Blessed or cursed, I’ve never been strongly pulled by the call of crowds. Oh, some. Absolutely. But, not so much as most around me. Never felt any real need to cheer a baseball team. I’ve played at it when we lived in Boston. And I kind of want to for the home town team here in LA, particularly as in an earlier incarnation it was my father’s team. But, beyond thinking it would be nice, I’ve not gone much farther.
I have stronger feelings for the actual gatherings of people. I feel an affection for California, and, actually for most of the places I’ve lived. And that’s not just the dirt, but the cultures, the people.
And I feel a deep mix of emotions around the Republic. I’ll return to that.
But my strongest feelings arise in two directions. My immediates, those who band together in my spiritual communities, and family. I also have a deep investment in the human family and right after that for the whole shimmering thing that is our interdependent and interpenetrating web of life.
However there is the intermediate. It, also, is a many splendored thing. But, mostly it manifests as country. It is a dangerous thing, and it can be a healing thing.
Me, I’ve got a long history of criticism of the nation state. And, only the rise of the multinational corporation has cautioned my full throated condemnation of the state and its excesses. The multinationals are very scary. At least in theory countries are not first and foremost about profit. (Not, anyway, if we ignore the siren call of Ayn Rand and her ilk)
There is something in country that pulls at human hearts. It becomes the embodiment of cultures. It is the expression of one’s family beyond the biological. And it is dangerous. No doubt terribly dangerous.
I see that I am not immune. Perhaps just a little attenuation, that manifests in my profound disinterest in sport teams. But, it’s still there. And I see the deep danger. Tribalism is probably the worst of the sins that love of country can fall into. Me and mine. And the devil take the others. Seen a lot of that in recent years. On occasion felt a little of it, too. And it isn’t pretty.
But, there is more to it than that. Or, can be. There is something that deserves the emotion, the deep feelings. The American republic is an experiment. And one that hasn’t quite played out yet. On the one hand it was a shaking off of monarchy. I find that a wonderful thing. And it has been an attempt at broadening the franchise, approaching a full on democracy. With cautions, like a Constitution and a bill of rights (yes, a flawed document – both constitution and bill of rights along with the other amendments), but one that cannot easily be shifted by the passions of a moment. A brilliant move, it provides protections from a tyranny of a momentary majority.
But, it carried from its inception three terrible sins: Our people started with a horrific genocide. Then we founded much of our first fortune on race based chattel slavery. And, throughout we began firmly set as a sexist patriarchy.
One can, and I would argue that these sins, as terrible as they are, are not all we are about. And, we have at varying times and with varying degrees of success faced into all these sins. But they still live demons nestled at our feet. They do not go away.
There was from the beginning a fierce vigor to the project that is this experiment. We celebrated the individual as few other cultures ever before did. And, we thought deeply into the matter of the commonwealth, and what that wondrous term could mean. We’ve been a bit better at the former, and less successful at the later. But both have been important. And they both continue to drive us forward.
In practice our existence as a country has been a struggle between the demons that birthed the genocide, racism, and sexism (and with it oppressions of all non binary sexuality) and dreams of that larger liberty. This is the nature of our Republic, dynamic, powerful, dangerous with good and ill intertwined.
And then there’s now. We are currently caught up in a great struggle for the soul of this nation. As I’ve noted we’ve fought with our demons before. And, for the most part, we’ve overcome them bit by bit. None completely, not by a far shot. But, always, so far, and we’ve found ourselves stumbling toward some promised land – that city on a hill.
And, for me, this project is part of something larger, that larger dream of liberty. And here’s where my patriot dreams rise. That’s the America I love. It’s the one that includes Jefferson’s deleted paragraph from the Declaration of Independence denouncing slavery, it’s the one that was reframed by Lincoln, it is the one that proclaimed in Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms. It is the dream Republic that doesn’t forget the failings, sometimes horrific, of these authors of our country. Or, of we who have inherited the possibilities and the demons.
If these ideals of human liberty and a commonwealth can indeed prevail, then we might advance to something new. I dream a world where we celebrate our own contributions, and each others. And, we hold ourselves to account, measuring our successes and failures by how the so-called least among us fare.
We do that here, and we can be a light for the nations. We do that and we are a hope for our planet.
Of course this doesn’t have to happen. There are even strong signs it will not. The pressures of population and climate change, fear and avarice could result in some terrible things. Probably will. But, I know it need not be that way.
There’s the dream. There’s that dream republic.
And, at the dream heart of this Republic we can find some of the ways through.
May we. May we…
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