Make Government Work Again
Our government no longer works. That seems clear today with our divided Congress, our politicized Supreme Court, and our two aging unpopular Presidential candidates. But I wonder if it ever DID work in the ideal sense we were all taught it should.
What brought me to this thought?
Welp, outside it is 115 degrees, so inside my air conditioned house I am watching John Adams on HBO. The miniseries, made in 2008. transports me back to a time when we may have actually thought about government,---and not just about politics and personalities. There’s a difference, you know. Politics is the game. Government is the job.
But now that we’ve survived as a nation for almost 250 years, it’s fascinating to look back on that first meeting of the original colonies in Philadelphia. Trust me, it wasn’t the smooth process upon which we now idealistically look back. At the time, it seemed more like today’s familiar “shit show.”
When it convened, the Continental Congress represented the first time all the colonies met to find a way to work as a unit.( I lied. Georgia didn’t send delegates until the Second Continental Congress.) Previously, each colony had operated as its own sovereign country. What a surprise: the delegates were not agreed on the objectives. Some of the states sent delegates whose mission was to mend fences with England, while others were already committed to separation.
It took more than a month just to arrive at an agenda. And when they did, things were no different from today. The First Continental Congress produced little more than a communications plan to make the King and Parliament aware that the colonies had grievances, and to make the citizens of the colonies aware that if the King didn’t understand and sympathize with those grievances and somehow rectify them, why then the colonies were willing to undertake a separation.
Many years later, we are still reactive rather than reflective. We are stuck in a divisive culture not that different from that before the Revolutionary War.
What are our priorities as a nation? Are they still life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Where does peace enter this list, or equality?
We’re here in an era not unlike the Enlightenment. Rapid change has created suspicion, and people want different outcomes for the country. Some want a Christian nation, while others insist that we gave that up a couple of centuries and millions of immigrants ago. We differ on the amount of freedom we leave to the states. We’re not in agreement about what freedom of speech looks like anymore: are hate speech, porn, and sedition included, or not.
We have differences over gun rights, too. We have urban vs. rural differences, racial differences, economic differences.
After the adoption of the Constitution, we ironed out those differences via Congress. The process was much like horse trading. It was made easier by the fact that most members of Congress moved to Washington with their families while they served. Delegates could become friends, and send their children to the same schools. This all ceased in the 90’s, when Newt Gingrich condensed Congress’s work week to three days, leaving Congresspeople more time to go back to their home states and raise money.
Now, most members of the legislature have a difficult time understanding how anyone on the other side of the aisle could even be human. No Little League coaching, no bar hopping, no PTA meetings. None of the glue that binds people together. Alas, no opportunity to understand each other. Just think about it. The easiest way to vanquish some of our acrimony would be to create community in Washington, DC. Let people just be people, and not just partisans.