The rest of the story

Those who suffered through my last commentary (Everything you know is wrong III) learned about the US Republic,  but you probably left the blog wondering “what was that all about? Did Pat drink some bad tequila?”

The answer to the second question is “no” (because there is no bad tequila), but here’s the answer to the first question.

The fact that the US is a Republic based on a Constitution has two important implications: one about the document itself, the other about the people it serves.

Americans hold their Constitution in high regard. We are right to do so, as intelligent observers around the world have commented on its simplicity, its insight, and its longevity. But the document is not magical. It works not just because it was brilliantly designed, but because it was ideally matched to the culture and characteristics of the American people (circa 1791).

Freed America slaves who returned to Africa to establish the nation of Liberia borrowed large parts of the US Constitution to little success. The US Constitution begat similar efforts in 19th century Latin America, post-Great War Europe, and post-colonial Africa, again with mixed success. The US Constitution was a unique match of brilliant political theory and informed citizenship.

What was the indispensable characteristic of that citizenry? Here the founders were unanimous: virtue, or as we call it today, morality. Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Patrick Henry, and George Washington wrote about it.  Samuel Adams said “Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.” John Adams said, “Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private virtue, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.”  and added “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

And these are just the pull quotes. All the Founding Fathers wrote and spoke about how important the virtue and morality of the American people were. This is not to say the Founders or the citizens were saints. Those same Founders tolerated America’s original sin–slavery. The candidates and their supporters in the Presidential election of 1800 engaged in far more slander than anything any candidate said in 2016!

Rather, the comments about the virtue or morality of the American citizenry described their common understanding of right and wrong. While the United States had no established religion, its people broadly accepted a code of conduct based on Judeo-Christian values. Even the Founders, many of whom were Deists, held the same beliefs, as Deism was a Christian off-shoot (heresy is the technical term). This morality, these virtues, matched uniquely with the Republican government developed under the Constitution.

Back at the beginning of the Republic, the American people had a common conception of right and wrong, even if those same citizens were individually more or less virtuous. Today, our citizens are just as likely to have different levels of virtue, but there is no common understanding of how to measure right and wrong. Religious participation continues to dwindle, and many organized religions follow, rather than lead, public mores. Some argue religion has no right to a voice in American government: a point historically inaccurate and (frankly) bigoted. Nevertheless, I would concede that religion has mainly lost its voice, while no alternative voice has succeeded it.

Instead, we have replaced a shared public morality with an individualistic one. As Justice Anthony Kennedy put it in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” There is little room for me to compromise with you when you have the right to define the meaning of the universe.

All of which leads to my final point: many of the problems we as Americans identify today are actually only symptoms of the real problem: the lack of a common morality. Our Republic requires it. Arguments about policy are just about politics (the art of compromise), while arguments about morality are good versus evil, and compromise is immoral. You can see this play out in issue after issue today: gun control, abortion, free speech, police violence, marriage, welfare, etc.

This is not a call to return to the days of that  good, old-fashioned religion; a culture can never return to its past. This is more a caution. America has only once experienced a similar moral debate: slavery. The issue was fundamental to concepts ranging from individual freedom and human rights to property, states’ rights, and habeus corpus. It took a bloody civil war to address that issue, and another one-hundred years to finish the argument.

I trust I have made a case for why our Republic needs a shared morality. I wish I had an easy answer for how we regain one. I have not heard anything beyond some platitudes thus far. I am open to good ideas: I know I am praying on this already.

As Paul Harvey used to say, my friends, “and now you know the rest of the story.”