasoning over many years.
Historians Rank the U.S. Government’s Top Achievements from 1950-2000
Rebuilding Europe after World War II – the Marshall Plan
Expanding the right to vote
Promoting equal access to public accommodations for people with disabilities
Reducing disease
Reducing workplace discrimination
Fact Finder
Why did it take until 1920 to grant women the right to vote?
Our efforts to govern ourselves have certainly been marked by terrible lapses, including slavery, the subjugation of women and the decimation of Native Americans. Yet, thinking citizens have worked – and still do – to correct evils. Progress may be excruciatingly slow, but if you want speed, dictatorships can deliver that – at the price of freedom and justice. As Winston Churchill once put it with humor as well as insight, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else.”
Applying reason and containing dangerous passions in public affairs is not, of course, just a requirement for politicians. As citizens, it’s our job too. Thinking citizens can and should guide thinking politicians. We’re all responsible for the future of our democracy.
“In the end, as in the beginning, we are responsible to each other and for each other. It is that kind of island, this earth.” - James Carroll, Author and Theologian
Thinking citizenship is part of what the founders called “civic virtue.” While the qualities that make up civic virtue go beyond sound thinking, a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” cannot survive without it. In Question #2, we’ll explore what citizenship requires of us, how it has expanded during our history and the elements of civic virtue.