First Principles

 I choose to read all sorts of material to try to remain informed. Amazingly, I never cease to be amazed at what I do not know. I was not familiar with Thomas Ricks, but the reviews of his book, “First Principles” struck me as most important. How he was able to extract from history the endless disagreements over serious matters persisted from the start of our nation. I always thought that there was universal agreement regarding the contents of the Constitution. That and much else were most enlightening and placed current political differences in a broader context. Surely, it does not make the current problems more amendable, but at least I know that these problems may never end.

Thomas Hicks closes his volume with a series of recommendations for us. I took the liberty to copy verbatim his suggestions 

1. Don’t Panic

Madison’s checks and balances have thus far worked. We need to ensure that the system works. This begins with ensuring that eligible citizens are able to vote. The ballot box is the basic building block of our system.

2. Curtain campaign finance

We should drop the bizarre American legal fiction that corporations are people, enjoying all the rights of citizens, including unfettered campaign donations as a form of free speech. Corporations today possess greater rights than do people, as they cannot jailed or executed. The founders would have considered corporate campaign spending the essence of political corruption.

3. Re-focus on the public good

Health is a public good which is a reason everyone should have access to health care. In the long term, so are education, transportation infrastructure, the environment, and public safety. These are the things that come under the “general welfare” of the people that is mentioned twice in the Constitution. The idea has its roots in an assertion by Cicero that “salus populist suprema lex esto”, i.e., Welfare of the public is the supreme law. With that in mind, Americas need to put less emphasis on the property rights of the individual and more on the rights of the people as a whole. As Michael Sandel’s puts it, “to be free is more than a matter of pursuing my interests unimpeded, or satisfying my desires, whatever they happen to be. It is to share in self-government, to deliberate about the common good, to have a meaningful voice in shaping the forces that govern our lives”.

4. Promote, cultivate, and reward virtue in public life — but don’t count on it

The next step is to treat people who think differently from you with courtesy. Hear them out. Try to understand their points of view. Ask yourself how they came to those views. Even better, ask them —not to score debating points, but to learn.  At the very least, you may come away with a better understanding of where your own side has erred or overlooked aspects of the problem. As part of that dialogue, when members of your own side violate American fundamental principles, speak out against them.

5. Respect our core institutions — and push them

Even at their most bitter moments, the founders all believed that government had a central role to play in American life, even if they disagreed how that should be manifested. They generally held a respect for inquiry, for the establishment of facts, and the intense debate about their meaning. 

We should question the view that the government is almost always the problem. Sometimes it is the solution, especially when it serves the common good.

6. Wake up Congress

The branch of the federal government that has failed most in recent years has been Congress. Two of its major functions are to be the voice of the popular will and a check on the executive. The framers of the Constitution would be surprised and chagrined by the passivity of Congress in recent decades, and especially its failure to assert firmly its role as a co-equal of the government with the executive. 

7. Enrich the political vocabulary 

The Revolutionary generation had a mixed record in discussing political issues, and we can learn from by both their successes and shortfalls. They devised ways to speak about independence and equality, but struggled to develop a political vocabulary that addressed the persistence of partisanship. Do we have an adequate vocabulary for the issues of our own era — political decency, global warming, dealing with terrorism, the growing inequality in income and wealth? Do we need to “make America great again,” or rather do we need to make America more American?

8. Reclaim the definition of the “in-American”

Someone who became an American citizen yesterday enjoys all the rights of a person whose family landed here three centuries ago. Political freedom begins with the freedoms of conscience, assembly, and speech. So speak out on behalf of our rights, and remember that doing so begins by protecting the rights of others, even when we disagree with them. Especially protect repugnant speech, no matter how ugly. When in doubt, remember that someone might one day try to label your own views as too offensive to be allowed public expression.

9. Rehabilitate “happiness”

We need to appreciate the Enlightenment’s broader, richer notion of happiness and make it again about finding one’s place in the world, enjoying what we have and what we see in it, and appreciate the beauty of the Earth during our short time on it.

10. Know your history 

Remember the founders made huge errors and decisions, most notably by writing slavery into the basic law of the land, with catastrophic consequences. Slavery was not a stain on the country, it was woven into the original fabric. The nation was founded in part on the acceptance of slavery. American slavery in turn was constructed on racial lines — that is, a belief that black people were inferior to white people, which is the core of white supremacism. Slavery no longer exists in this country, but that belief system remains alive. As the nation moves forward, we need to be clear-eyed about where it came from. 

In studying the founders; struggles and then thinking of where the country is today, we should recognize that the American experiment is still underway — and can be lost if we are not careful. In moments of doubt, we should focus on finding ways to continue and improve this experiment. Despite its flaws, it is worth it.