In this season of peace and joy and celebration, accentuated in many homes by the presence of Charles Dickens’, “A Christmas Carol,” whether on television or in print, comes useful advice for America’s progress in overcoming our deep political division and polarization, and fulfilling our yearning for a measure of civility and reconciliation, from my favorite English novelist’s lesser known book, “The Life and Times of Martin Chuzzlewit,” (1843), which Dickens once told a friend was his “best work thus far.”
Dickens was no great admirer of the United States when he visited for the first time in 1842, but he mused about America’s potential if it lived up to its ideals and best standards. In “Martin Chuzzlewit,” Dickens sends the title character to America, which he satirizes as a country filled with self-promoting hucksters. He writes critically of slavery and our propensity to violence. Twenty-five years later, he returned to America and noted its significant improvements. In “Chuzzlewit,” Mark Tapley, the title character’s servant, wonders during his voyage back to England how, if he were an artist, he would paint the American eagle. Chuzzlewit replies:
“Paint it as like an Eagle as you could, I suppose.” “No,” said Mark. “That wouldn’t do for me, sir. I should want to draw it like a Bat, for its short-sightedness; like a Bantam, for its bragging; like a Magpie, for its honesty; like a Peacock, for its vanity; like an Ostrich, for its putting its head in the mud, and thinking nobody sees it.” “And like a Phoenix, for its power of springing from the ashes of all its faults and vices and soaring up anew into the sky!” said Martin. “Well, Mark, let us hope so.”
Of course, we should all hope so. What Gunnar Myrdal called the “American Creed”—the foundational values embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution —are rallying points for American citizens to honor, defend and, when we fall short, to fulfill. These values and principles, set forth by those, to borrow from Abraham Lincoln, who conceived this nation in liberty, are the guiding lights of the nation. The men who signed the Declaration, Lincoln observed, established standards intended to chart the American course, with goals and principles, “even though not perfectly attained, are to be revered by all and constantly approximated.” As Myrdal noted, “The schools teach them, the churches preach them. The courts pronounce their judicial decisions in their terms.” There has been, perhaps more often than we care to admit, a gap between the creed and governmental practice, which is why achievement of the creed remains aspirational, but the gap has supplied powerful motive to many across the decades in the battle for justice.
The fundamental values that define the American Creed are the ties that bind our nation, the principles that should govern even in the most challenging of times. The Declaration of Independence provides the ends, the Constitution, the means. The essence of the creed—American Constitutionalism—calls on all citizens, as the distinguished historian, Michael Kammen, wrote in his Pulitzer-Prize winning book, “A Machine That Would Go of Itself,” to accept “conflict within consensus.” The ratification of the Constitution in 1787-1788, and all subsequent amendments, represents our agreement— for governors and governed alike-- to the constitutional consensus to obey the Constitution. This is the doctrine of the Social Contract, the agreement to which all are a party, without which American democracy disintegrates into a world in which the strong do what they want, the weak suffer what they must, legal restraints disappear and law is reduced to the arbitrary will of the ruler.
Within this consensus, we will experience conflict, for how could it be otherwise in a nation of 300-plus million people, but the conflicts will occur within the framework of the Constitution, between the lines, so to speak, including the commitment to representation and compromise, equal protection and due process, and an absolute commitment to playing by the rules, which will prevent sharp differences from spilling over into acts of violence, or worse, rebellion. With this commitment, we certainly have the opportunity, in darkest times, when divisions threaten to boil over, to rise like a Phoenix and maintain a governmental system which, for all its imperfections, has remained the envy of the world for 250 years.
David Adler is president of The Alturas Institute, created to advance American Democracy through promotion of the Constitution, civic education, equal protection and gender equality. He has lectured nationally and internationally on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. His scholarly writings have been quoted by the US Supreme Court, lower federal courts and by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
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