C‘Mon, Let’s Celebrate

American Sings after 250 years

“I hear America singing,” Walt Whitman famously wrote.

Recently, I listened to a crime novelist—people’s names escape me—use these identical words as he described his renewed faith in America’s unique experiment in self-government, one founded on Enlightenment-era principles of human equality and individual rights deriving not from any government or master, but from our Maker.

A polity where law—not a king—rules; justice is blind; governmental power is divided, not concentrated; and ultimate power rests in the people.

Four months ago, this crime writer admits to having been deeply depressed. He wanted to pull the covers over his head, throw in the towel, and hide.

He worries about current threats to American democracy, our 250 year old experiment in self-government: legal and illegal people alike handcuffed by masked men and removed from our country without due process; prestigious law firms and well-endowed universities caving into presidential blackmail; threats of violence against judges and elected office-holders, some of which sadly is being realized; and hundreds of executive orders that consolidate enormous power in the hands of one man, essentially undermining the Framers’ genius to divide power into three separate, co-equal branches of government and with some powers even reserved to other governments.

All of this handcuffing, ignoring due process, threatening, blackmailing, and issuing daily orders occurs with no push-back from those who control Congress, one of two branches designed to check executive power. The brave among that cowardly branch profess to feeling afraid.

Given these outsized civic crimes against our nation’s founding principles, this writer who studies crime has reason to be depressed.

The People Sing

Today, he says, “I hear America singing.”

That singing—folks speaking up, calling and writing their elected representatives, engaging in peaceful protests held in all 50 states—has restored his faith that the American people know the promise of this unique experiment in self-government, and are determined that no man shall render it asunder.

We the people, he thinks, will preserve this democracy. And the judicial branch will hold firm, even if Congress cowers. This, of course, was before the Supremes limited the federal judiciary’s check on the executive’s power grab.

America’s founding purpose is facing an existential threat. It’s a daunting task, our need to stay informed, continue to engage, and maintain faith in our civic creed.

Nonetheless, this unique American experiment in self-government remains our birthright. We happy few must keep the faith of our Fathers, and ensure that future generations inherit a national purpose worth believing in and making a sacrifice for.

We cannot pull the covers over our heads.

Deegan Sings

Sometimes we strain to hear America singing. And then . . .

In a display of uncommon local courage, Jacksonville’s very own democratically-elected mayor recently vetoed an exceptionally mean bill. City Council's anti-immigrant bill, as we recently explained, doubled-down on criminalizing the very existence of people who do honest work, and threatened nonprofit charitable organizations that serve them.

Mayor Donna Deegan stood up, lifted her voice, sang her own verse, and did what so many other leaders seem too afraid to do: she stood on principle.

In announcing her veto, Deegan explained the mean bill helps “no one,” is “not rooted in the common good,” “stokes fear and casts a shadow of suspicion over all immigrants,” and calls on city government to overstep its role into immigration law and policy, the sole domain of the federal government.

Rather than doing good, she declared, this bill does great harm—to small business, to nonprofits, and to people doing an honest days work, trying to make a living.

“In the end,” she said, “this veto,” upheld by eight city council members, “is a declaration of who we are and who we aspire to be.”

Her Honor believes we are a good and decent people, and adds her voice to millions of Americans singing.

Lift Your Voice and Sing

Lest we forget, Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration is as revolutionary today as the day he penned it:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident . . . all Men . . . created equal, . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, . . . among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, . . .

It’s impossible to sugar-coat this moment: our faith in the principles laid out by Jefferson and our nation’s founding generation is being tested.

Do we—or do we not—believe?

Our making common cause—our singing together—remains the pillar of our civic faith. Will we measure up, as our mayor has, or will we pull the covers over our heads?

We should never give in to forces determined to deny us our birthright, to undermine our faith in what is uniquely American—a belief in the God-given right of each and every one of us to be treated equally and fairly under the rule of law, not of kings.

Re-read the Declaration of Independence. Ask yourself what it means to be an American. A demographic—you know, a white Christian? a member of a political party? someone who lives in rural America? Or someone who believes deeply in the principles so eloquently penned by Jefferson?

It’s our birthday. It’s right that we celebrate. And in so doing, it is incumbent upon us to pledge anew that we the sovereign American people will fight for the principles Jefferson declared so long ago. Indeed, it falls to us to keep the spirit of the American Revolution alive.

Lift your voice and sing.

Loudly.