A More Perfect Union

The preamble to the Constitution says that one of its goals is “to form a more perfect union.” I had an English teacher who objected to that because she said it was either perfect or not, you couldn’t make it more perfect. At the time, that made sense. But I think I now understand what James Madison had in mind when he wrote that.

It’s been said that America is a grand experiment, and indeed the study of politics is called political science, although it’s not science the way other sciences are science. And so while we may strive for perfection, we may mistakes, we back track, we move forward, and then maybe sideways, and then to the other side. We try new things. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t, sometimes we agree and sometimes disagree, but we keep working at it. And all that means there are lots of things that consist in the American Spirit.

We often hear people say after some event, “That’s not who we are.” But while the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement are who we are so too are David Duke and the KKK. Just as the Voting Rights Act is who we are so too are Jim Crow laws. Just as calls for peace and non-violence are who we are so too are calls for violence and actual violence. That’s part of our striving for a more perfect union. Even when we think we might be there, there is always room for growth, ways to call forth the better angels of our nature in order to be better, to move onto perfection.

Seeing our country as a grand experiment also says that we have to look at what works and what doesn’t, to deal with facts which are verifiable, not just stipulated. If we simply believed what some people said, we would have our electricity powered through cold fusion. But that was a false claim. It could not be replicated through experimentation. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts. If it is a claim of fact, then it can be verified or not. And then, as George Conway said “If you don’t change your views as you learn new facts, then many of the facts you believe probably aren’t facts.”

But before we can get to that more perfect union, I believe we also have to focus on the beginning of the preamble which says “We the people…” In many ways we are still working on that “we” part. Sometimes in our grand experiment we are closer to it than others, but that too is what we should be striving for, a more perfect we. And that means it’s up to us.

Last week I wrote about words mattering. And what we see is that those who can yell the loudest and be the most obnoxious or say the most outrageous things will get more air time, because they can drive ratings. And so we get this perception that we are more divided than we are, and get exposure to things that probably shouldn’t be given much attention. But, do you know how we end that? We turn it off. We don’t watch it. We don’t listen to it. We don’t read it. Because when the extremes get ignored, then those who have been making money off of them will change and begin presenting a different and more civilized product.

Finally, as a new administration begins, I want to quote from John Wesley, as I did on Sunday: “Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may. Herein all the children of God may unite, notwithstanding these smaller differences.”

And when we live into we the people, then we stand a much better chance at a more perfect union and “that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”