For a long time now –since the Nixon administration,
essentially, though there were traces before then –the American right has
heralded itself as the only true patriotic philosophy. Liberals, they have been
saying for half-a-century or more, are not only insufficiently patriotic but
they literally hate America, and are traitors. I see that view presented in
countless conservative editorials and I’m sure you’ve noticed it, too. This
goes back to our earlier discussion about the differences between conservatives
and liberals: conservatives want to keep things the same (or change them to how
they used to be), while liberals/progressives want to see things improved. To
many conservatives, the very suggestion that America could be improved is
unpatriotic –love America as it is, they say, or leave it. Liberals, however,
tend to subscribe to a vision of America –not as it is, or as it ever was –but
as it was meant to be, as it always should have been. They are engaged in an
effort to fully reflect the principles on which the country was founded, but
which have been imperfectly carried out. As Bobby Kennedy famously said, “Some
men look at the world as it is and ask why; I dream of things that never were
and ask why not.”
In order to work toward an America as it was envisioned
to be, it is necessary to understand accurately just what that vision was. In
my opinion, two of the people who have summed it up best were Thomas Paine and
Abraham Lincoln.
Thomas Paine was different from the other “founding
fathers” in many ways. He never became a powerful political leader in the U.S.
He did not come from a privileged background like the plantation owners,
merchants, and successful lawyers who made up most of that group. In fact, when
the American Revolution started he was only a recent emigrant to the colonies
from his native England. He was working as a journal editor after a string of
failed businesses.
In 1776 Paine published his famous pamphlet “Common
Sense”, in which he outlined his arguments as to why America should declare
independence from Great Britain, and what the new government should look like.
Among other things, he said that a monarchy is a terrible way to run a
government, that a government across the ocean would never look after, or even
understand, the needs of distant colonies, and that as long as America was part
of Great Britain we would continually be getting caught up in wars that are
none of our business. All those things, as the title implied, are just common
sense.
But Thomas Paine went further than that. In fact, he
went further than any of the other Patriot leaders had gone up to that point.
Instead of complaining about oppressive tax laws or making legalistic arguments
about citizenship rights, he painted a utopian picture of what civic
republicanism should be. And he took it beyond the borders of the thirteen
colonies.
“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause
of all mankind,” he wrote. “O ye
that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant,
stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom
hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled
her—Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to
depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for
mankind.”
This, then, was to be the
mission of America. To be a beacon of freedom. All around the world, people
oppressed by tyranny could look across the ocean to America and see a
democratic republic in action. Everywhere else, Paine wrote, the King is the
law –but in America, the Law is the king. The oppressed can be inspired and
endeavor to throw off their own chains –and if their efforts do not work, he
was saying, they can come to America –an asylum for mankind – and join with us in
our own great experiment. And an experiment it was, to prove once and for all
that such a form of government could and would work.
Paine’s words inspired
the American public in 1776 in a way that previous –more tedious –writings by
patriot leaders had not. Paine’s vision gave them not only something to fight
for, but something to live for, something to die for, that was worth the living
and dying. It lit a spark, without which that generation might not have had the
ability to persevere in their great struggle.
Flash forward fourscore
and seven years –to 1863. July of 1863, to be specific, and the Battle of
Gettysburg –which most historians believe to have been the turning point of the
Civil War. You all know about the speech President Lincoln gave on that
battlefield, and can probably quote the first line or two from it. But unless
you are familiar with the arguments of Thomas Paine in 1776, you’ve never
gotten the full import of that brief speech.
"Fourscore and seven
years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived
in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men 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. ..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… that from these honored dead we
take increased devotion to that cause for which they here 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."
Shall not have died in vain. This is why Abraham
Lincoln, and millions of other Unionists (including one-third of white Tennesseans),
could not let the Republic be fractured into two parts, which could then lead
to being fractured into smaller parts still. If that happened, the experiment
set forth by Thomas Paine and his peers would have failed. The whole world
would see that a democratic republic could not endure longer than a couple of
generations. Abraham Lincoln believed in Thomas Paine’s vision, and –like Paine
–wanted to see it extend to as many people as possible.
I believe in that vision, too, with all my heart. When
I talk about Paine and Lincoln, I get misty-eyed every time because I believe
in it so much.
And I am a liberal.
I do not believe that vision was perfected in 1776, or
in 1787 with the Constitutional Convention. For one thing, there was still
slavery, Native Americans were being slaughtered and cheated, women couldn’t
vote, and even poor white men couldn’t vote yet.
Nor do I believe it is perfected in 2021. Not because
I hate America –but because I love it.
To quote Paine one more time: "We have it in our power to begin the world again."
--Troy D.
Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at
Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
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