Democracy and Independence

Yesterday, July 3, Sunday services were lightly attended as expected on a major holiday weekend with excellent weather. Our President Elect, Charles Huntington, delivered a thoughtful sermon reflecting a good deal of quality thinking and diligent preparation. Your editor solicited the written copy thinking it would be appropriate for wider distribution as an USH-Enews special edition. Here it is for those of you who were away at the time. Have a nice 4th of July! DCN

Democracy and Independence
Sermon delivered to the Unitarian Society of Hartford by Charles Huntington
Sunday, July 3, 2005

In the months running up to this Fourth of July weekend I have found myself increasingly confused if not downright despondent and about the directions in which this country and its government seem to be headed. I suspect that the circumstances about which I speak are well-known and of equal concern to you. Between the war in Iraq, the undermining of environmental regulations, the interference by the White House and Congress in basic civil liberties such as the right to deny medical treatment, the attempts insert Christianity into government, and the attacks on the Judiciary, I am no longer sure if my assumptions about this country and what it stands for hold true. Probably the most extreme example of this trend is the Constitution-in-Exile movement. Some of you may have read Jeffrey Rosen's article on the Constitution-in-Exile movement, which was published in the Sunday Times Magazine back in April. The proponents of this movement contend that if something was not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, then no law can create it. According to this thinking, well-excepted programs such as Social Security, environmental protection, and progressive taxation are unconstitutional. The long-term strategy of the Constitution-in-Exile movement is to pack the courts with sympathetic judges. The recent resignation of Sandra Day O'Connor and the imminent resignation of William Rehnquist, bring this rather obscure movement in from the fringe.

Like many of you, when I was growing up, I was taught to be proud of my country, to be proud of its principles, and to be proud of its actions. My father was a World War II veteran and understood what it meant to confront evil and to sacrifice to protect our rights and the rights of others. My father notwithstanding, in approaching tomorrow's celebration of the 229th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence I am having a lot of trouble mustering much patriotism or pride in my country. Last evening we attended the outdoor Fourth of July concert of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra in Simsbury. I know that some of you were also there. The concert was filled with wonderful patriotic music that was written to stir support for the country’s sacrifice at times of war. But, all I could see was the loss of life, the death of individuals on both sides of the conflict. The music was almost a distraction from the implications of so much death. When the cannons go off during the 1812 Overture, we regard it as a wonderful musical effect. When the cannons went off during the War of 1812, I am quite sure the response was quite different. Folks must have wondered if they were to be the next on the receiving end of that shell. The fact that we can now inflict death surgically from 30,000 feet makes it no less real. Every soldier’s death has lifelong impact for parents, spouses, siblings, and children.

My negative response to current events has even gotten to the point where I'm having trouble listening to NPR, to which heretofore I was a bona fide junkie. The actions of our government and the justifications being put forward have become so outlandish that I can no longer listen to them. Some of you know that I spent about 10 years in Washington working as a health-care lobbyist and was, therefore, quite close to the political process. One of the things that impressed me most about that experience was the ability of politicians to assert one position or another with the most convincing and extreme self righteousness that you could ever imagine. The tone of voice and body language with which members of Congress communicated a position were absolutely intimidating. I mean, how could anyone so self-assured in their position possibly be wrong? It was as if anyone questioning the merits of their position lacked a shred of integrity and had inflicted a callous personal insult. When I first encountered this phenomenon I was totally caught up in it. Over time I began to realize that the positions being put forth, where as often as not utter baloney. Now when I hear that certain tone of voice, pouring out of my car radio, my assumption is that person is lying or is so thoroughly immersed in self-deception that they actually believe what they're saying. It seems as though the political process is gotten to the point where anyone who admits to seeing shades of gray or confesses that some questions do not have answers is regarded as too weak or indecisive to be considered a legitimate leader.

Now, with the aid of a certain piece of new technology I find it very easy to simply turn off NPR and turn on the music. This is my MP3 player, an I-Pod if you will, on which I have loaded over 1,900 songs, almost my entire CD collection. So, now when I hear that whiny little self-righteous voice coming out of my radio, I just hit a couple of buttons and my soul is soothed by a couple thousand songs of my own choosing.

But while my soul can be soothed temporarily, it is troubled at a much deeper level, troubled by what is going on in our country and even more troubled by my escapist response. As a Unitarian Universalist I know how I am supposed to respond to things that I do not understand. The first thing that I am supposed to do is exercise tolerance, so that I do not reject or simply tune out what I do not understand. The second response, of course, is to attempt to learn. That is, to try to crawl up inside the head of the other person so that I can learn how it is that they think and understand the influences that have shaped their thoughts. Finally, my job as a UU is to take this knowledge and to grow intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. As of late, I have even gotten past the first step of basic tolerance, and I'm not particularly proud of it.

In order to better come to terms with what is going on in our country and to get out of these spiritual doldrums, I decided to revisit some readings on American political philosophy. In the past I found it helpful to better understand the philosophical underpinnings of our form of government. Every time that have gone back to do a little reading I find that things are not as I thought, and perhaps not as they are commonly understood. In our political debates, often one side or both asserts that it has greater fidelity to the thinking of the founding fathers, as if they're thinking constituted some sort of fundamental sacred truth. It seems that fundamentalism not only applies to religion, but it also applies to political philosophy. So, I have found it useful to try to better understand the philosophical underpinnings of our government for myself.

In this particular little spiritual quest, I have returned to the writings of Michael Sandel, whose books and articles I can recommend highly. Sandel's work is at times a bit dense, but his prose is beautifully written, sometimes bordering on verse. His philosophical inquiries always seem to dig to one level farther down than anyone else goes.

As we all know, the basic precept underlying our particular American political philosophy is individual freedom or individual rights. It seems that in ancient times, political philosophy was divided into two camps, one of which saw the government as protecting individual rights, and the dominant camp, which was much more concerned about the welfare of society. The first was called liberalism, in the second was called Republicanism. American liberalism first gained ground in years before, the Declaration of Independence. As the colonialists grew increasingly frustrated with Parliament's imposition of unfair laws, the political commentators began to assert that there were individual rights that existed before and above any laws written by Parliament. At the time it was thought that Parliament should simply recognize these individual rights, and as a matter of self-control avoid running afoul of them. The notion of an independent judiciary that would protect individual rights was to come much later.

When the Continental Congress got around to framing in the Constitution, the notion of a Bill of Rights was actually something of an afterthought. It was not given much consideration until the proponents of the Constitution were searching for ways to quell an opposition that was more concerned with states rights versus the rights of the national government. The Bill of Rights was inserted more to protect states rights and individual rights.

I was particular surprised to learn that freedom of religion, and the separation of church and state was not originally intended to protect an individual right to religious expression. It was, rather, intended to prevent the federal government from interfering with state laws that interfered with religious freedom. The notion that no government entity, federal or state, could interfere with individual religious rights was actually an invention of the 20th century. The last state law establishing a religion was not struck down until the 1960s.

One other lessons that I draw from this has to do with the fact that some fundamental rights, which I assumed to have been very much the creation of those people we call the founding fathers, were actually the result of courts interpreting the Constitution in the context of contemporary society. It makes you wonder why anyone would want to rely solely on what we might understand of the original intent of the framers of the Constitution. It seems to me that the Constitution has remained robust, not because it anticipated all future circumstances, but because the courts have been willing to respectfully reinterpret it in light of changing circumstances. This in turn raises the question of the very notion of fundamentalism, be it a fundamental interpretation of the Constitution as exemplified by the Constitution-in-Exile movement or the fundamental interpretation of a religion. By fundamentalism I mean the assertion that my religion or whatever is the only true religion, and anyone who believes otherwise is damned and not entitled to the full privileges of citizenship. The issue is not the Constitution or any particular religion. The issue is fundamentalism. Why do we as humans, resort to a fundamental interpretation of any doctrine? At its core I regard this as a spiritual question. I will return to it a bit later.

One side of the current political debate reflects a relatively extreme version of individual rights. I don't mean to denigrate the notion of individual rights. The principles of individual freedom are something that has been inculcated in all of us in this country. As Americans we hold up this image of the rugged individualist, of the Lone Ranger (not to disparage Tonto), who swoops in to save the day. And the individual is right there in our Unitarian-Universalist principles: we believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

I am not sure why I thought this, but I assumed that this was a relatively ancient philosophy. But, as exemplified by the recent development of individual religious freedom, the major philosophical underpinnings of individual rights were an invention of the last 50 or 60 years. Proponents of individual rights most frequently cite a book entitled, A Theory of Justice published in 1971 by John Rawls, who was a professor of philosophy at Harvard. In order to develop his theory of justice Rawls invented something that he called the Original Position. In the original position people were neither concerned about the needs of society, nor, as a matter of fact, did they had any knowledge of the particulars of their own wants and desires. Given these circumstances, the question was, how much would a person allow other people to impose on him/her before they felt that he or she would be worse off. A fair number of people have had a go at this question, but, in general, the answer is not much. Things like child labor laws and minimum wage laws don’t meet the criteria.

Michael Sandel's take on this approach to individual rights is to ask: Why would anyone develop a political philosophy based on a hypothetical situation that never existed and could never exist? Individual humans do not make decisions outside of their social context, or, at least if they do, they are labeled schizophrenic. In fact, the case can be made that the families and communities in which we live have more influence over what we think and believe that any of our individual characteristics. Sandel asserts that in humans have never existed outside their social context and to invent a political philosophy that is based on persons in utter isolation makes no sense on the face of it. What Sandel doesn't address is why a political philosophy based on an everyman-is-an-island point of view would be created and become such a powerful influence in our current political debate. How is it that we in this country value the individual so highly? Why does the dominant religion in this country rest on the notion of a personal relationship with God, rather than God relating to us as a community?

I can’t say that I blame Sandel for avoiding this question. I would certainly not claim to have the answer, however, I will venture a bit of a guess based on a little of what I know about family systems theory. One of the things that causes families and individuals within families to develop problems is something called cutoff. Cutoff occurs when someone or some branch of the family is ostracized to the point where even mentioning their name is taboo. The resultant secrecy and truncation of the family network of relationships, which is intended to help a family deal with its stresses, is to increase the level of stress in the family, all of which eventually gets focused on one person, who then develops problems or symptoms. The impact of cutoff in a family can then get passed on from one generation to the next. When a family in which there is cutoff seeks help from a family therapist, he or she will often recommend that the patient reestablish contact with the ostracized family member. For reasons that no one family therapist and quite explain, this eventually leads to a lessening of symptoms.

What I want to suggest to you is that this country is suffering from the effects of cutoff on a societal scale. The original white settlers of this country fled either economic or religious persecution at a time when contact with their families and communities back in Europe was terminated for all practical purposes. Many of our African-American ancestors were dragged from their families and their lands, and any opportunity to re-establish a family structure in this country was cruelly prevented. Native American families and communities were decimated. In one hand, this large-scale cutoff required an extraordinary degree of self-reliance just for survival in a new and undeveloped land. On the other hand, from a family systems perspective, cutoff at this scale is bound to lead to societal symptoms that would not occur with an intact family and community structure. I wonder if our odd American idolization of the individual and individual rights, as opposed to being able to see ourselves as members of a family and society, is the result of a massive societal cutoff, with which we as a society have yet to come to terms. Why is it that we cannot see the responsibility that we bear to each other and to the world at large? Perhaps our national history of cutoff is an explanation. Perhaps it is not. I do know that there has to be a reason, and I believe that we would be better off understanding what it is that makes us worship the individual.

Well, that's a pretty big question that I have posed. I have a few questions of my own to grapple with before I get around to that one. First and foremost, why am I allowing myself to disengage in the face of current events that I don't understand or support? I can come up with reasons why the current trends in our government are wrongheaded, and even dangerous. But, I am no less likely to rationalize my actions than anyone else. Like everyone else, I prefer to think myself as a rational being. After all, I do things on the basis of well reasoned principles, right? I'm smart, I can invent really good reasons, but they are inventions nonetheless. It is human nature to first observe our own actions and beliefs, and then develop a rationale for them. It does not occur the other way around. As I stated earlier, our actions, are more determined by the emotional ties to the families and communities in which we exist, rather than by the reasons we invent. So, while I can come up with really good justifications for my disengagement from politics and for my growing addiction to my MP3 player, those are just after the fact rationalizations.

In my more honest and reflective moments, I recognize the emotional similarities between today’s irrational and emotionally charged political debate and the circumstances with which I grew up. I will spare you the details, but the response that I learned growing up in these circumstances was to either over-function or to withdraw emotionally. I find myself self now pulling out the same repertoire of responses, either diving in too deeply or disappearing altogether. The need for me to take a step back from these emotionally driven responses and to consider in a more dispassionate and connected way the circumstances in which we find ourselves politically is, in fact, a spiritual quest. I understand spirituality as the process of coming to terms with life’s conflicting truths. My simultaneous tendency to want to fix and be repulsed by our current political circumstances is one of those conflicting truths. This is a spiritual journey that I cannot take alone.

As poorly functioning as it might be, we do have a democracy in this country. I guess that the point that I am trying to make is that we have a democracy, but we don't have independence. No matter how much we value that word, regardless of the fact that we devote a day each year to celebrating the concept of independence, we are in fact not independent of each other individually or as a country. We live in a complex network of relationships, and the actions of one affect many.

Ironically, preserving our democracy depends on each of us autonomously assessing the influences of family and community and asking ourselves in a dispassionate way if our behavior really reflects the kind of people that we want to be. These are very difficult questions to stay with. It is much easier for me to sink into my MP3 player. Perhaps I'm too old to be making many changes in my life, but I other hand, I am old enough to understand that the process of trying is more important than any end I might achieve. However, I do fancy having raised my children, at least he two children that are here, to be much more keenly aware of their roles in the family and the community. I trust that when the situation warrants, they will be much better able to sort out behaviors that are emotionally driven from those that better reflect the people they wish to be. And I see this not just as my role, but our role as a family, as a church, and as citizens of a larger community.

I thank you for being here today and for being so kind in your attentiveness. May we now go forward and enjoy the beauty of this day, and the blessings of the democracy that we share.

Let us know of any comments, errors and corrections - thanks (revised 7/11/05)