I was driving through a small town near Burlington yesterday when I passed a stenciled sign nailed to a utility pole: “Main Street Closed for Parade, July 4, 10:30 a.m.” All over America, volunteer firefighters are polishing their trucks and pulling their visored caps and white gloves from the closet shelf. Children will weave red, white and blue crepe paper through the spokes of their bicycles and the high school band will run through its John Philip Sousa repertoire a few more times before Tuesday noon. And oh yes, because it’s an election year, there’ll be a few politicians walking and waving among the fire trucks and bands.
A friend who lives in central Vermont claims that in his town on the Fourth, one side of the parade street is lined with “woodchucks” (people who were born and raised in Vermont) and the other side with “flatlanders” (people who moved to Vermont from elsewhere). He says the rest of the day’s activities are similarly separate, with one group running the bake sale and the other the tag sale and so on.
My friend, like any good story teller, is not immune to confabulation if it improves the tale, and I hope that’s the case with his Fourth of July story, especially because it’s an election year.
In Washington, the Supreme Court, about to recess for the summer, ruled that the Bush administration has to provide more legal protections for the men it’s holding at Guantanamo Bay. As is often the case recently, the court was divided in its ruling, five to three (Chief Justice John Roberts abstained). Clarence Thomas, for the first time in his 15 years on the court, read his dissenting opinion from the bench, to draw attention to the depth of his disagreement with the majority. Antonin Scalia, in his dissent, accused the court’s majority of “audacity” in defying George Bush’s claims of executive power. John Paul Stevens fired back with a string of footnotes defending the majority and attacking the arguments of the dissenters. Whatever your take on issues before the court, it’s hard not to notice how pointed – even nasty – opinions have gotten since a five-member majority made Mr. Bush president in December 2000.
Across First Street SE, the legislative branch has been arguing over gay marriage, flag-burning and other politically inflammatory issues before its members go home to campaign in earnest. All politicians agree – at least superficially – that Americans should be providing an example of democracy for Iraq and other nations, but I’m not so sure if the influence isn’t flowing the other way. It’s starting to sound very Sunni vs. Shi’ite in this country.
Which is not to say that this commentary is going to turn into a weepy, “rally ‘round the flag,” can’t we all just get along, join hands and sing “Kumbaya” kind of meditation. Americans are facing the most serious moral issues since we confronted slavery. The issues are too important and the consequences of our decisions will be too profound that we should not allow ourselves to be bullied into doing something stupid because we’ve engaged in a national game of blue against red.
Like the Sunnis and the Shi’ites, Americans – across the spectrum – have more in common than we care to admit. We share a worldview that – we say – is grounded in respect for the individual, although few of us have been acting that way lately. What is needed in the months ahead is a political dialogue that recalls us to our sense of decency, that makes us think deeply about our collective power in the world and the effects the use of that power has on others. We need to create the space for a mature exchange of ideas, away from the shouting match that only serves short-term partisan interest and the ratings of the shouting shows.
On Tuesday, we should celebrate our national independence by not letting anyone do our thinking for us.
The Street Where You Live
I was driving through a small town near Burlington yesterday when I passed a stenciled sign nailed to a utility pole: “Main Street Closed for Parade, July 4, 10:30 a.m.” All over America, volunteer firefighters are polishing their trucks and pulling their visored caps and white gloves from the closet shelf. Children will weave red, white and blue crepe paper through the spokes of their bicycles and the high school band will run through its John Philip Sousa repertoire a few more times before Tuesday noon. And oh yes, because it’s an election year, there’ll be a few politicians walking and waving among the fire trucks and bands.
A friend who lives in central Vermont claims that in his town on the Fourth, one side of the parade street is lined with “woodchucks” (people who were born and raised in Vermont) and the other side with “flatlanders” (people who moved to Vermont from elsewhere). He says the rest of the day’s activities are similarly separate, with one group running the bake sale and the other the tag sale and so on.
My friend, like any good story teller, is not immune to confabulation if it improves the tale, and I hope that’s the case with his Fourth of July story, especially because it’s an election year.
In Washington, the Supreme Court, about to recess for the summer, ruled that the Bush administration has to provide more legal protections for the men it’s holding at Guantanamo Bay. As is often the case recently, the court was divided in its ruling, five to three (Chief Justice John Roberts abstained). Clarence Thomas, for the first time in his 15 years on the court, read his dissenting opinion from the bench, to draw attention to the depth of his disagreement with the majority. Antonin Scalia, in his dissent, accused the court’s majority of “audacity” in defying George Bush’s claims of executive power. John Paul Stevens fired back with a string of footnotes defending the majority and attacking the arguments of the dissenters. Whatever your take on issues before the court, it’s hard not to notice how pointed – even nasty – opinions have gotten since a five-member majority made Mr. Bush president in December 2000.
Across First Street SE, the legislative branch has been arguing over gay marriage, flag-burning and other politically inflammatory issues before its members go home to campaign in earnest. All politicians agree – at least superficially – that Americans should be providing an example of democracy for Iraq and other nations, but I’m not so sure if the influence isn’t flowing the other way. It’s starting to sound very Sunni vs. Shi’ite in this country.
Which is not to say that this commentary is going to turn into a weepy, “rally ‘round the flag,” can’t we all just get along, join hands and sing “Kumbaya” kind of meditation. Americans are facing the most serious moral issues since we confronted slavery. The issues are too important and the consequences of our decisions will be too profound that we should not allow ourselves to be bullied into doing something stupid because we’ve engaged in a national game of blue against red.
Like the Sunnis and the Shi’ites, Americans – across the spectrum – have more in common than we care to admit. We share a worldview that – we say – is grounded in respect for the individual, although few of us have been acting that way lately. What is needed in the months ahead is a political dialogue that recalls us to our sense of decency, that makes us think deeply about our collective power in the world and the effects the use of that power has on others. We need to create the space for a mature exchange of ideas, away from the shouting match that only serves short-term partisan interest and the ratings of the shouting shows.
On Tuesday, we should celebrate our national independence by not letting anyone do our thinking for us.
© Mark Floegel, 2006