Charter Day Remarks, 1999
February 6, 1999
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." So wrote Thomas Jefferson about slavery - the great stain on our national story. Might we not today, for different reasons, borrow Jefferson's words. Should not we "tremble for our country when we consider that God is just?"
Our President has broken a bond of precious trust. He has degraded the great office that was our gift to him. He has embarrassed his country. And if that were all, it would be tragedy enough.
But this is not a one-man show. The full dimensions of this sad tale verge on the operatic, with principal players, secondary figures, extras by the hundreds, and multiple story-lines.
And no matter how many times the tenor gets stabbed, he'll sing loud enough to reach the cheap seats.
It is as sickening as it is astounding-an American epic that so many of us wish would just go away.
But it will not. Nor should we delude ourselves that closure beckons with the end of the impeachment process. It may take a long time to fully measure what this means for our Republic, or to discover what we have done to ourselves.
For in the end, it is to ourselves that we must turn. Leaders do not spring from the ground in full flower. We grow them, water them, allow them to bloom, we the people, we bear the ultimate responsibility for the Republic. Whatever it becomes says much about what we have become. So, yes, the impeachment debacle is cause for pain. But what really worries me-what causes me to "tremble for my country", is the almost certain accelerating effect that this sorry spectacle will have upon an already cynical popular view of politics, of politicians and of the making of public policy.
For at least a generation we have borne the burden of politicians, some in office, some merely hungry for office, who have based their campaigns, indeed their careers, on the crackpot notion that our government, the American government, is the mortal enemy, of our liberty, of our honor, of our legitimate aspirations.
It is one thing, and a right thing, to argue about the cost of government, about its scope, about its competence. These are legitimate-these are vital issues. It is quite another to suggest that, by its very nature, our freely elected government is evil. That idea, in our America, is historically inaccurate-constitutionally unimaginable-and profoundly dangerous.
Dangerous because the growth of such a distorted notion was first a cause, and later a justification, for the damaging flight of so many from the vital duties of active citizenship.
There are other forces which have degraded our public life and fueled public cynicism about our elected leaders. Perhaps the most potent of these is a stunning popular ignorance about our constitutional system and the defining events in our national history. In a 1996 Washington Post poll, only 24% of those surveyed could name their United States Senators, just 26% knew the length of a United States Senator's term, and 6% could identify the Chief Justice of the United States.
We have all read the full results of these surveys. They need no further repetition.
But here is the terrible truth. Our founders created a government that will survive as a guardian of liberty only with the active support of citizens who are both engaged and informed. Those honored with the power to govern must be accountable to voters who care about the vitality of our public institutions-and who understand what is required to preserve that vitality.
Last November, 36% of eligible voters participated in congressional elections. In 1996, barely 49% voted in the presidential elections. These are signs of sickness, not of health. These are clear warning signs that the foundation upon which our representative government depends is weakening and growing weaker.
A public culture crippled by apathy and infected by ignorance spawns other enemies of freedom. As more and more reject the idea of active citizenship, many who remain engaged embrace intensely focused but narrow views. These activists are passionate about a single issue and indifferent to all others. They are one-cause citizens, and they see the complexities of our time through the distorting prism of a glass that makes balance impossible and context irrelevant. Name the subject-you will find a "one-cause caucus" eager to impose what are inevitably minority views upon an indifferent, and thus unrepresented, majority.
We have, to take one example, seen the rise of preacher-politicians, or is it, politician preachers, who seem convinced that God is a politician with views remarkably like their own. Does God really have a firm opinion about the right number of rest stops on interstate highways? I hope He doesn't. In the American system, you cannot make a religion of politics and you should not make religion political. But we are in danger of doing both.
Our founders took measured-determined steps to insure that our country would never be constitutionally a Christian nation, that we would never be a nation with a state religion of any kind. But they took equally measured, determined steps to guarantee that the private right to worship would be meticulously protected. Understanding that critical constitutional difference demands a thoughtful and engaged electorate. That so many of our fellow citizens manifestly do not understand is yet another of the dangers we confront.
The rising tide of constitutional and historical ignorance is exacerbated by the popular media's increasing abdication of its responsibility. The columnist, Russell Baker, has written about
And thought is not the only thing absent. Also nearly invisible is any serious attention to important matters of public policy. The capers-congresses-and chases are dominant almost to the point of exclusion.
Mine is a somber message. Many, even those who share some of these concerns, will argue that I have missed the larger point, the larger point being that America has never been richer, safer, or more content. We do enjoy unprecedented prosperity. Or as journalist Greg Easterbrook reminds us, "Even home runs are at an all-time high."
To those who argue that proposition, and I respect them, I reply that you have missed an even larger point. Economic progress, social stability, the true happiness of our people - none can be long sustained if our public life is impoverished by citizen neglect, if our constitutional system is left to the mercy of accidental leaders, unaccountable to an informed electorate. Political liberty, economic freedom, both depend upon citizens who understand and who care and who are passionate about the discharge of their duties as free men and women. Upon this proposition our founders staked their "lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor." What was true for them, remains true for us.
The citizen leaders who imagined and created our government were not afraid to remind us of its demands. As the delegates to the Constitutional Convention left Independence Hall for the last time, the crowd that met them was anxious and concerned. One in that gathering shouted out above the din, "What have you given us?" To that question, Benjamin Franklin replied, "a republic, if you can keep it." A republic, if you can keep it.
And throughout our history, our greatest leaders have been those who knew that government's purpose is far more than to preserve public ease-it is also to promote public service. And so these leaders-true leaders-were not afraid to remind us of our public obligation. More than 60 years ago, in the midst of the great depression-in the shadow of the Second World War, Franklin Roosevelt spoke words that still stir-and still shine:
To my generation, and the one which follows, much has been given. But not much has been expected. We turn now to face our destiny, a destiny dependent upon whether, upon whether, we have the will, the intelligence, the civic soul, to place safely into later hands the glorious republic it has been our honor to inherit.
Of our destiny, what would we have history say?
