Safeguarding the Idea and Ideals of America
By: Lindi Tardif
Tags: Declaration Independence, Liberty, A More Perfect Union, 2020 Presidential Race, Us Constitution

Safeguarding the Idea and Ideals of America

In 2009, I was sworn in as a citizen of the United States. The ceremony was all the more thrilling because it was held in Boston’s Faneuil Hall, where Revolutionary-era Americans had met many times to protest the hated Stamp Act, decry the bloody Boston Massacre, and otherwise fan the flames of liberty.

I, a black woman born and raised in apartheid South Africa, was proud to become a part of this great country. I believed I knew exactly what the United States was and what that meant.

I was thrilled by the fact that folks from all over the world had come together to join a nation not because we shared ethnicity, history, religion, or language, but because we embraced certain beliefs. America is not just a place on the map or a 50-state composition. It’s a set of ideas, embedded in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Pledge of Allegiance, to which everyone can subscribe: “We the People of the United States” are one nation, under God, based upon our shared belief that “all men are created equal” and are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” among which are “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Building on these foundational ideas, we became the healthiest democratic republic in the world, undergirded by rule of law. We have been continually energized by the influx of people from every other nation in the world. And we are fighting to overcome past evils and truly provide liberty and justice for all. America is both an idea and an ideal, one which we continually strive to embrace more perfectly.

That’s what I knew to be true as I raised my hand to recite the Oath of Allegiance to my new country. But I understood, of course, that we Americans weren’t always of the same mind about this.

Some of us see ourselves as liberty lovers who stemmed the tide of fascism and communism, brought apartheid to its knees, fought a bloody Civil War to end slavery, and returned to the “trenches” again and again to slay Jim Crow, to prize life, to protect justice, and to encourage all to pursue happiness.

Others, however, see us as rapacious imperialists, indelibly stained by our “original sin” of slavery, who casually take the lives of the not-yet-born, impede the lives of the unfortunate, turn a blind eye to a biased criminal justice system, and tolerate glaring income inequality and wealth disparity.

Despite our lapses and failures, I feel we have always understood, on some level, that we are engaged in “the great American experiment” of self-governance, a multi-century quest to become “a more perfect union.” We’ve always known that the path would sometimes be rocky and that we would sustain setbacks. But we are still majestic, for though we have fallen short more times than we like to remember, in our hearts we’ve remained dedicated to the ideal of liberty and justice for all. This has been and remains our North Star, a bright light that blazed even more brightly when Barack Obama was twice elected president. These twin victories seemed to have demonstrated that, among other good things, America was willing to judge people according to character rather than skin color.

And then came Donald Trump.

In many ways, I was predisposed to support a conservative presidential candidate in 2016. I am, after all, an evangelical Christian leaning mostly right of center. I’ve always favored upholding conservative values, even when I lived in South Africa after apartheid ended and democracy was ushered in. But, over the past four years, I’ve had to ask myself some pretty challenging questions that I hope others will consider as well.

Obama’s pair of victories seemed to have signaled that America had taken yet another giant step toward its guiding star. Trump’s victory seemed to signal the opposite, for he gave a firm nod to racism and white supremacy. What does Trump’s 2016 electoral college victory — and the fact that about 74 million people voted in 2020 to give him another four years — say about who we are and what we value?

For example, what does it say about the importance we place on liberty? A free press, informing the people and shining a bright light in the dark corners of government, is necessary if there is to be liberty. Why, then, did we find it so easy to overlook the constant attacks on press as “the enemy of the people” and personal attacks on journalists such as Megan Kelly (then at Fox News) for simply doing their jobs? And how comfortable are we with major media outlets that have become shameless partisan rags?

What importance do we place on justice? Do we truly value “liberty and justice for all,” or are we only concerned with policies, practices, and procedures that are slanted in our favor? Do we care fiercely about babies in the womb, but are happy to wash our hands of any responsibility to them once they are born? Are we truly comfortable with a leader who wants protesters to adhere strictly to the law while ignoring concerns about systemic bias in the criminal justice system? Are not both important?

What importance do we place on domestic tranquility? What do we think about a president who told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”?[1] Who proudly stated he could shoot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters? And what does this latter statement say about us, the people?

What importance do we place on democracy? Can we blithely accept the president’s attempt to stop the counting of legitimately-cast votes? Ignore the fact that he is still holding the country to ransom, claiming massive voter fraud without producing any plausible evidence in support? Trump has and continues to roil the waters to such an extent that 70 percent of Republicans feel the 2020 elections were not free and fair.[2] This is a terribly troubling statistic, for free elections are perhaps the single most important pillar of any democracy.

These are just a few of the questions that make me wonder: To what extent are we willing to trade our shining ideals for immediate personal or partisan gain?

Many of President Trump’s policies — as opposed to his behaviors — fit comfortably within the Republican norm. These should be debated, challenged, refined, and, if they gain majority support, enacted. We live in a democracy and understand that not all policies will be our preference, for each of us is but a single voice among many. We understand that millions of people have different backgrounds and experiences than we do and support policies we do not. If we are to believe in democracy, we must believe they are good people, as we are, striving to create a better life for themselves and their country.

But today, we do not believe this. When faced with issues and elections, face masks and street protests, we tend to focus on our partisan preferences, on our sense of rage and/or entitlement, on our immediate gain or loss calculation — on so many things other than an overarching concern for liberty, justice, decency, and domestic tranquility, or the respect for and cooperation with others so necessary for a democracy to function and to survive. We have become the very house divided against itself that President Lincoln warned us cannot stand for long.

To survive, we must understand that Donald Trump is not the sole cause of our troubles. The truth is, he could not have rocketed to the presidency had not the nation embraced such distasteful and distrusting views of “the other side.” He is less cause and much more result, which makes it all the more clear that the solution to our problems is in our hands and in our hearts. Or, at least, it can be. We can decide whether to understand or to revile “the other.” We can decide whether to reach or to spit across the aisle. So long as we are a democracy and select our leaders, we maintain the power to decide our country’s direction. Our leaders can push us one way or the other, but we, collectively and individually, make the ultimate choice.

Because we can make the ultimate choice, we must ask ourselves hard questions such as, are we willing to undermine our higher ideals for this particular issue, policy, or partisan battle? Does our current need justify the means? Is it worth the cost?

Not the dollar cost, but the cost in terms of loss of mutual understanding, civility, integrity, and decency, of justice and domestic tranquility, and our other higher values. We understand that policies will change as administrations change: taxes will rise and fall, we will become more or less involved in world affairs, environmental and other treaties will be made and unmade, and so on. We will, and should, argue over the issues of the moment. But we should never forget the higher values that made America the beacon to the world. These include civility, integrity, decency, the ability to argue with but not hate others, and the willingness to accept the results of elections, especially when we lose.

Ultimately, it’s these things that matter. We can recover from poorly conceived or executed tax, immigration, or other policies. But we will forever be knocked back on our heels if we lose our grip on decency and integrity, and our ability to see the best in others.

After four years of Trump’s leadership, we are faced with crucial issues such as racial justice, the rise in extremism (including anti-Semitism), income inequality, and hyper partisanship. Will we continue to look at such things from our own narrow perspective and not care what happens to everyone else? A lot of conservatives say “yes” through their votes: We don’t care what it costs the nation or how other people are affected by Trump’s behaviors as long as he works in our interest.

Or will we say, the nation is bigger than we are and we need to unify and look beyond ourselves? We need to think about people affected by racism and anti-Semitism, and to consider those dealing with racial justice issues and the many people more impacted by COVID-19 than we have been. Will we turn a blind eye to them, or will we say we need to embrace ubuntu, remembering our neighbors and coming back to our values and to who we are as a country?

I believe in the American people, which is why I wasn’t perturbed about the 74 million votes cast for President Trump in 2020 as so many folks were. The right leadership can remind people of who they are and, equally important, who they want to be. When Winston Churchill was praised for giving the British people courage during the dark days of World War II, he responded: “I never gave them courage; I was able to focus theirs.”

In other words, our best leaders bring to the surface that which is already within us. And we can make their job easier by turning our eyes away from the anger and distrust which has darkened our vision in the past many years and turn our eyes toward, as Abraham Lincoln said, “the better angels of our nature.”

We stand today at a crossroads. Which path will we take? The one that brings us the rewards of political expediency at the cost of increased divisiveness, or the one that takes us closer to our North Star? Will we unite in the pursuit of our higher ideals, or will we break apart on the shoals of partisan and personal hatred of “them”?

I understand that we are today grappling with serious policy issues which can profoundly influence our nation’s direction. I fully understand why people are so strong in their support of candidates whose stances on certain policies reflect theirs. For example, not too long ago, I wrote a scathing letter to then Vice President Biden about the “ain’t Black” comment he made to Lenard McKelvey (aka Charlamagne tha God). But on November 3, I cast my vote for him, as did other card-carrying members of the GOP.

It wasn’t an easy decision to vote for Biden, for I do not agree with all of his policies and I have serious concerns about the influence the progressive side of his party may wield on him. But I felt it is now vital that we select a president who will unify the country and help us return to our higher principles, including decency, integrity, and an overriding concern for justice and domestic tranquility. In punching the Biden/Harris ticket, I took a leap of faith down a road I’ve never traveled, not knowing where it will lead, but confident that so long as honor, integrity, and respect for others are our guides, we will arrive at our destination safely and be content with what we find.

I believe Americans want to choose the right path. That we want to return decency, integrity, and the other higher ideals to their rightful place in our personal and political lives. The results of the latest popular and electoral votes bear this out.

As the Civil War was drawing to a close, President Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address. In it, he admonished us to act “[w]ith malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds….”

We are today, as President-elect Biden has said, engaged in a war for our nation’s soul. Our collective soul is much more important than any transient policy, which is why we must work together, with understanding and respect for all, to bind up our nation’s wounds and continue our march toward our North Star.

As we do so, when we find ourselves wavering, let us remember the final words of our Declaration of Independence: “…we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

The idea of honor, let alone sacred honor, seems terribly old-fashioned and quaint. But what made America so honored in the eyes of the world were our shining ideals and the sacrifices we have made to achieve them. Let’s muster the courage to march ahead in this spirit.

May God bless the United States of America as we do so.