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An Unbiased Partisan Look at Politics
An address given by Rev. Don W. Vaughn-Foerster
At the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Grand Traverse
Traverse City, Michigan
October 24, 2004

What is it about which we can be both unbiased and partisan? The short answer is the U. S. Constitution. In fact our country may not survive as the democratic republic, which the framers of our Constitution bequeathed us, unless large numbers of citizens become more partisan for the Constitution and less biased in the way they approach its provisions. Many people in our country do approach the Constitution that way, but more and more many people view the Constitution as more of a hindrance than a help -- as something that requires more self control than they are willing to give. They don't grasp that a social contract which attempts to level the playing field for all persons is very likely the only way they will be able to keep their own rights and privileges when they are in competition with the unscrupulous and greedy among us.

Of course, some folks think they can be more unscrupulous and greedy than everyone else because they don't grasp the merits of fairness. They are so caught up in the competition for power and control that they create their own “reality” and blind themselves to the effects of their own actions. They want to act as if what they already know is enough and as if anything or anyone who contradicts their conviction can be or must be ignored. We seem to have a society filled with people who refuse to entertain any notion that may challenge their beliefs. There are people you can lead to the voting booth but you can’t make them think -- to paraphrase the old saying about horses -- or donkeys? or elephants?

However, it isn’t just the self-servingness -- and in some cases the obtuseness -- of the general populace that puts our constitutional system at risk Let’s see what else does. From the beginning, there were commercial, aristocratic, and religious forces that wanted a strong executive branch basically served by the legislative and judicial branches of government. The Revolutionary War did not rid this country of aristocrats, oligarchs, and plutocrats -- those who wanted a king or a charismatic figure to call the shots for a subservient public. Before and after the Revolution there was the notion that a strong leader makes a secure nation. The Revolutionary War did not rid this country of religious zealots and tyrannical preachers who wanted the whole country to walk in lockstep up through those fabled pearly gates into the service of the god who resided only in their minds. From the beginning of this nation there have been forces that would have this country run on authoritarian rather than democratic principles. There have been those who would act in violation of the separation of powers of the government and the civil liberties that the Bill of Rights provides for the citizens of this country.

These forces have never gone away. For instance, despite the wishful thinking of many politically religious persons, the separation of church and state is clearly asserted in the U.S. Constitution -- first, in Article VI of the Constitution and then in the First Amendment. Article VI requires of Congress, executive and judicial officers both of the United States and of the several states, an oath or affirmation to support the Constitution but specifies that no religious test “shall ever be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the United States.” Religion and government clearly are separated. The First Amendment restrains Congress from making any law that would tend toward any establishment of religion. Even so, persons and groups, who would have their version of religious morality control the rest of the nation, steadily snip away at our constitutional protections by pressing for constitutional amendments about such things as laws against abortion, homosexuality, school vouchers for religious schools, same-sex-marriage, and the like. If such folks as pursue these things have read the Constitution, either they do not understand it or reject it in favor of a more autocratic, theocratic system.

` Measures to restrict civil liberties and provide for more centralized authoritarian control of society have continued to put our constitutional system at risk. These measures have ranged from the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1799, which were designed to curb criticism of the government at a time when war with France seemed imminent and which gave the president unprecedented powers to deport undesirable foreigners, to the World War II concentration camps on our own soil in which German and Japanese Americans were held for the duration of the war, on to the Patriot Act of 2001, which gives our current president even more powers than the acts of 1799.

Along with these threats to constitutional guarantees of individual rights, there has been the growing influence of a military-industrial complex as identified by Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1961 in his last, and probably his most controversial, speech as president, Eisenhower acknowledged that the post WWII world compelled the United States to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions but he went on to warn about the influence of this complex. He pointed out that the influence of this complex is virtually total in our economic, political, and even spiritual lives and he warned that we must guard against its unwarranted influence. He went on to say that “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

The disastrous rise of misplaced power about which Eisenhower warned seems to have taken place. We now have in place in this country a complex arrangement of large corporations and the military that has insinuated its way into almost every national consideration. The potential for abuse is enormous. We should worry along with the Tao The Ching which says, “An army’s harvest is a waste of thorns, Conscription of a multitude of men drains the next year dry.” We should listen to James Madison who, in the oppressive climate of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1799, wrote, “There never was a people whose liberties long survived a standing army,” and “The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the dangerous weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad.” (From “Political Reflection” in Aurora General Advertiser, 2/23/1799). Not to perceive in this situation a threat to our rights and liberties as guaranteed by the Constitution is to have our heads in the sand.

Even more compromising and insidious, however, is the power private corporations have gained over our public life. In a way the military-industrial complex is only the handmaiden of the multinational corporations of which there become fewer and fewer as they gobble each other up. If military power is a threat, the enormous wealth that can buy military power is a greater threat. Whether our Constitution can survive the great influx of money into our political process that is now going on is an open question.

The irony is that it is the way our Constitution was interpreted by our own Supreme Court in 1886 that set both this country and the world up to be run eventually by mega-financial interests. In the 1886 case of Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, a dispute over a rail bed route, the U.S. Supreme Court deemed that a private corporation was a “natural person” under the U.S. Constitution and therefore entitled to protection under the Bill of Rights. Ostensibly, this gave corporations the same powers as private citizens. But, as time has shown, corporations actually have far more power than any private citizen. Corporations can marshal the votes of large numbers of private citizens in ways that single citizens cannot. Corporations can defend and exploit their rights and freedoms more vigorously than any individual and therefore they are more free. Furthermore, corporations have become the primary vehicle by which those with the most money can siphon it out of those who have less, thereby creating probably the greatest disparity in wealth in this nation’s history. This Supreme Court decision, according to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, “could not be supported by history, logic or reason” and was a great legal blunder that changed the whole idea of democratic government. I think it set it up for automatic oligarchies to form. (This paragraph based on the article “The Uncooling of America: the History of Corporations in the United States” by William Kalle Lasn.)

I have been painting a dismal picture of the state of our democratic republic but that is only because I think something can be done to improve its state. We have to start stripping away those noxious attitudes and self-serving expectations that are eating away at it. Raising this issue is something like getting into hot water, but isn’t getting into hot water what keeps you clean?

Working on this may be discouraging at times. But we can surmount discouragement. There is a story in a book on punctuation that relates quite well to our situation. The book's title is Eats, Shoots and Leaves; its author is Lynne Truss, an English punctuationist who would dearly love for people to show right relationships between their words, phrases, and clauses by using commas and other puntuational equipment properly. Ms. Truss tells about the time she was at a book-signing and a rather bedraggled woman came up and said despairingly, “Oh, I’d love to learn about punctuation.” The author, with a laugh and holding up a copy of her book, replied, "Here, this is the book for you, madam." Acting as if she thought she had been disagreed with, the woman said, "No, I mean it. I really would love to know how to do it. I mean, I did learn it at school, but I've forgotten it now, and it's awful. I put all my commas in the wrong place, and as for the apostrophe...!!!" She threw up her hands in despair. The author responded," So shall I sign it to anyone in particular?" The woman went on, "And, I'm a teacher. I'm quite ashamed really, not knowing about grammar and all that; so I'd love to know about punctuation, but the trouble is there's just nowhere you can turn, is there?”

This story seems a classic case of the adage, "You can take a horse to water but you can't make him drink." It demonstrates how you can virtually drown people with information about how our political system is failing to work as it should, but you can't make their minds absorb that information. But, even as the author knew that there was information in her book that would help people master punctuation if they would just pursue it, we know that there are resources for us to pursue that higher citizenship which enables us to do what needs to be done when the chips are down. For instance, I was greatly encouraged the other day by an article in the Record-Eagle that told of faith-based groups actually trying to promote election-year civility. Apparently Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and Evangelicals are getting together and trying to find a middle ground that will help them deal in a socially constructive way with the current wedge issues of abortion, same-sex-marriage, homosexuality and the like. They are actually trying to work out compromises that will get all parties some (but not all) of what they want. Win-Win may become a watchword again. Then there are increasing numbers of orthodox Christians and evangelicals who understand that the New Testament does not endorse many of our nation’s present and proposed social policies but instead calls for helping the poor, keeping religion and government separate (i.e., rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, etc.), and promotes alternatives to violence and war in the handling of crime and terrorism. There are people out there strong in compassion and with rational minds. We can find ways to link up with them and begin to strengthen public awareness of the dangers to our constitutional system. We are not alone.

Yes, we can hear the words of Hermann Goering telling us how easy it is for leaders to plunge us into war, but he is also telling us that if we do not want war -- or poverty, or civil repression -- we do not have to let our leaders beguile or frighten us into those things. We can look to our own strengths and courage and confront the forces that would lead us into someone else’s desired Armageddon. We do not have to let our fears and doubts prevent us from facing the issue head on. But, most of all, I am encouraged by my memories of the civil rights and peace movements of 30 to 40 years ago. The difficulties we faced in those days seemed insurmountable but our country went a long distance in overcoming them. That there is still more to do does not cancel what was done. We are now in a time that requires all who believe in the rights and liberties embedded in our Constitution to organize again -- to make clear again to a self-serving leadership and a docile public that our democratic future requires us to return to the intent and spirit of the framers of our Constitution.

In those days some 30 to 40 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. spelled out our hope as well as anyone could when he said “There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.” That is still the call to commitment that we must respond to in this day when the very nature of our democratic republic is at stake.

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