The American Experiment
Millions voted during the midterm elections, a record 18 billion dollars was spent by the two parties, the final results took days to tabulate, and still the outcome in one senate race is up in the air. One thing, though, is abundantly clear: America is a deeply divided country. Regardless of which party controls Congress, it will not have a mandate from the people but will govern with the slimmest of majorities. In virtually any of the so-called battleground states a few votes here or there would have changed the outcome.
Just a cursory reading of American history reveals that our country has always been divided, perhaps not as much as today, but just the same, Americans have struggled since our inception to form a more perfect union. The dream of a United States of America continues to be more of a vision than a reality.
Of course, to be a united country doesn’t mean that we all have to agree on every issue or vote the same way. Diversity has served to make us stronger, not weaker. When we respect other people’s opinions, even when they differ from our own, and value them as equal partners in the American experiment of democracy, regardless of their race or religion, we are moving towards becoming a more perfect union.
A microcosm of how a united country should function can be seen in how a healthy marriage operates. A healthy marriage is not where one partner makes all the decisions and the other partner remains subservient. A good marriage relationship develops when partners learn how to live together, which means learning how to argue, negotiate and compromise. Demanding one’s way is a sure-fire way to destroy a marriage. When a couple tells me they never disagree or debate, I assume one partner has just given-up. That’s not the definition of a healthy marriage and that’s certainly not what it means to be united!
With the exception of the Civil War, our country has managed to come together at crucial times throughout her history through the art of negotiation and compromise. It seems, however, that in the last 20 or 30 years we have rejected compromise as a way to solve our problems in favor of holding inflexible positions that only alienate those who disagree.
Political scientists tell us that sometime during the 1990s political discourse in the public place changed, becoming more vicious and less conciliatory. If we portray one party as the enemy, then naturally the art of compromise becomes much harder as the political battles become zero-sum struggles, resulting in only winners and losers. If our nation continues to go down this path, the divisions will only grow wider, and it will just be a matter of time before our democratic republic collapses.
America is an incredibly complicated nation. The metropolitan regions tend to vote blue, while the less densely populated areas vote red. Demographic experts point out, however, that when you consider the populations of large cities and compare their population numbers with the rural areas and small towns, the number of people are about the same in both rural and urban regions, which helps explain why we are so evenly divided.
Surely we can understand that those living in urban areas have needs that are vastly different from folks living in rural or less populated regions. People in rural areas are less dependent on public services, say, mass transportation, such as subways and trains. Moreover, urban areas require larger police forces and fire departments, greater infrastructure and, consequently, the need for greater tax revenue. People in rural areas often live lives that are less dependent on the wide variety of tax-financed support that large cities require, but even rural areas often look to the government for support—the billions of dollars of government subsidies that farmers have received over a number of decades is just one example.
For America to be a thriving and healthy nation, we must learn to appreciate the contributions and needs of both segments of our diverse population. We are not at war with one another; we just have competing interests and, as in any healthy relationship, need to work together through civil engagement and compromise.
I have learned much from the business people in the urban churches I pastored, and I have learned much from the farmer and rancher and the small town shop keeper in the more rural churches I served. These congregations were very different—as a rule, rural people were less willing to go into debt, and city congregations were more likely to be racially mixed. But the one thing I learned from both groups of people was that when a decision was made, everyone should be able to walk away from the table feeling good about the decision—no one should feel like a loser. In other words, both congregations realized that if the church were to move forward, they would have to find ways to reach compromises. Otherwise, the church would stand still and would ultimately begin to decline.
What is true for a marriage and a church is also true for a nation. A nation divided, Abraham Lincoln warned, cannot endure. In America’s past we have made major compromises when faced with what seemed to be insurmountable obstacles. The U.S. Constitution itself was a compromise as it evolved from the Articles of Confederation which many delegates did not want to abandon, fearing that too much power would rest in the hands of the few. The role of the federal government versus state governments was as debated then as it is today.
The original 13 colonies had many issues that were vigorously debated, such as population disparities, economic interests and geographical inequities. Many contentious problems had to be hammered out in order to give fair representation to all the states. The competing interest groups worked tirelessly to ensure that each state was treated as fairly as possible.
No one state or power group got everything it wanted as can be illustrated by what is called The Great Compromise—the thorny problem of ensuring fair representation in Congress when some states have far greater populations than others. This dispute became a source of contentious debate and was only resolved when Roger Sherman proposed two houses of Congress—the Senate, which satisfied the less populated states and the House of Representatives, which satisfied the more populous states. The Founding Fathers wisely recognized that compromise was inherent to a healthy democratic republic.
Despite the many differences between the states, what brought the nation together was the fervent desire to create the best possible government for the majority of people. Even then, though, there was the fear that someday sectarian politics, that is, political movements with regional or religious agendas, would tear the country apart. Without working together through respectful debate, negotiation and compromise, as our Founding Fathers did, that fear will be realized.
Benjamin Franklin, on the last day of the Constitutional Convention, was asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” to which the great statesman replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” For now, the American experiment is ongoing.
