Those of us who believe in democracy cannot yield, those who believe only in power should understand the terrible consequences of the path they are on before it is too late.
Thoughts on the morning after reading the leaked ROE decision.
Even optimists have their difficult days.
I got out of bed while it was still dark and took my dog for a walk in the cold rain. I made a pot of coffee. I read again the language of the leaked Supreme Court decision overturning Roe and repudiating stare decisis. A deep sadness holds me. My poor dog and I go out again.
I return home and read, aloud, Lincoln’s speech at Cooper Union. The first third of the speech is a calm and deliberate review of the facts meant to lay before everyone the absurdity of the lies being spread about the place of slavery in the Constitution and the intention of the founders at the time. He reviews each vote cast be every member of the delegation who signed the Constitution on the question of slavery in the territories. He finds clear evidence that the framers believed the federal government had the power to limit the expansion of slavery. He proves there is no evidence to the contrary. It reminds me of the catalog of cases that put to rest any factual claim that the election in our time was stollen. The founders were not supporters of slavery, though they left it alone where it was. Our most recent election was not stollen. Facts are facts.
Lincoln then addresses the Southern population. He says, “In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of ‘Black Republicanism’ as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite - license, so to speak - among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all.” And today, a prerequisite to speak at a GOP gathering is a public affirmation that a fair election was stollen, and sometimes that Americans who are moved by the factual evidence, must be child pornographers. Lincoln is not bullied: “You need to be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander.” Rep. Jamie Raskin similarly admonished Marjorie Taylor Greene and her ilk on the House floor last week. Lincoln ends this part of his speech by saying, “Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.”
By now I have dried off and had a warm cup of coffee. But I am still shaking.
Lincoln next turns to his own party and asks them to put the unity of the nation above their own concerns and to try to discover what will satisfy the South. He goes through the arguments and finds the only satisfaction is one that they cannot give: the extension of slavery everywhere. And today? What will satisfy the GOP? The extension of the power of government to ban books, to outlaw contraception, the use of power to push gay people back into the shadows. Giving rapists the power to force a woman to carry a pregnancy to conception against her will. The overturning of democracy by means of voter suppression and election nullification laws. In short, the only satisfaction will come from things we cannot give.
Lincoln’s conclusion then is ours now: “Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.
The speech gives me courage but does not cheer me up. It is courage for the fight to come, not joy that a fight can be averted.
How did we get here, again? How is it we are once more on the brink of an irreparable rift that will destroy what has been the foundation of our freedom and our progress?
I reach back further and read Washington’s farewell address. He told us that unity was the foundation of our liberty and that “from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth.” He said, upon this point “the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously). Looking at the different regions of the young country, Washington argued that “One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.”
How can anyone read this and not think of the efforts over the past few decades to delegitimize our government and divide our people- from birther myths to FOX News, to the big lie. Washington begged us to be “indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.”
In the first half of the 19th century his counsel was ignored because slavery would be expanded at all costs. In the first quarter of the 21st century there is no one obvious issue at stake unless that issue was power in and of itself.
Have we reached a similar breach? And how awful will the remedy this time be?
Let us make repair our paramount goal. For all the others will fail without it. Those of us who believe in democracy cannot yield, those who believe only in power should understand the terrible consequences of the path they are on before it is too late.
