Make America American Again
Amidst rising political divisiveness and dysfunction, Americans—and their political leaders—would do well to recommit to the social contract that united the early settlers in a commonwealth rooted in solidarity and communitarianism.
For relief from the summer heat, political discord, and rancorous debate over confederate monuments, consider a visit to the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Be prepared for a powerful reminder of what America means, and what it means to be an American.
Contrary to popular belief, it was Provincetown, not Plymouth, where the Pilgrims first landed on American soil on November 21, 1620 after a grueling 67-day Atlantic crossing. Upon anchoring, short on provisions but long on grace, 41 male passengers from among a total of 101 signed the Mayflower Compact.
The plaque at the entrance to the monument reads: “The body politic established and maintained on the bleak and barren edge of a vast wilderness a state without a king or a noble, and church without bishop or a priest, a domestic commonwealth the members of which were straightly tied to all care of each other’s good and of the whole by every one [italics original].
Thus was born the New World’s first democratic commonwealth committed to a civil body politic whose just and equal laws would “...meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.”
At that moment, caring, civility, community and the rule of law were enshrined as the American ethos. At this moment as Washington drifts toward corporatist, winner-take-all, authoritarian rule, those core values are under assault. The Compact articulated an understanding of shared destiny, embracing the notion that the survival and flourishing of the individual are inseparable from the flourishing of the greater community.
In retrospect, the Compact portended the birth of a nation rooted in communitarianism, a social contract in which the collective good is foundational to long-term “common defense” and “general welfare” later enshrined in the Constitution. The emergent U.S political culture was both a precursor and an exemplar of precepts from the 18th century Age of Enlightenment: moral secularism, liberty, tolerance, and fraternity.
In the same historical moment, Adam Smith, father of modern economics, understood that the connective tissue that enables the “invisible hand” of markets to function depends on a social fabric bound by empathy, pity and compassion among its adherents. The “invisible hand,” he argued, needs an invisible heart to produce flourishing societies. Well-being thrives on mutuality which, in turn, expands the stock of social capital in the form of trust and reciprocity: “How selfish so ever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.”
As the nation’s moral fiber took shape, the idea that citizens acting in unison are bound by common values set the stage for the political formations that would define the American experience and self-identify. The Founders imported many of the fundamentals embodied in the social contract formulated by 17th and 18th century political philosophers such as Locke, Rousseau and Hobbes. Even the concept of the “American Dream,” as economist Robert Shiller recently observed, is rooted far more in morality, freedom, and equality than in material wealth.
These values helped shape the notion that life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness were inalienable rights that must be protected and nourished by an engaged citizenry. Through majoritarian rule, a vigilant citizenry would transfer certain rights to duly elected government in exchange for protections, provisions and common rules of conduct for the collective betterment.
Of course, “all” has been, and remains, a work in progress. Lincoln’s “better angels of our nature” have been corrupted and suppressed in the struggle for a just and inclusive society. The recent white-nationalist incited violence in Charlottesville is a painful reminder of the dangerously fragile state of the American ideal. Countless lives and dreams have been lost to discrimination. And efforts to enlarge the circle of active citizenry from white males, to white females, to a color-blind electoral process to this day remains a fraught work-in-progress.
Fast forward four centuries from that fateful day in Provincetown. Look beyond the daily news feed and ask, as the Pilgrims did: What do we stand for?
The disconnect between the American ideal and American political reality is nothing short of stunning. Voter suppression, religion-based immigration restrictions, permanent disenfranchisement of former prisoners, unbridled corporate influence in elections, erosion of affirmative action, and blurring of church-state boundaries. This is a picture that bears resemblance neither to the communitarian, democratic worldview embodied in the Mayflower Compact nor the moral fiber that defines nation’s political culture.
To the Pilgrims, Trumpland surely would resemble the land they left behind rather than the society to which they aspired. We owe it to them, to ourselves, and to future generations to halt the corrosion of the American Ideal and to Make America American Again.