Monuments and Heritage Shared Visions and Common Ground

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.