“But it’s a child’s two-dimensional view of freedom — one where any suggestion of collective duty and responsibility for others become the chains of tyranny.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/opinion/coronavirus-deaths.html?smid=fb-share
Our country has reached more than 4,000 deaths a day from Covid-19, and today I read a news article about a restaurant owner who is defying a local law banning indoors dining. This at the same time we have our fellow Americans violently storming our Capitol because their candidate will not be inaugurated as President. I don’t know the political views of the restaurant owner, and I don’t know whether the restaurant owner supports the insurrectionists, but I do know that they have something in common: they believe that their rights are defined by them and are disconnected from the greater society in which they are a part.
The insurrectionists believed (and many still do believe)that what they did was right and was an exercise of their rights. The restaurant owner believes what she is doing is right and an exercise of her rights. The insurrectionists were not concerned with the rights of their fellow Americans who voted for the other candidate. They were not concerned with the rights of their fellow Americans who were doing their legitimate jobs in the Capitol. The restaurant owner is not concerned with the rights of her neighbors and those in her community.
By failing to consider the rights of others, they demonstrate why democracy is so fragile and what we need to do to fortify it.
Democracy is fragile because it is so easy to focus on our rights and much harder to live up to our obligations to one another.
I have seen a number of social media posts in recent days blaming the lack of civics education for where we find our nation today.
A population that is ignorant of its civic responsibilities that are necessary to our form of government is dangerous to democracy. But what these people don’t seem to know, or have forgotten, is that we do teach civics in public schools. Civics teachers throughout our country are teaching teenagers about the rights we have as American citizens, and we teach that alongside the duties (required) and responsibilities (voluntary) that come with those rights. (See e.g., Virginia Civics and Economics SOL: “The student will apply social science skills to understand citizenship and the rights, duties, and responsibilities of citizens;” Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills: “Student is expected to … describe scenarios where good citizenship may require the subordination of personal desire for the sake of the public good; …[and] explain the responsibilities, duties, and obligations of citizenship ….”)
This Civics curriculum is built upon the foundation laid in the elementary years, when we teach children about community and the role we all play in it. (See, e.g., Utah Core Standards “In the third grade, students will explore the concept of community, [and] will learn about individual rights and responsibilities;” Maine Standards and Instruction: “Students understand … by identifying the rights, duties, and responsibilities of citizens within the class, school, or community.”)
So, please don’t blame the schools for democracy’s fragility showing. And please, please, please don’t knee-jerk and start passing laws adding more to what teachers have to do so you can feel good because you “did” something.
It is not a matter of not knowing, but a matter of exercising that knowledge. Why do so many people remember their “rights” but forget their duties and responsibilities? How have we lost sight of the community that is the United States and to which we all owe a collective duty like we are taught from grade school? When did we forget that we exercise our individual rights with the hope that the consequences of our actions benefit not just ourselves, but our community?
Think freedom of the press — this right is not so that journalists and media owners can print whatever makes them money, it is so that our knowledge is not limited to just what the government wants us to know. “The Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to served the governed, not the governors…. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people.” Justice Hugo Black, New York Times Co. v United States.
Think freedom of speech — Madison was not concerned with letting anyone walk around saying anything to anyone simply for their own personal gain; this right exists so we can share our ideas, share our knowledge, and engage in political discourse that leads us to the best possible outcomes. “[The founding fathers] believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.” Justice Louis Brandeis, Whitney v. California.
Think freedom of assembly — the foundational purpose of right is not so you can hang out with your buds, or avoid people you don’t like; it is so that people cannot be separated from like minds because there is strength in numbers. “The very idea of a government, republican in form, implies a right on the part of its citizens to meet peaceably for consultation in respect to public affairs ….” Justice Morrison Waite, quoted in DeJonge v. Oregon.
Think of the right to petition your government. It is not only to address the personal difficulties that you may have suffered (such as the Civil War widows who petitioned for money from the government), but to make our country, our community, better for all who are here. The right to petition dates back to the Magna Carta, and ensures that the “government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes may be obtained by lawful means.” Edwards v. South Carolina.
Even the freedom of religion is not solely concerned with the individual’s right. “Religion & Gov[ernment] will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together,” James Madison.
The arguments and actions of many, from those who refuse to wear masks to those who stormed the Capitol, to the restaurant owner who defies the law to open up dining during a pandemic, focus on their rights, and perhaps the rights of their close family and friends. When such a myopic and exclusionary view of community is coupled with violent demands for the ability to exercise First Amendment rights for the benefit of self or the few, our fragile democracy is increasingly endangered.
How do we fortify our democracy?
We are told to drink our milk and take our calcium to fortify our bones. We need to work consistently to fortify our democracy. I have several thoughts on that, and would be interested in hearing others’ ideas. Mine:
We talk about the right to eat at restaurants, go shopping, to get back to normal. We need to include in any talk of “rights” an honest discussion about the trade offs we are willing to accept. We need to have conversations with one another, and we need to listen to one another. And then, we need to make decisions openly and transparently. We need to revisit our First Amendment freedoms and exercise them not for ourselves or those close to us, but for the whole community — for every member of our society.
There is in every decision we make an unspoken decision about what we are willing to forego. If we as a people are willing to forego the lives of other Americans, (whether they agreed to sacrifice their lives), let’s just admit it and have that conversation. In a pandemic, how many deaths are we willing to accept? Whose deaths are we willing to accept? These are not rhetorical questions to make a point. These are the kind of questions we need our politicians, and ourselves, to answer.
We need to think of what our answers to these questions are. Perhaps as a country we are ok with 10% of service workers dying from Covid. We should decide collectively if that is the type of country we want to be.
In order to have these conversations, we, and especially our press, need to hold people accountable for answering. Don’t allow “well what about (job loss, the flu, etc) responses, either from others or yourself. These type of responses are simply avoiding the hard questions. They may be important questions, but they should be considered separately.
We need to get corporations out of the dialogue. Corporations being considered legally “persons” serves a certain purpose, but they are not the persons envisioned when Abraham Lincoln spoke of a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Just look at the power they have in pulling support from politicians in the wake of the Capitol riots. While I applaud their stance on not supporting politicians who supported an insurrection; I question that they should have had the financial wherewithal to put those politicians in power in the first place.
We need to talk with a common vocabulary. One thing clear to me in the last several years — words do not mean the same to all Americans. What do we mean by “democracy”?
What else?
