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Jefferson’s Proposition: Myth become reality become myth
Thomas Jefferson is the author of the proposition that among the unalienable rights with which we are endowed by our Creator are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For too long, this proposition was nothing but a myth for many Americans. But, as the nation matured, campaigns to end slavery, to recognize the equal rights of women, empower labor, and to provide almost all Americans with civil rights, brought us more in line with Jefferson’s proposition, and the myth became reality for most.
There remains work to be done. We have yet to recognize civil rights without regard to sexual orientation. The intuitive relationship between health and Jefferson’s proposition is mysteriously counterintuitive to many. Poverty, not ability, is still the biggest obstacle to achieving each of our potentials. We only recognize the humanity of other human beings when there is some other national interest in doing so. As the militarism of Americans has grown, war has become integral to our foreign policy. It may be that as we’ve abandoned Jefferson’s proposition, we’ve also lost the ability to live and pursue democratic principles. Worse, we devalue them with our belief in American Exceptionalism.
It’s been nearly half a century since the last great accomplishment of our democracy, the Civil Rights Movement. The New Deal has been dismantled. The pursuit of happiness has been replaced by the pursuit of wealth and power, and the value of life and liberty has been forgotten along the way. For too many Americans, pursuit of wealth has become synonymous with liberty, and greed has displaced compassion as a core value while wealth has become the sole measure of an individual’s worth. Power is sought not for the good that can be done with it, but for power’s own sake. Fear has replaced confidence as our driving emotion, and has diminished our desire for liberty. We’ve forgotten the counsel of another of our Founders, that by sacrificing liberty in pursuit of security we will end up with neither.
The myth that became reality is once again becoming myth. The foundation of democracy, built with the lives and deaths of so many, is crumbling with our physical infrastructure. Democratic accomplishments recorded in the lives of people like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, and Cesar Chavez have been forgotten by generations raised under the dark cloud of perpetual wars—real, metaphorical, and imagined.
The American Dream is now out of reach for too many of us. Like its cousin, the pursuit of happiness, the American Dream has become the American Myth. As if to chastise us, we’re told by the few that the many are promised only the pursuit of happiness, and only the potential for achieving the American Dream. Nothing is guaranteed. Rather than having been deceived, we have deceived ourselves by believing that life, liberty and happiness are somehow related. In our lack of sophistication, we’ve assumed that life and liberty are not also functions of health.
Like all useful mythology, the American Myth still serves a purpose. It gives hope to those without a reason to hope. It offers a false promise with which the few can manipulate the many. We are told that everyone in America has equal opportunity; it is only talent and ability that distinguish those with wealth and power from those without it. A hereditary aristocracy has been replaced with an economic aristocracy, and we’re expected to ignore the hereditary component of economics. Wealth begets power; power begets wealth; concentration of wealth and power begets oligarchy; oligarchy conflicts with democracy; only the illusion of democracy can be permitted; as the illusion fails, a police state replaces liberty; We the People are distracted by a surreal mix of entertainment and perpetual war.
An entire generation born and raised in the post-1980 world was never exposed to the Democratic Party that gave us the New Deal, Unionized Labor, the Civil Rights Movement, and an end to the Vietnam War and the conscription of the poor and working class. Like the Democratic Party of their time, they’ve been infected by Neoconservative politics and Neoliberal economics. Feudal Capitalism is their status quo. Unless they’ve studied history, which isn’t a priority in current curricula, they don't even know what is possible. They have no frame of reference with which to recognize how far off course the Democratic Party has gone. Entertainment and anti-depressants integrate them with their Brave New World.
The chicken-or-the-egg question about the shift of both the American people and the Democratic Party to the political Right is difficult to answer. The shift isn’t even acknowledged by the party faithful. In their defense, how can they know better? But whether we call the values of the new Democratic Party the "The Third Way," or the "DLC Way" or just plain old "Centrist" or "Moderate" democratic thought, it is far to the political Right of the Democratic Party that gave us our greatest achievements. It’s become the party of decay or, at best, stasis. Activism has become an embarrassment. Dissent is condemned as hate.
After thirty years of Feudal Capitalism, the argument between the Democratic and Republican parties that was formalized in the U.S. Constitution isn’t even the real battle. It’s nothing more than a distraction in a larger class war. One need only look at the events and revelations surrounding the Great Recession to see proof that the economic elite have captured the Democratic Party and are busily erasing the distinction between the two parties. We have reached a point where, no matter the outcome of an election, We the People pose no threat to Power as long as we are following one party platform or the other.
This is a critical time for what remains of our democratic republic. Will We the People recognize our liberties and our opportunities slipping away? Will we step outside of a corrupted system and threaten to destroy the foundation upon with Power stands as it continues to dismantle more than two centuries of human progress? Will we return to the Progressive path we have abandoned? Or will we let Jefferson’s’ proposition become reality become myth once more?
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