THE UNFINISHED WORK OF WE-THE-PEOPLE BEGINS TO BE FINISHED

It seems to me that President Obama, possibly for the first time in American history, has united two fundamentals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Historical forces now have reached a democratic apotheosis.

"We the people"--the first three words of the Preamble to the Constitution--are subjective words that have vexed the American nation since the time, 226 years ago, they were written. The vexation is in the question of who is the "we?"

Eighty-seven years after the Declaration was written, Abraham Lincoln gazed over a blood-soaked battlefield and past the Constitution to the Declaration and for the first time firmly established in the American conscience the affirmation that the nation was "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Until that time the proposition was only a promissory note.

Lucy Stone, one of America’s first advocates for women’s rights, asked, a decade before Lincoln’ speech: “‘We the People’? Which ‘We the People’? The women were not included.” Neither were white males who did not own property, American Indians, or African Americans--slave or free. "We" at the time of the founding of the country obviously and tragically did not include everyone. It was always a promise awaiting its fulfillment. Stone and Lincoln both looked forward “to the great task remaining before us.” 

"We...the people"--This triumvirate of words, declared this week from the highest office in the land on two of the most important events on the nation's calendar (this year, coinciding), is instantiated in the very person of its orator. The oration came from a person of color, on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, standing near a rainbow-coalition of a Supreme Court (male, female, black, white, Hispanic, Jew, Protestant, Catholic). We-the-people, it was proposed, includes everyone.

 The overall theme of the inaugural oration took, for the first time, the central proposition of the Declaration and the first three subjective words of the Preamble, such that the two essential phrases--one affirming equality, the other inclusion--meld into a single national avowal for which the nation now can rededicate itself “to the unfinished work” on the battlefield of our time--that is, to the proposition that We the people (now all the people) are created equal.

INTEGRATED HISTORY

Some people segregate historical narratives--e.g., the story of America--into histories of separate peoples. However, they cannot be separated without creating a sanitized, falsified history. A true historiography of America is the history of one country, not separate peoples. (And, yes, part of that narrative IS the legal segregation of "races" who were still in a relation with each other.) Explicitly, you cannot write the (white) history of America, as if there is a such thing, without writing alongside (actually within it) it the history of people of color in America. How would you write the narrative of the founding of (European) America without including the story of Native Americans? History is a fabric in which you cannot look at only the warp without the weave (there would be no "fabric," no substance).


 If there is any such thing as a "white history," it can only be understood as a relation with people of color in America. At the level of individual people, many white families in America (mine included) can only properly be understood by including (largely unacknowledged and unwritten) narratives of relations with blacks. No group "deserves" a "place"--that's segregated historiography; but the real story must be written and taught.


Historical themes and strands must be chosen. If a widely lauded and salient theme of America--what we are about and who we are--has been the historical development of freedom, liberty, democracy, empowering the common man, justice, and so on--how could you disinclude the narrative of black struggle for all these things? Is it not logical to make the case that this is one of the most important narratives in American (indeed world) history? This narrative can ONLY be written, not by segregating the story, but by including "black history" as integral to the American narrative.

AMERICAN DECLINISM, AMERICAN RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY

Seems to me that since the founding by Europeans of the American colonies there has existed the Christian thought of "the City on a Bright Shining Hill" which led directly to ideas of American Exceptionalism and even to Manifest Destiny. God was seen as being resolutely on the side of America. America's experiences in the 20th century--acknowledged as the American Century--including the success of the Second World War and more recently the "winning" of the Cold War, reinforced the ideology of that exceptionalism, as if the nation could do no wrong, especially in foreign policy but also in domestic affairs. The fact that America has the world's largest economy and is militarily unchallenged (for now) has been internalized by Americans as reinforcement and proof of its (moral) superiority. The reasoning goes thus (like the Social Darwinists of the 19th century who saw "natural" God-given superiority of the upper social classes): That America is on top means that it was supposed to be on top as pre-ordained by God. This must have been part, then, of what many see as American hubris and some of the exploits of American foreign adventurism, such as both the Vietnam and Iraq wars. If America has been imperialistic, then God must have willed it.

If Christian scripture is accurately describing the current dissolution of American social conditions (assuming you mean to indicate that Scripture was specifically foretelling American history 1,900 years and more into the future from when it was written), then there seems to be some historical cognitive dissonance between the historical idea of America's metaphysical founding, and subsequent singular guidance by God (which surely influenced the conduct of American foreign policy), and the current biblical apocalyptic interpretation of its decline. The American Christian cognitive dissonance results from the belief that America, the New Jerusalem, is now in the throes of evil forces leading to debauchery and imminent demise. All this as if Christian ideology itself had nothing to do with the historical evolution of current conditions.

I understand that there must be a great deal of frustration among some Christian groups, leading to the Religious Right and to a wing of the Tea Party movement. It (the American religious interpretation of America's place in Christian teleology) has at least partly led, I believe, to imperial overreach (two current Asian land wars) and some of the very conditions of its (near) demise. Certainly the lingering costs of the Vietnam misadventure and the already-one-trillion-dollar war in Iraq have been a significant part of the current American malaise. We have seen erosion of civil liberties (the Patriot Act) and the squandering of treasure on needless wars (and a $700 billion military budget this year). American religious ideology has surely been an important contributor to what has led us to the current situation.

In addition, Christian ideology does not seem to value God's Creation, either, since capitalism has been essentialized as a "natural" outgrowth of the Christian worldview of how to conduct human affairs. Capitalism (interpreted as ordained by God as the "natural" economic system), for its part, requires constant growth and search for new markets and resources. Christianity largely endorses this state of affairs, does it not?

Can American Christians let go of some of their religio-political beliefs (certainly not all are destructive), so that capitalism as a globally monolithic system can be jettisoned? So that foreign (mis)adventurism and imperial overreach do not drain our coffers? So that the City on a Bright Shining Hill does not fire destructive military cannonades into the surrounding landscape? I fear not; most likely in times of turmoil the current religious ideology governing the affairs of the economic-governmental superstructure will be clutched even tighter. In that case, we will just wait for the end while we continue to clutch to our bosom the ideas of ordained Exceptionalism. At least we will feel morally superior while we watch the destruction.

AMERICA HAS BECOME MORE AMERICA

With the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States, I feel that America has taken a great forward leap to fulfilling its promise made long ago and kept alive, sometimes dimly, through several centuries.

Thus, I see the election of Barack Obama, a black American as President, as a historical moment that is consumation of a long wait, a waiting that fulfills the hope of an experiment. The American experiment--never assured of success--has always been that all Americans would have a chance to effect their potential.

It is difificult for me to express my personal feelings about Sen. Obama ascending to the highest office in the land and arguably the most important in the world. Having grown up in a small southern town in the 1950s and '60s, where and when prejudicial attitudes were the norm, I, too, living in that racist milieu, was a child racist, or at least I breathed the air of institutional and social racism and accepted it as normal.

The historical moment of Obama's election was so palpable to me that it felt as if several time-space cycles phased in together at the precise moment that they were "destined" to take place. It felt like a completion, an old promise fulfilled for America generally and for me personally. When I saw Barack Obama embrace his running mate Joe Biden on stage at the end of Obama's victory speech on election night, it seemed much more than two election winners celebrating, it seemed to be the apotheosis of that centuries-old promise, of racial reconciliation. Again, it was also my completion, and my apotheosis.

We, as a people, living in the present, have become more of what "we"--envisioned for us 220 years ago by America's Founders--promised ourselves. It was a Covenant that could not be fulfilled during those long years. The Promise had to be kept (barely) alive through centuries of slavery, through turmoil of the Civil War, through dark days of Jim Crow, through struggles of the Civil Rights Movement, and through years of resignation that matters would not change.

I am speaking of hope, the hope that was the vision of the Founders. That hope and vision were that America could become, one day, the land of equal opportunity, the land of the free, the land of hope, and the place where people could dream of fulfilling their dreams. Now, with the advent of a "black" man to the highest office in the land, that hope is now reality.

America has now taken a giant step to realizing its potential. The election of Obama is the fulfillment, a historical moment, when America has now become more of itself. America has become more of what it has always promised. America has been waiting to become more America. That moment has arrived.