Our radical politics is not new. I’m reading the first volume Henry Adams’ History of the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson. Published in 1889, it begins with a look back at the realities of life and the nuances of American culture in 1800, the year Jefferson was elected as the third President of the United States. It includes an example of conservative versus liberal thinking that, if anything, is even more extreme today. Adams—the grandson of John Quincy Adams and great-grandson of John Adams—began his history with a wide, yet detailed look at American culture and the difficulties involved in travel at a time when the frontier was never far away.
“If Americans agreed in any opinion,” he wrote, “they were united in wishing for roads; but even on that point whole communities showed an indifference, or hostility, that annoyed their contemporaries” (Adams, p. 46).
As an example, Adams quotes Timothy Dwight, President of Yale from 1795 to 1817, on the Rhode Island state legislature’s refusal to fund the completion of an unfinished turnpike designed to cross the state:
“The principal reason for the refusal, as alleged by one of the members, it is said, was the following: that turnpikes and the establishment of religious worship had their origin in Great Britain, the government of which was a monarchy and the inhabitants slaves; that the people of Massachusetts and Connecticut were obliged by law to support ministers and pay the fare of turnpikes, and were therefore slaves also; that if they chose to be slaves they undoubtedly had a right to their choice, but that free-born Rhode Islanders ought never to submit to be priest-ridden, nor to pay for the privilege of travelling on the highway. This demonstrative reasoning prevailed, and the road continued in the state which I have mentioned until the year 1805. It was then completed, and free-born Rhode Islanders bowed their necks to the slavery of travelling on a good road” (ibid.).
This was, apparently, not an exception to the rule. As Adams noted, “So strong was the popular prejudice against paying for the privilege of travelling on a highway that in certain States, like Rhode Island and Georgia, turnpikes were long unknown, while in Virginia and North Carolina the roads were little better than where the prejudice was universal” (p. 47).
Flash forward a couple of centuries to 2020. On May 3, Heather Cox Richardson wrote this in her Letters from an American blog:
Jeff Kowalsky’s photograph of the “American Patriot Rally” at the Michigan statehouse on April 30 shows a large, bearded man, leaning forward, mouth open, screaming. Positioned between two police officers who are staring blankly ahead above their masks, he is focused on something they are preventing him from reaching: the legislature. His fury is palpable.
The idea that such a man is an “American Patriot” is the perverted outcome of a generations of political rhetoric that has celebrated a cartoon version of “individualism.” That rhetoric has served a purpose: to convince voters that an active government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, and promotes infrastructure—things most Americans actually like—is socialism (para. 1-2).
This kind of extreme individualism, which separates the individual from any responsibility to community, has been a force in American culture since the beginning. That said, this is not the spirit on which the nation—and the national culture—was built. For every radical individualist icon there are countless more Paul Reveres, Nathaniel Hales, Abraham Lincolns, Martin Luther Kings, and many others--whose identity is tied closely to their achievements and sacrifices on behalf of their community.
In that sense, America is at its best when it functions as a community of individuals helping not only themselves but also their families, their neighbors, their communities. That has become so apparent during the current pandemic, whose real heroes are not politicians or corporate execs but doctors, nurses, technicians, janitors, food processors, truck drivers, mail deliverers, police—people who put their lives at risk to protect and serve their community.
As for “socialism” versus “conservative” let me say this. In a democracy, government is not a separate monolith, but simply how we organize ourselves to protect and defend each other. We pay taxes to support the services we need, be it road-building or health care or protection against those who would abuse our community or cheat or take unreasonable advantage of us, and we elect fellow citizens to make sure that the work gets done. The issue, ultimately, is to determine what kind and what amount of services and protection we, the citizens, need. This is where politics must be focused and engaged. Labels like socialism and conservatism separate people and make it that much harder to come together and solve problems.
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Adams, Henry. History of the United States 1801-09. New York: Literary Classics of the United States 1986.
Richardson, Heather Cox. Letters from an American. May 3, 2020. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-3-2020?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cta
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