Tomorrow is Presidents' Day – not one of the major holidays of the year, unless perhaps you're a skier – but a good day nonetheless to reflect on our nation's history and on the future of our democracy. An important part of our nation's history has been the struggle to define and create a working democracy that includes as many people as possible. This story has all too often been ugly and violent, but somehow we have managed to broaden the scope of democracy over time, from the abolition of slavery to voting rights for women and the civil rights movement a few decades ago. Thanks to some of this history, in the state of Mississippi where I lived for over a decade, President's Day is still officially known just as Washington's Birthday, because state legislators did not want to recognize Abraham Lincoln as part of the holiday. Even today, the legacy of slavery and of the devastation of Native American civilization reverberates through our society. Every President of the United States so far has been white and male, and in most cases, very wealthy. Our nation certainly does not have a perfect record as a democracy, but still we have managed to keep some version of democracy going for over two hundred years.
Today, our political leaders including our current President are proclaiming the goal of spreading democracy to nations in other parts of the world. Whatever you think about the methods and results so far of the actions that have been taken under this banner of spreading democracy, I would guess that most if not all of us would like to see more democracy around the world. I'm not sure that what we're really spreading is democracy, but in any case, I have another and deeper concern. Before we have any business trying to spread democracy around the world, we need to make sure we have a healthy democracy here at home. But our American democracy is showing serious signs of trouble. Many of the foundations of our democracy are eroding, and unless we tend to and strengthen those foundations, we could lose the very thing we are supposedly trying to spread.
What happens to democracy in the United States is important to us at JUC not only because this is the nation in which we live, but also because as Unitarian Universalists we affirm in our fifth principle the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large. It may seem strange to affirm "democratic process" as part of a set of religious principles, but the fifth principle is closely related to our affirmation of the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and to the goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all. The idea that every person counts is at the core of our religious heritage, especially on the Universalist side, as well as being central to the ideals of democracy. For better or for ill, our history as a faith tradition is surprisingly intertwined with our history as a nation, including as many as five Presidents of the United States who were Unitarian or who can reasonably be claimed as Unitarian. They are John Adams and John Quincy Adams as well as Presidents Fillmore, Taft, and Thomas Jefferson, who called himself "a Unitarian by myself." If we care about our Unitarian Universalist history and principles, we cannot help but care about democracy.
Many people in American history have been denied the right to vote, either directly or through more subtle manipulation. One of the better parts of the American story has been the expansion of voting rights in our Constitution and through legislation, although it took enormous struggle and even bloodshed for this to occur, and the story is not over yet. The principle of "one person, one vote" is one of the foundations of democracy, and while we have never fully lived up to that principle, the overall trajectory of American history has been positive on that point, at least until recently.
Public confidence in our voting process has been shaken badly in recent elections, and whether or not we have had elections decided by fraud or manipulation, we need to ask how we got to the point that reasonable people can have such doubts about our voting process. There is no excuse for the companies who manufacture voting machines to have partisan political ties, whether or not the voting machines are fairly and securely designed. There is no excuse for inaccurate felon lists, unequal distribution of voting machines, or inconsistent treatment of provisional ballots to affect who gets to vote. There is no excuse for partisan politics at the state level to so badly skew national politics, either through partisan oversight of elections or through blatant gerrymandering of Congressional districts. And there is no excuse for the massively corrupting influence of money on our political process, especially money that leaves politicians beholden to corporate special interests and to the powerful and wealthy over everyone else.
What we need is meaningful public financing of elections, as well as reforms to ensure a trustworthy, verifiable voting process. Campaign finance reform has been limited by Supreme Court rulings that treat corporations as persons and that treat campaign contributions as free speech, even though it is a form of speech that some people have a lot more of than others. But some limits on campaign financing are allowed, and there are good models of public financing being tried in places such as Oregon. Ultimately, these shouldn't even be partisan issues, because we all have a stake in free, fair and reliable elections, except perhaps the wealthy incumbents or corporate lobbyists who have taken advantage of the flaws in our present system.
If we can't trust our voting process, our democracy is in serious trouble. But the foundations of democracy include much more than just voting. Many of the founders of our nation were quite skeptical of democracy by popular majority vote, partly because they were not sure they trusted the wisdom of the masses, and partly because they saw the dangers of unfettered majority rule. One of the primary goals of the founders was to avoid tyranny of all kinds, whether the tyranny of a king or the tyranny of the majority. Thomas Jefferson once said, "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine." To the extent that our democracy has been successful, it has been because it is a constitutional democracy which includes all the protections of the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is an absolutely necessary balance to majority-rule democracy. We recognize this balance in our Unitarian Universalist principles by pairing the right of conscience with affirmation of the democratic process. This is also why elections in the Middle East or anywhere else will not produce anything we would recognize as freedom or democracy unless deep and broad human rights have already been affirmed within their cultures and constitutions. This is unlikely to occur by external military force.
Without the Bill of Rights, including freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly, we could not even be having this service together here this morning. Without the assurance of due process and the right of privacy that lies behind the prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure and other parts of the Bill of Rights, we cannot feel secure in exercising our other rights. Some of these rights have already been eroded, and more are in danger in the future. Unless we use our constitutional rights to speak out in defense of those constitutional rights, we may find ourselves some day unable to speak out at all.
Another foundation of our democracy that goes back to the creation of our Constitution is the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances that is found there. James Madison was one of the architects of the Constitution, and we heard an excerpt earlier from one of the Federalist Papers [#51] that he helped to write in defense of these checks and balances. Madison is one of the Presidents who is sometimes claimed to have had Unitarian leanings, by the way, although his religious affiliation was clearly Episcopalian.
Madison was also worried about the possibility of the tyranny of the majority, or of the dominance of any one religious, political or other type of faction within the society or the government. He believed in pluralism, hoping that a multiplicity of interests and different religious groups would be a protection against such dominance. That is why the growth of huge blocks of religious fundamentalism in this country is one of the dangers to our democracy and why separation of church and state remains important. Madison also thought it essential that there be independence among the different branches of government and checks and balances to ensure that no branch of government could abuse its power.
Much more is at stake in the current controversy over warrantless domestic wiretapping than the legalities of wiretapping or whatever intelligence benefits may have accrued from that secret program. If the positions of this administration prevail, it will radically shift the balance of power in our government in ways that could be applied in many other places. The same argument for centralized Presidential power has already been applied in the area of torture and detainment, and in the practice of "signing statements" claiming Presidential power to interpret legislation. No matter who the President is or what party is in power, if the President has the power as Commander in Chief during an undeclared, endless war to violate or ignore legislation passed by Congress, international agreements we have signed and even the Bill of Rights itself, then our constitutional democracy is in grave danger. Make no mistake, we are facing a constitutional crisis that is much greater than you would ever guess from listening to the mainstream media.
At the time he helped write the Federalist Papers, Madison had as much concern about too weak an executive as one that was too strong. But he also foresaw and wrote about the very danger we are facing now. In 1795, Madison wrote, "Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded.... In war, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended.... War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.... No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." Our founders most emphatically did not want a king, and I believe they would be shocked at the direction in which we are moving today.
What shocks me is that so many people seem unaware of or unconcerned about this constitutional crisis. To some extent it is because so much of what is done in our administrative branch today is kept under a cloak of secrecy. It is also due to the decline in quality of investigative news coverage as the mainstream media have fallen under increasingly concentrated corporate control, driven more by profits than a search for truth. There is a counter-trend in the development of alternative media such as Democracy Now! and many other sources on the internet, but these alternative media are marginal in terms of resources and public awareness, and most of them can only last as long as information on the internet remains relatively free of corporate control and government monitoring or censorship.
No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, access to reliable information is essential in order to participate fully in our democracy. An informed and engaged public is another one of the foundations of democracy, which requires good public education, transparency and accountability in government, and strong and independent media, all of which have eroded to some degree. Along with a free economy, it also requires enough economic fairness and equity so that most people feel a stake in our nation's future and so that extreme wealth is unable to gather too much power to itself. As the philosopher Plato said long ago, "An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics." But the gap between rich and poor in the United States has been widening for some time. In Plato's description of the decline of a republic, democracy led to tyranny, and it can happen here unless the people of our democracy prevent it from happening. That means you and me. We must not let the foundations of education for all, independent media, and economic justice continue to erode.
But of all the threats to democracy that exist, there is one that is greater than all the rest: fear. Greed is right up there, too, but even greed has roots in fear: the fear that we will not have enough and will never be secure unless we gather ever more resources for ourselves. It is fear, especially fear of terrorism, that is driving our domestic and foreign policies more than anything else. When President Roosevelt said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," he could have been talking to us today. Out of fear of homosexuality, some in our country would amend the Constitution to limit our rights rather than to broaden them. But above all we have developed an obsessive fear of terrorism in this country, responding in a way that could help bring to reality the scenario of endless war and executive aggrandizement that Madison worried about. Unfortunately, far too many people in this country seem willing to give up our rights and freedoms for a perception of safety.
Now, I don't deny that terrorism is a real threat, but think about this: in the past five years in the United States, while about 3,000 people died from terrorism, another 75,000 people died from AIDS, about 200,000 from car crashes, close to 400,000 from diabetes, and over 6 million from cancer and heart disease. Natural disasters have killed many more than terrorism. Yes, terrorism is a threat, but I'm begging for some perspective here. And if the concern is about nuclear terrorism, we could do a much better job of preventing it by cooperating with the international community on intelligence and on the security of nuclear materials, especially in places like Russia, by fully supporting nuclear non-proliferation treaties, by pushing the conversion of nuclear reactors from highly-enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium technology, and by acting as less of an arrogant bully in the global community, which only fuels the fears of others and feeds any desires to take us down.
A nuclear bomb going off in an American city is a horrible thing to imagine, and we should do all we reasonably can to prevent it. I pray it never happens. But as awful as it would be, it is not the absolutely worst thing that could happen to our nation. It would not be the end of civilization, unless we let it be. We have already survived the near-destruction of a major American city, and we were largely unprepared because it came from a hurricane, not a bomb. The worst thing we could do is to throw away our whole democracy out of fear of terrorism. There is no such thing as total security, and if we try to make total security our goal, there is no limit to how far tyranny could progress in our nation. As President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, "If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom."
A basic level of security might be considered one of the foundations of democracy, but we need to broaden our concept of what security means. Real security is not only about reducing the risk of terrorism. It's not only about preventing crime or having a strong military, either. These are only part of the picture. If you don't have health care or if your job is in danger, you are not secure. If you are deeply in debt (and that includes our nation, not just individuals), then you are not secure. If you live in a place that is not prepared for natural disasters then you are not secure. If we destroy the natural environment of this planet or deplete the world's resources then none of us is secure. As long as we depend on oil we are not secure. If we cannot understand or get along with people different from ourselves then we are not secure. If we can be secretly searched by our government without a warrant then we are not secure. To the extent we can have it, real security must take into account all of the facets of security, not just those that deal with physical force.
The history of our nation is certainly a mixed bag, full of violence, war and oppression as well as noble hopes and ideals. The crisis we face is not the first in our nation's history. The most positive elements of our society, and the foundations of our democracy, only came about though people who spoke out, took risks, organized and took action for the common good. If we mean what our principles say and if we love life enough to care about other people and about future generations, then we must set aside some of our fears and act courageously to preserve and improve our democracy. As much as our votes matter, our voices matter even more, both individually and collectively. So speak out. We are fortunate that we can. Whether the issue is public financing of elections and voting reform, the Bill of Rights, checks and balances, separation of church and state, quality public education, independent media, economic justice, tranparency and accountability in government, or a broader view of security, it is up to us to protect and continually rebuild the foundations of our democracy.
May it be so.
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