Author: RickNierenberg

The tearing down of monuments and painting of graffiti on statues of men whom some revere and some revile shines a light on one of the most potent emotional triggers we can see in this increasingly volatile and at times violent cultural conflagration.

In a larger sense though, if we can take one step back from the fury and contempt with which some seek to erase and some to defend these icons of “heritage and tradition”, it is all about “identity”. Racial, ethnic, political identity are all, in the end, extraordinarily personal.

Wouldn’t it be an amazing thing if, out of this seeming cauldron, one could forge a larger and more shared identify?

We have an unprecedented and, yes, exceptional opportunity as Americans. Our identity is not static. “We” are not stuck with who “we are” at any given time. “We” can be who we are seeking and striving and yearning to be. Moving ever forward, sometimes in fits and starts, sometimes with regressions and detours, but always guided by shared ideals, values and yearnings. Principles which were articulated for us, if not always embodied, over generations upon generations of men and women. Some heroes, some – well – not so much, and some ordinary folk, participants and witnesses. Generations who have argued, dreamed, struggled, fought and died to bring to be more genuine, more actual, the dream which has yet to be, for everyone real.

We are all part of it, if we can see it that way. Yes, Jefferson held slaves, but he also articulated a vision which lasts and will God Willing, continue to last. Such internal and shared contradictions are intrinsic to our struggle to become, they are who we are. The same men who pledged their sacred honor and gave their lives to affirm that “all men are created equal” were unwilling to see that three fifths of a person is not equality. The country later fought a bloody civil war to settle the issue.

And finally, the guiding principle that all men are created equal prevailed. That principle was eventually enshrined in our shared ‘sacred text’, our constitution.
Whether or not we are Americans does not depend on whose side our ancestors fought, but on the fact that we commonly share the heritage that our basic principles of freedom, justice and equality were fought for, died for, and prevailed to he established anew as form and fiber of our nation.

Such battles continued and continue to this day for so many of us. For those whose distant ancestors came from Africa, Asia, and the Americas. For women. For those whose gender identity and sexual orientation are not binary. For those who follow the “Judeo-Christian” tradition. And for those who do not.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could find a common identity which embraces the struggle for ever more and more freedom and justice, and does not get tied to where one’s ancestors fall along the lines of that struggle?

Wouldn’t it be amazing if could realize that being an American means believing and dreaming that all men are created equal and endowed with the right to life, liberty and justice, even if at any given moment, including the present moment, that dream has not yet come true?

For those who are new to this blog, and perhaps because it bears repeating to those who have visited “TheCenterHolds” before, my purpose is to argue that our best hope, in our seeming to fracture society, is to come back together to a shared set of values, to find and articulate again what makes us Americans, what we believe. To come home, America.

In order to move toward that goal I tried to articulate for myself what I believe are our major core values I found seven, true for me, and listed them in one of the first posts. My plan was to take each goal and to ask whether where we are now was moving us further or away as a nation from those core values. Not a secret, or a mystery novel, my ultimate conclusion will be that at this moment in history, his rhetoric aside, the current president is taking us far astream from our real values, and that for this particular election we should vote Democratic. Note, that may not always be the case. There will be times when Conservatives should vote Republican, and Liberals vote Democrat. This, I will continue to argue, for those who really love our nation and what it stands for, is not such a time.

I hope to demonstrate that idea, to the extant I can, without nasty personal insults and attacks, which may be emotionally satisfying but do not contribute to unify us. Rather I hope to derive my conclusions from a view of our common American-ness, our shared values.

In this particular post I will investigate the following value, which I listed as number 3, after fairness and rule of law. I believe, as Americans:

We value a reliability, trustworthiness, dependability of our respect for tradition, our adherence to precedent, and to principle. That our word is our bond, and that we are as ‘good as our word’, both at home and abroad. That when we give our word, that when we make an agreement we can be expected to keep it. We respect that value in individuals, calling it by names like integrity, and we value it as a nation. We expect that our allies can count on us. That we will keep up our end of a bargain, that we will hold fast, not blindly, but whenever we can, to  our word, to our principles, to our ideals, our norms and traditions.

The current president spoke a great deal about heritage and tradition in his address, described as dark, before Mount Rushmore.

I will return to that speech further on, but for the moment I would argue, along side of him, that as Americans we value our heritage and tradition, but assert that in our best traditions we share the value that when we give our word, it should mean something. We value reliability and trustworthiness, and we expect that our allies should be able to count on us.We value that others know we will stick to our word, and keep our end of the bargain.

In viewing such a withdrawal from deals we had made, publicly committed to, and which had, in fact induced our bargaining counterparts to take real actions, some have said, for example, that “Americas standing in the world has dropped catastrophically”.

Since taking office the current president has reneged upon many international agreements. There is no shortage of pointed criticism and concerns voiced over the abandonment of these agreements. Some of which had been negotiated, signed and approved by Congress, such as  the Iran Nuclear Deal,  and the Intermediate range nuclear forces treaty; some of which were internationally agreements with adhered to by every other country, such as the Paris Climate accords, some were only at the late negotiation stage, such as the TPP. Some were organizations to which we had long belonged, such as UNESCO and the UN Human Rights Council. 

To be fair (as fairness is another shared American value about which I plan to write another time!), the complete picture is probably more nuanced than that. While it is true that “the United States has long understood international legal commitments to be binding, both internationally and domestically” the application of international law to American legal climate and decision making is complex.The American reputation for compliance with international law, viz a viz the  European Union was not viewed as pristine, even before the Trump administration, however in an extensive analysis published a year before the last election one conclusion was that “the behavior of the US demonstrates, not an across-the-board hostility toward international law, much less rampant noncompliance, but primarily ambivalence about consenting to and internalizing international legal commitments in specific areas”, and while we had violated laws regarding institution of force in some instances,”the general record” before Trump “of US compliance with international human rights and other bodies of law is nevertheless comparatively strong.”

Why should we adhere to international agreements? Professor of Law and Politics at the University of Pennsylvania, former Director of a Harvard School of International Relations, Beth Simmons,  recognizing that” through the four hundred years of its existence international law has been in most cases scrupoulously observed”,wrote a comprehensive article categorizing the multiple analyses legal and political scholars have made concerning the costs and benefits of compliance with international law. 

Defining such agreements as “authoritative commitments to codify customary practices into explicit international legal instruments. She recognizes that in entering such an agreement a state voluntarily gives up one aspect of their sovereignty.They do so, she points out, with reluctance, because with the inevitable rise in global interdependence there grows the desire (I might say need) for greater regularity and predictability,  it allows each state, in return for a sacrifice of a degree of freedom of action to have greater influence over other states policies”.

From one standpoint, that of the so called “realists”, international behavior is governed by power and that when agreements hold it is because of “convergent interests or prevailing power dynamics”. From another, a so called “rational” approach, international agreements can help states solve common problems which they might not be able to solve any other way. The stability engendered when nations hold to agreements  serves to enhance a collective good, from which each participant benefits.    

 The “normative lens” which most concern me here, holds that a government’s compliance with international agreement reflects ‘democratic norms related to the rule of law”. “In this view, normative standards of appropriate conduct are socially constructed reference points against which state behavior can be gauged. (p85)  We expect that ideas, beliefs and standards of behavior influence governments adherence to international agreements.As one Oxford  professor of international relationships put it,  law influences compliance “only in the presence of a social system marked by shared norms and beliefs”. Renowned Harvard Law professor Roger Fisher  observed that  “rules will be better complied with when they follow commonly held notions of fairness and morality “.

Which brings us back to Trump’s speech before Mount Rushmore. He calls for the defense of heritage and tradition. I for one wonder whether the frank and relatively unprecedented withdrawal from our agreements with other nations does not in itself defile our most treasured heritage and tradition. 

But lets investigate the issues further. 

He started out, of course, lauding those principles which we are do deeply share, and rightly called the American revolution  a “revolution in the pursuit of justice, liberty, equality and prosperity.” Of course this  begs the question of whether we have achieved that stated intention, many continue to ask whether we have achieved our dream of just and equal pursuit of liberty and prosperity.

In just a few lines,however, he changes his tone, and says about those very people who are seeking a more equal and just pursuit in his words of liberty and prosperity that they are waging ‘a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heros, erase our  values and indoctrinate our children”.

Which heroes, history and values is he talking about? The confederate generals who waged war against the United States (that is the constitutional definition of treason by the way)? In service of the value of slavery? How indoctrinate our children?
Yes, you could argue and I think very reasonably so that all in all, good and perhaps not so good, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson did more to promote our shared identity as values than did anyone else. But Robert E Lee? Stonewall Jackson? Yes, let’s preserve history – but not pretend that these men fought for the promulgation of American values. They fought to tear them down. To deface our great nation forever. The confederate flag is not our history – it is the flag of a defeated enemy of the United States.

“The left wing cultural revolution”, he says, is “designed to overthrow the American revolution”, that those who want a park without statues of traitors actually wish to “destroy the very civilization”! Wasn’t our American revolution based on the overthrow of tyranny? Why is it not quintessential American, when a group of Americans see its rights trampled on (or, perhaps, kneeled upon) to stand up and fight for those rights?

Our children, the current president says, are taught in school to “hate their own country”, that a “radical view of American history is a web of lies”. That they defile the memory of  “Washington,Jefferson,Lincoln, and Roosevelt”. Really? As I remember each of these men were willing to tear down a few statues, in some cases actual statues, to promulgate certain ideals, that this president quotes more than supports. Interestingly he says quite accurately in quoting Dr Martin Luther King Jr that our founding fathers had given our founding fathers a “promissory note to every future generation and that our mission was to fully embrace our founding ideals”.

That is correct, Mr President, that is exactly what Martin Luther King exhorted us to do, as did Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and yes, Reagan and Obama. To hold fast to our ideals.

Our heritage, our tradition, our values, as they say our “DNA” is built not an acquiesce to the symbols authority. We don’t have to curtsey and kiss the ring. Our heritage is built on the continual and inexorable march closer and closer to the ideals to which our Founders pledged their sacred honor. We are not there yet. But we are headed there.

We overthrew the yoke of English colonial hegemony, we fought a civil war to liberate Americans of African descent from the tyranny of their slave holders (bearing the confederate flag), we fought to give women the vote, and a larger voice, and equal pay, we fought for the rights of all people to attend public schools and dine in public places, and for those of all sexual orientations and gender identities to share in the great American experiment of freedom and liberty and justice, the very tradition which Trump extolled before Mount Rushmore.

So when our black American brothers and sisters are treated so consistently like our founding fathers were by their English masters, as less than their fellow countrymen, it is our American tradition to protest. Black Lives Matter, and Colin Kaepernick, and those who were driven from the square in front of the White House are today’s true patriots.

And if you are looking for Traditions and Heritage to defend, maybe start with the idea that our word is our bond and if we put our name on an agreement we will not be the ones to break it.

Somehow I like to hope that the American people share that value more than one that says that you can declare who spends ten years in jail for expressing a right to freedom of expression. 

I like to think that is a shared value, common ground.

2.We value a rule of law which is consistent, impartial, evenly distributed and upheld, that the law for one person is the same as for another. That justice is separate from politics, that there is a consistent and agreed upon set of constructs, principles and norms which govern every person fairly and impartially. That every man and woman has “their day in court”, and that the courts are fair and honest. That justice is, as they call it, “blind”.

For those of you new to this blog, and for those returning to see the newest post, allow me to introduce what I am doing.

I believe, like Abraham Lincoln said even before he was president that a house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that as Americans we do have common ground, shared values and beliefs that make us one nation. I believe this underlying unity has been obscured by the past years of partisan politics and rancor, and that to survive and thrive as the nation we all wish it to be, we must “Come Home” to our bedrock believes. I have in the first post of this series, (scroll down to America Come Home) tried to articulate for myself and share what I believe those key shared values might be.

In this post, I wish to explore one of those values, that of the rule of law.

Todays papers – I mean that in the literal way, “today, as in the day I am writing this – are filled with serious questions about whether the nation has lost its way with regard to the rule of law. Front page articles are taking our Attorney General to task for not adhering to bedrock judicial principle.

As with every post, my hope is to offer what I believe is a clearly shared common value, to explore the nature of that value, to investigate whether and how the particular value  really is one of our American core believes, and then to ask whether the current administration is taking our nation closer to, or further away from holding to our real core shared values.

Today I would like to investigate something about the nature of one key shared value, a shared belief and aspiration for a nation in which we can trust in the rule of law. I articulate that value as above.

Impartial Justice

This is a bedrock principle of the founding of our nation, perhaps among the few truly bedrock principles.

We are Americans in part because we believe and affirm that humans are endowed with certain unalienable rights The federal judiciary is the principal guardian of the rights conferred by the constitution.  Americans have accepted the principle that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what is constitutional and what is not. While the final arbiter, the Supreme Court is neither the sole symptom nor manifestation of the rule of equal justice, impartial justice, but rather represents the vast body of laws, codes, and the system of enforcement, trial of fact, and then assessment of the correct application of that  law. This complex system  forms the vast fibers, sinews of trust, really which make up the rule of law by which we as a nation strive to order our interaction and commerce.

What is the source of the strength of the highest court, and the judicial system. It cannot only be the capacity of force, for we believe as another bedrock principle that government governs by “consent of the governed”. Presidential Medal of Freedom winner under Ronald Reagan, Irving Kaufman, while  Chief Judge of the US 2nd court of appeals states quite definitively , “What, then, is the source of the Court’s strength? The Court’s only armor is the cloak of public trust; its sole ammunition, the collective hopes of our society. When, in the public mind, the Court is functioning as an apolitical, wise and impartial tribunal, the people of our nation – even those citizens to whom the results may be anathema – have evinced a willingness to abide by its decisions.” Unless the public believes that issues of great moment, he argues, are decided by reference to constitutional principles that transcend shifting political vicissitudes, the Court’s stature as an independent body is in jeopardy. Our basic notion of rule of law is eroded when the vaunted and hallowed objectivity of  judicial system, our justice department, our courts, and our law enforcement agencies become intertwined, commingled and rendered less pure by an untoward pollution by partisan politics. 

In an extensive legal analysis, Kaufman traces the history and meaning of Judicial independence  in a landmark article on the Columbia Law review. “Aware that unbridled government prerogative can easily engender an unending cycle of tyranny followed by revolt, the framers chose to make all exercises of national power subject to the rule of a higher law: a constitution drawing its authority directly from the will of the people”

Having stated this Principle, the judge proceeds then to trace the history of our ideal of judicial independence through its origins in English law.He delineates the foundation, from before our existence as an independent nation, of the idea that law, once enacted, once “rightly decided and approved, ” has a supremacy over and limits sovereign power. Early legal commentators in then very royally governed England insisted  that the “the Crown was accountable to the law because the law makes the king”, that the natural order was that “his own laws bind the lawgiver”. One prominent early  English jurist articulated that the  “King hath no prerogative  but that which the law of the land allows him”.

In fact, back in ‘merry old England’ days, when the Sovereign James II challenged such a conception, and argued that the King, as absolute sovereign of England. was empowered to dispense with any of the laws of government which he found necessary, when he denied the principle of the law’s supremacy over the dictates of the sovereign, he was deposed by force of arms and Parliament “effectively assumed the sovereign power of England” as the Sovereign permanently renounced claim to absolute power.

That tradition of an impartial judiciary, so hard won in England, was also a judicial goal in colonial America, with one jurist arguing that the impartial and independent administration of justice was a requirement to ensure the safety both of the citizens persons and possessions. It was in some measure a British attempt to maintain control over colonial judges, including a statute passed by parliament in 1774 making Massachusetts judges dependent on the crown, which Kaufman argues  shortly lead to “public outcry, public violence and ultimately revolution”.

The change of nationhood did not erase, but rather strengthened this principle. In framing the constitution, it was understood, in Kaufman’s words, that “the security of individual rights could be preserved only if the legislative and executive powers were kept within the limits prescribed by a higher fundamental law.” They realized that their bold experiment could succeed only if “judicial power were kept absolutely separate and distinct from the executive and legislative branches”. While the concept of separation of powers tolerates some overlap of functions, it will not tolerate “undue or injurious intrusion by one branch into the sphere of another”.

Situations can be seen to test these concepts. The current fallout regarding the firing of US attorney Berman,  is thought by some to be an attempt to subvert the separation of the principled separation of justice from politics. Professor Austin Serat, for example, distinguished professor of law at Amherst college, has offered the opinion that “Berman’s firing has highlighted the Trump administration’s eagerness to once again subjugate the apparatus of American justice to the president’s personal and political agenda. It is the latest post-impeachment purge of officials deemed insufficiently loyal to the president.”

To determine whether this is a fair characterization requires some investigation of the laws, customs rules and norms governing the role of the US attorney and its relationship to the political process. At the risk of being redundant, the purpose of this blog is to discover then articulate some of the shared values and common ground we hold as Americans, and then to determine how they apply to the current administration and the choice we have in November. 

Judicial impartiality constitutes an essential element of due process, and affirms that judges must be free to act without fear of personal consequences, for example termination. Duke University Law professor Sara Sun Beale has written extensively on the role of US attorneys, and has presented a very  comprehensive review of history and role of the US attorney especially in the light of the relationship between the role of politics and the prosecutorial function of the US attorney .

She points out that the Court has held that the President, in order to fulfill his duty to ensure that the laws are “faithfully executed” must be able to remove subordinate executive branch officers who are not performing to his liking, and that Congress should not interfere with that prerogative. What if the role that officer is fulfilling, however, is to investigate actions by the President, as it may be seen to be in the present case of the firing of Attorney Berman? “It is quite evident that one who holds his office only during the pleasure of another cannot be depended upon to maintain an attitude of independence against the latter’s will”.( site above)

The impetus for her incredibly well documented questioning the relationship of political motivation in the US attorney’s role arose in part from the “public firestorm” which flared from the notion  that political considerations may have influenced a wide range of judicial decisions under the George W Bush administration.That concern erupted over the firing of 9 US attorneys  in 2006. Only two had been terminated by a president in the twenty five years prior to 2006. Beale questioned whether this political influence had “tarnished the reputation and credibility” of the justice department. At the time inspector general reports found the department improperly used political considerations to hire judges, interns and prosecutors

 US attorneys are appointed by the president, and serve at his pleasure, but once chosen they are ““expected to leave behind partisan politics, adhering to the norm of prosecutorial neutrality”. There was serious concern for mechanisms to “help insulate U.S. attorneys from the improper partisan pressures that may arise from within the executive branch”(italics mine).

Beale outlines an extensive history of the progressive centralization of power from state control to one residing with the Attorney General and that office, which she terms “main justice”. The bottom line is that while the Attorney General had had authority over US attorneys since before the time of the Civil War, it took some decades before an organizational structure existed to extend central judicial authority to the widely distributed web of US attorneys. Over the twentieth century the central department of justice assumed greater control over the dispersed justice system, both through increasing communication technology, deferral on the part of local offices in particularly complex cases, and also the assumption of increased formal regulatory authority by Main Justice. The broad and pervasive centralization of judicial priority setting was much accelerated by the focus on anti-terrorism activities following September 11.

While Professor Beale goes on to say “the appears to be general agreement that from the outset the position was regarded as a ‘political plum’ that went to party stalwarts”, she articulates how clearly threatening to our notion of impartial justice this political entanglement can be.  She quotes a judicial scholar who was also an Attorney General of the United States  going so as far as to say, “this treatment of it(the position of US attorney) as a reward for political activity is a serious menace to enforcement of law.” 

I think we have every reason now, then, to ask, whether these current interventions by the Attorney General into who retains the role of US attorney will have the effect, as it is arguably its intention, to be a ‘serious menace to the enforcement of law’, in this case, who knows, just throwing it out there, enforcement of laws pertaining to activities of his boss, the current president.

Former judges openly call our nation’s ‘highest law enforcement officer’, the Attorney General, a “lying bully who is determined to subvert the independence of our nation’s prosecutors” .

And, according to columnist Max Boot, albeit not a Trump fan, it is impossible to give Barr the benefit of the doubt, because, Barr distorted the findings of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation; overruled line prosecutors to recommend a more lenient sentence for Trump crony Roger Stone; tried to dismiss the charges to which Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn had already pleaded guilty; and has appointed investigators to investigate the investigators who probed the connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. A retired federal judge concluded that the attempted dismissal of charges against Flynn was “clear evidence of gross prosecutorial abuse,” and more than 1,900 Justice Department alumni have called for Barr to resign.

In a sense Trump didn’t start this, but his enablers made huge strides in laying the ground work for a disregard of law and norms. The Constitution says that the Senate shall advise and consent to Supreme Court Justices. It doesn’t specify the election year exception. Even without his refusal to hear witnesses in an impeachment trial (John Bolton, anyone?) his refusal to do his constitutional duty damaged the rule of law, immeasurably.

What is my bottom line here? I hope, with this series of posts to test whether the current administration is taking our nation closer to, or further away from our core shared values, bedrock principles and common ground as Americans. I believe I can demonstrate strictly from these first principles that it does not.

There will be times when we can have honest and substantive elections regarding conservative versus liberal policies, and which will make our nation better.

This election is not such a time. We must reject the current administration because its values are not our American values. Today are argued that the respect for the impartial rule of law in this administration is not our American respect for law.

There will be other elections, but this time, we must reject Trumpism.

Come Home America.

The Center, our center, must hold.

One of most predictable, insidious and crippling impediments to genuine problem solving in the  negotiation between opposing parties or even groups with competing interests is the tendency for the extremes of both sides to hijack the agenda, and thereby start to redefine the terms of the discussion in such a manner that those in each camp who seek accommodation and solution, even though they may constitute the clear majority, are marginalized, made less relevant, prevented from compromise and reasonable solutions with shared wins disappear.
I heard the lecturer in a seminar  on negotiation tactics challenged that some problems defy a negotiated settlement, and the example posed was peace between the warring parties in the middle east. “The solution can only come” he answered, “when we realize that the moderates on both sides have more in common with each other than they do with the extremes of their own side”.
Imagine, for example that the moderates on each side of a territorial conflict are trying to work out together reasonable boundaries and rules of engagement by which they can move towards a shared common peace and prosperity. Each sides moderates are trying to weigh what the can give, what they must keep and how can they compromise. The extremes, however, on each side, however, believe that the other side has no right to any of the territory, and in fact has no right to exist. There are inevitably those within the extreme fringes of both camps who believe they have the right, duty and opportunity to intervene in the dialogue by, say, blowing up a restaurant, or by expelling families from a village. These extreme actions force the moderates further away from a common ground, force each side into an increasingly polarized and unreconcilable position, and tend to make any solution impossible. The agenda, one of finding a mutually beneficial compromise, gets hijacked to protecting oneself or maintaining order.
I don’t want to get side tracked into discussing it in detail but rather wish to point out as an example some of what has happened over the last two weeks in the USA concerning the issues of racial disparity in policing and how to find a meaningful solution to an issue which I believe most people recognize as a problem.
Any mass protest will draw some who find an opportunity to cause some mayhem. I believe most moderates both on the relatively right and the relatively left of the nation would have wanted to move through that towards confronting and solving some of the more pressing underlying problems.
The president took a far extreme position of insisting that so called law and order be maintained by the use of overwhelming force, invoking the militarization of the police and calling for the possibility of lethal force.
A more moderate and much larger segment responded with enormous peaceful marches and protests, and condemnation of the president by a very large and respected cohort of military and political leaders, even of his own party. It seemed that  the effort of the extreme to hijack the agenda away from the need to find meaningful progress in the relationship between police and population was not successful, had in fact backfired, and a large, general, perhaps actionable consensus seemed about to form that such progress was necessary and that until it came, there would be large but peaceful expressions of protest, including some as creative as renaming the site of the greatest police violence “Black Lives Matter” Plaza. I am sure the president loved that.
But then the extreme on the other side decided it was their turn to hijack the agenda. The city council of Minneapolis voted to disband the police.
Shall we imagine what would happen then? Lets say the thousands of police officers agreed, and simply laid down their badges,  (but not their guns!) and walked off the job. Maybe a couple of these dismissed officers now need to put food on the table. Where better to take it than from businesses, stores and the other citizens. They have the guns, they can do it. What are you going, call the police?
I am not going to go further with this train of thought, this argument, because this example in itself is not the point, the point I wish to make is that we must be on guard, no matter where we fall along a political spectrum, to guard against the inevitable tendency for the extremes, the fringes, to take over the conversation, and prevent a meaningful solution to the problem.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. The center must hold. We must find ways to seek common cause based on those values which we can discover we share.
The current site, the blogs and posts, is dedicated towards trying to find our common shared values and to arguing that we must come back as a nation to that shared center before we move forward.
In these pages I will try to derive what core American values are, and whether they are being pursued in the government we presently have.
So far there are three pages.
The next will take an historical episode in which the center could no hold, and look at some of the aspects and results of that time.

It is exaggeration, hyperbole and the cry of “the sky is falling” to say that these last few weeks have brought us to the brink of a new civil war. We are not in a new civil war.

It is not exaggeration to say, however that these few weeks have shown us that we could be heading towards one. The vast differences in the way whole swaths of the citizenry view current events, and more importantly, each other shows us, and shows the world that the divisions run so deep that civil war, I mean a real civil war, are no longer simply unimaginable. More seasoned observers have said as much.

Armed men calling themselves patriots occupy government buildings to protect what they call their rights, then threaten mayhem on others marching to protect the rights of others.

Our president not only threatens but uses active duty military to harm those engaged in their constitutional right of peaceable assembly, while some citizens on their own volition use deadly force against individuals in law enforcement.

Still the vast vast majority both of protestors and police, the vast vast majority I hope of those on moderate right and moderate left desperately want our nation to come together and succeed, survive and thrive.

But the extremes, the fringes of any movement tend to be able to hijack the agenda of the middle. If tens of thousands of police are concerned and compassionate professionals, a few dozen nation wide captured across a nation on video can brand the whole group an occupying force. If hundreds of thousands of citizens trying to find a way to peacefully but forcefully bring to a nations conscience the death of unarmed black men at the hands of that small group of police who abuse their power, well then a few hundred looters and arsonists can brand that movement as anarchists.

We must not let the extremes in our politics hijack the agenda of an entire nation, which is to make the lot of all improve, to survive and grow and thrive as a nation.

This blog is intended as a vehicle over the next few months to try to argue for us to search for and act on common ground a shared values.

I believe, and will try to articulate that in this particular election, our only hope as a nation, our hope to find common ground, will be to come home, come back, to the more sensible and centrist choice. In this case, this time, I will argue that the only sensible choice is the Democratic Party. Joe Biden is an experienced, sensible, and decent man, and could help bring us back in the direction if not all the way to the destination of being a unified nation.

Note, that may not always be true and perhaps not in every election, but this time it is.

Over the next few months I will try to discover and articulate what I believe are our shared values, our truths, our common ground.

I hope the reader will participate and share.

I have been sitting down to try to seek, understand, list and express what seem to me to be our core American values. I know I am not alone in feeling real fear and foreboding that our great nation, this great experiment in democracy, liberty and justice is precarious, that it is in danger.

America, we must come home.

We must find common ground. Remember our shared values. Reconnect with some unity of purpose.

Yes, I know. These are cliches. Shibboleths. Everyone says them. “All men are created equal”. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. “To form a more perfect Union”. These words once possessed near religious meaning. The were enough to create a nation. But what do they mean now? Too often empty expressions. Catch slogans. Blah blahs.

I have tried to discover, for myself, what do I believe are our common values. What binds us together as a people, a culture, a nation, an idea. If in fact, anything does. If we articulate what are our values, those ideals and principles we all really share, then maybe we can determine if we are being true to them, and if not, how might we be.

I started by listing for myself as many of what I believed were truly core American values as I could. Then I looked through my somewhat chaotic list of values several times, trying to find common threads, to group them, to make coherent what looked almost random.

I found that, in broad strokes, our American values, for me, fall into seven basic categories and principles.

1) We value a general respect for fairness.
Not that everybody’s lot be equal, but that the system is fair for everyone.
That the rules are developed in a manner which we can see and understand.
That the rules are applied evenly.
That everyone has the opportunity to make of themselves as much as their ability and effort can take them.
That we give each other a fair shake.
That each of us is expected to play by the rules.

2) We value a rule of law which is consistent, impartial, evenly distributed and upheld.

That the law for one person is the same as the law for another.
That justice is separate from politics, that leaders don’t use the judicial arm of the state to enforce their political purposes.
That there is a consistent and agreed upon set of constructs, principles and norms which govern every person fairly and impartially.
That every man and woman has “their day in court”.
That the courts are fair and honest.
That justice is, as they call it, “blind”.

3) We value a reliability, trustworthiness, dependability of our respect for tradition, our adherence to precedent, and to principle.

That our word is our bond, and that we are as ‘good as our word’, both at home and abroad.
That when we give our word, that when we make an agreement we can be expected to keep it.
We respect that value in individuals, calling it by names like integrity, and we value it as a nation.
We expect that our allies can count on us.
We expect that we will keep up our end of a bargain, that we will hold fast, not blindly, but whenever we can, to our end of the bargain to our word, to our principles, to our ideals, our norms and traditions.

4) We value truth, and honesty.
And also intellectual honesty. We don’t like it when politicians, scientists, public servants, the press, or anyone bends, slants or compromises facts, and the truth to fit their own private opinions and agendas.
We may not all agree on what is true, but we value the honest pursuit of truth.
We value a free exchange of ideas in a fair, open and available intellectual public square.

5) We value respect for the dignity and the rights of individuals.
Ideally of all individuals. Of all races, colors, genders, creeds, nationalities, it is in our DNA to do so.
We believe that individuals have intrinsic worth as human beings. Well meaning Americans may differ on whether that dignity and intrinsic worth of an individual automatically guarantees them, say, entrance to the country, for example, or government assistance – and those are fair policy disagreements to have, but as Americans we value individual rights and dignity. That includes those rights enshrined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, of course, such as the right to peaceable assembly and a free press, but it also means a respect for certain traditional norms and standards. Although some may tolerate it to achieve other goals, I can’t really believe that taunts, slurs, insults, and ridicule are not what Americans wish to emulate in leaders.

6) We value in general a certain decency, a certain dignity, a decorum, standards, civility.
A certain willingness to respectfully listen to one another.
We may for a time decry “political correctness”, but we don’t really value in the long run public servants or leaders who speak like street toughs and ‘hooligans’, who are ill mannered, ill tempered, crude.

7) We value the ideal of progress, opportunity, a chance to succeed.
We cherish that each individual have a chance to have that mythical American Dream.
We value the ideal that each generation leaves the nation better than they found it.
We value the belief that we continue to improve and that the lives our our children will be filled with more opportunities and a better world than we had.
We value the notion that humanity can get better. We may not believe it, but we value it.

Of course there are so more things we value, our lives and our families and our safety, security, shelter, and the like, but those are common to all mankind. And I am sure there are values which I have either left out or expressed differently than others would have them, but the categories of values expressed above capture, I hope, a good deal of what it means to be an American.

And, America, we have to come home. Come home to American values. Come home to ourselves. To who we really are.

Now, I don’t wish to be too coy, or devious, or to make out as if this is part of mystery novel with an unexpected ending. This is at heart the beginning of a political statement, a series of political statements. The thesis of these statements will be that in the coming election the only way to come home and to honor our values as Americans is to vote democratic.

Note please, note well that I am not claiming that this will always be the case. There could well arise in future elections candidates who are conservatives, republicans for whom one could vote and still be upholding in every respect those values we cherish as Americans.

But not this time.

In future writings, and very soon I hope, I intend to show specifically why, based on these above stated values and on the actions of the current president and administration, to come home, to be America again, means to reject Donald Trump.

For the moment, and this is The Moment, I would respectfully beg the reader to consider these values, to ask if these are really fairly called American values, and if so, to ask how well they are being represented in the current administration and the environment they have created.

Then we well talk again soon.