The Vanishing Common Good

Sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville revealed an Achilles heel in American democracy in 1835 when he described an early America whose democratic practice operated apart from politics in the public square. He observed a vast hive of thousands of lodges, fraternal organizations, clubs and churches that operated alongside the realm of government and political life, each pursuing the particular interests of its members, offering them the ceremonies of democracy without the civic rough and tumble where leaders and legislatures were elected and laws shaped.     

“Americans of all ages, all conditions, all dispositions formed all kinds of associations, religious, moral, serious, futile….hospitals, prisons, schools….pursuing in common the object of their desires.” They shared the perhaps unintended pattern of functioning largely below the radar of political public life. The common understanding of faith communities in this new democracy—separation of church and state—undergirded the same pattern as did the new sciences of the age that also were above politics. Then (as now) clergy were called to their pulpits on the pledge to do no politics in the churches.  

Thus organized the effect has been to take a lot of what was called citizenship out of the government-related democratic process, creating a passivity in the public square and silencing the prophetic voice of most churches.  Good citizens were expected to keep the peace.

This may help explain why the outrageous injustice documented in the New Pew Research Center report of huge inequalities in the nation has so far avoided creating an uprising, an American Spring.  The Report shows the U. S. wealth gap is now running $3,173,896 for the median income of the top 7 percent of U. S. population but down to $133,817 for the bottom 93 percent. Between 2009 and 2011 the top group gained 27 percent in income while the bottom 93 percent lost 4 percent.

Our scandalous Inequality has grown in part from the hierarchical structure and theological conventions of industrial capitalism. Ever since the large U. S. central banks began shifting investments overseas destroying the economic foundation of manufacturing centers like Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Youngstown it has been largely with only a whimper of resistance.  It was accepted as the operation of a divinely instituted natural law at work in older industries. There was deep suffering, but no rebellion.    

There have been historic exceptions to our national history of passivity: the Farmer’s rebellion of the 1880s; Populism that led in the 1910s to the industrial reforms of the Progressive movement; the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960s. In each case leaders pursued a democratic practice with teeth in it. They changed the laws through their challenges not at the lodge meeting but in the public square.

There is a rebellion afoot today and it has teeth. It’s among conservative forces like the Tea Party. Championing a new spirit of individualism, this rebellion seeks to separate winners from losers, to form an organic social and racial Darwinism that will bless the survival of the most deserving among us, as they define them.  State after state is abandoning fair voter rights laws, blocking universal health care, balking at immigration reform, and repealing gun control restraints.   As corporate money pours into this rebellion from wealthy conservative sources, the trend threatens to pull the country apart more rapidly than we may imagine.  

We’ll analyze the sources of this disintegration next week, pointing to the strengths that should unite us.