By Peter Berger
By Peter Berger
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson met at the Continental Congress in 1775. A year later, both were appointed to the five-man committee charged with drafting the Declaration of Independence, but it was Adams who insisted Jefferson write it. Their friendship grew as they served together in Congress, as diplomats in Europe, and as members of Washington’s cabinet, but diverging political views and the resulting electoral brawls and bruises led to their estrangement.
After a decade of wounded silence, the two old friends, by then old men, began exchanging letters again. Their warm correspondence continued until the spring of 1826. In a final touch of grace, they died within hours of each other on the Fourth of July, Jefferson in early afternoon and Adams in early evening. Unaware his friend had died, Adams gave the author of the Declaration of Independence his last words — “Thomas Jefferson survives.”
With those words, he pointed us toward the document that articulates our nation’s founding purpose. Nearly 200 years ago, he expressed his confidence that our national spirit would endure.
We are passing through a hard time. Confidence can be helpful. It can even be vital. But it is rarely, if ever, sufficient. Knowledge, reason, courage, patience and zeal, tolerance and firmness, justice and mercy in proper measure — these are essential.
Adams and Jefferson learned them in their day.
We must learn them in ours — soon, now, before it is too late.
Donald Trump’s supporters need to understand there’s a reason so many Americans don’t believe him — he’s a liar. You need to ask yourselves what you’d do if your children lied as much as he has. You need to believe the evidence of your eyes and ears.
Trump claims, for example, to be an astute, successful businessman. Consider, though, we’re talking about a Wharton graduate who either doesn’t understand how tariffs work or who’s chosen to lie about how tariffs work, a man who’s spent his life burning through his father’s money, whose business reputation rests on six bankruptcies, judicial findings of fraud, and pretending to fire people on television. Does that sound like the résumé of a captain of finance?
Apply that level of accuracy, reliability and truth to Trump’s other statements and claims, from the length of the wall and the strength of the economy to the lethality of the virus.
Consider the dismay of our allies and Trump’s exchange of “love letters” with the likes of Kim Jong Un. Consider Trump’s tolerance for violence and death threats when they’re perpetrated by extremists who wave his flag.
Consider, too, assailing the news as “fake” and journalists as the “enemy of the people” is the hallmark of history’s tyrants. So is promising to make the country “great again.”
If you count yourself a progressive, you need to understand progressive doctrinal purity tests and blanket stridency can be just as counterproductive to good government as Trump supporters’ dogged loyalty. Respect for diversity can’t just apply to subgroups within the progressive camp. It needs to apply to how you treat the other camps.
I’m not suggesting you accommodate extremists, most of whom, according to FBI warnings, do strike from the right wing. Neither am I pleading Mitch McConnell’s case. I find his political conduct smug, malignant and despicable.
But 70 million Americans voted for Donald Trump, and they aren’t all racists and extremists. Many are decent, intelligent people, and while I disagree with them and honestly can’t understand how they could support Trump, especially a second time, their views matter, if only because they’re nearly half the country.
In the same way, 74 million of us voted for Joe Biden, but all of us who did — likely most of us who did — aren’t progressives, either. We’re Republicans, moderate Democrats and independents who rejected Donald Trump. Our views matter, too.
Republics need to be governed through persuasion and compromise. The alternative is team T-shirts and endless reciprocal partisan vengeance.
A century and a half ago, Abraham Lincoln spoke to us at Gettysburg in the middle of our Civil War. He told us the war was testing whether a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal can long endure.” He was talking about slavery, and government by the people and for the people. He was talking about the kind of government we still say we want.
The battle had ended on the third of July. Lincoln delivered his brief address in November. The stench of dead horses and slain men still hung in the valley.
Do we really want more of that?
Today, the stench of partisan battle is in the wind.
We must either reason and heal, or perish.
If you doubt that, think how many times we learned in school about nations and civilizations that declined and fell. I’m sure most of their citizens thought it couldn’t happen to them either.
Edmund Burke was a member of Parliament sympathetic to the American cause during our revolution. He wrote “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” What, though, can ordinary people like you and me do in this divided hour?
We can take the time to exercise good judgment. We can speak a word of correction and restraint to a friend. We can shun political cowardice. We can recognize our own self-interest is often best-served by respecting the interests of others. We can always bear in mind there’s a difference between malice and disagreement.
At the end of our war for independence, George Washington had thoroughly planned and prepared for Yorktown, the last battle. When he saw the success of his troops’ opening assault on two crucial British redoubts, he observed simply, “The work is done, and well done.”
The battle had just begun, and Washington’s service to his country was far from complete. But his moment of simple satisfaction seems appropriate in our present moment, as does John Adams’s equally simple observation and hope.
Thomas Jefferson survives.
Peter Berger has taught English and history for 30 years. Poor Elijah would be pleased to answer letters addressed to him in care of the editor.
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