LAB1663.NET - Sam’s bit o’ the web

Technically, the first decade of the 21^st Century won’t come to a close until midnight on December 31^st, 2010.  However, no one else seems to be concerned with technicalities and so neither will I;  the media in general is in full “end of the decade” mode, so I might as well express my thoughts on the topic as well.

We’re seeing a lot about how “the 2000s” were different–about how everything changed and nothing was the same.

While I agree that the events of this decade have been trying, upsetting and often tragic, I come to a different conclusion from those impressions than most of our leaders and much of our media.

The 2000s have been trying, no doubt–both for America and for the rest of the world.  Contested elections, terrorist attacks, wars, natural disasters, the near-collapse of our financial system and a growing distrust of government that is made all the more dangerous by our collective apathy.

But where many people will tell you that all of these challenges justify some of the actions we’ve taken as a nation during this decade, I say that the actions we’ve taken this decade justify taking the next decade to sweep aside the corruption, paranoia and bile that color American politics and step up to fulfill the promise of what we can be.

The United States is a young nation, but in many ways we are the grandfather of modern liberal and democratic political institutions.  The Enlightenment-inspired ideals that informed the actions of our founders may have been born in Europe, but they came to adulthood in the Americas.  Following the American Revolution, reform movements and even full-blown revolutions swept Europe.  The modern democracies of our closest allies, while many are older than ours, look to those Enlightenment ideals as their inspiration.  We were the first nation founded on those principles.  Ours was the first revolution to fight for a country governed by laws rather than men and by the principle that those laws ought to apply to all men–regardless of station or means.

We’ve failed at the fulfillment of that promise more often than we’ve succeeded.  The trail of American transgressions against liberty is longer than I have the time or the inclination to repeat, but it’s familiar to us all.

This decade, we failed at the fulfillment of that promise with alarming ease and regularity.  We let fear, mistrust, greed and malice take hold in our lives and in our public discourse.  We let corruption and the will to power at any cost take root in our government.  We allowed ourselves to be cajoled into a sense of urgency that justified the sacrifice of our own liberties and the heinous violation of the rights of others.  Atop our own sorrow at the troubles we faced, we heaped war, torture and national shame.  We allowed ourselves to be manipulated by small-minded, ugly-spirited persons.  We let them persuade us to deny our brothers and sisters the protection under the law that our constitution guarantees to them.

Many of us forgot the promise of the republic:  “…the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.” [John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, Chapter VI]

So as we move forward, we should endeavor to remember that promise.  Let’s scribe that promise across the halls of our legislatures and force our leaders to speak it so frequently that they can’t help but believe it.  Let’s end our wars, restore our liberties, enhance freedom for those to whom we deny it and promote those ideals that we inherited from the Enlightenment around the globe.