Joseph Ellis uses this premise to help guide us through his book, AMERICAN DIALOGUE. That is, he's not so much interested in proving points (although you could make a case that he does), as much as laying out a fascinating groundwork that hopefully will lead to more productive and civil conversation.
For the most part, the conversation centers around the availability of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the people of the United States. As Ellis puts it: "'We the people' has been a struggle, residual prejudices may disappear but never die, and the ongoing battle for racial equality remains the longest, most challenging struggle in American history."
One part of that struggle is economic inequality. Ellis compares America's Guilded Age (of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century) to our current state of economic affairs. He writes, "[T]he United States has a higher level of income inequality than any other democracy in the developed world. In effect, as the size of the economic pie has grown over the last fifty years, larger slices have increasingly gone to a smaller segment of American society."
Throughout AMERICAN DIALOGUE, Ellis refers to the ideas of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison and George Washington to engage us in a discussion of the development of the unique republic called the United States.
"These voices from the past speak from different contexts with distinctive political accents, but they constitute a chorus in sounding three clear notes," he says. "First, the United States has committed the predictable mistakes of a novice superpower most rooted in overconfidence bordering on arrogance; second, wars have become routinized because foreign policy has become militarized at the same time as the middle class has become immunized from military service; and third, the creedal conviction that American values are transplantable to all regions of the world is highly suspect and likely to draw the United States into nation-building project beyond its will or capacity to complete."
A few pages after making these points, Ellis brings us up to the present day when writing about our current political situation. "Trump embodies, in almost archetypical form, the demagogic downside of democracy... The very fact that a person with Trump's obvious mental, emotional, and moral limitations could be chosen to lead the free world casts a dark shadow of doubt over the credibility and reliability of the United States as the first democratic superpower."
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| Joseph Ellis |
Referencing America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Ellis notes: "One can only imagine George Washington rolling over in his grave. For the very suggestion that the British Empire should serve as the role model for American leadership in the world defies the core values of the American founding. A republic, by definition, cannot be an empire."
As for the consequences of not heeding this wisdom, Ellis goes on to state: "... The role of superpower in the twenty-first century is unlikely to prove cost-effective. When the ledger is closed on the military budget for Iraq and Afghanistan, the cost will approach $4 trillion. Such a sum, if spent on domestic priorities, could have shored up Medicare for a generation and paid for the restoration of America's aging infrastructure."
As the founding leaders struggled with establishing a system of government (states' rights vs. a federalist view) they also struggled with how to treat the indigenous population (i.e. Native Americans) and slaves.
"Slavery [and I would add how we treated America's indigenous population] will forever remain the signature sin of the founding."
The last chapter of AMERICAN DIALOGUE is a fascinating capsulization of what Ellis sees as three important moments in American history - Washington's commitment to war with England after the battles at Lexington and Concord; the treaty of Versailles, specifically how John Jay boldly decided to negotiate with France for the western border of the United States; and, perhaps most importantly, Philadelphia in 1787, when members of the Constitutional Convention had to decide whether to revise or replace the Articles of Confederation. [Spoiler alert, they replaced them.]
In summing up this rich and varied history of ideas and people, Ellis points to the opening words of the Preamble to the Constitution, "We the People..."
It is our very diversity, claims Ellis, and its inherent and evolving tension, that creates the need for continual dialogue. It is also our strength.
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