Out of many

Revisited

Boom, there it is: 250 years. Photo by Al B

This week should have been a culmination of celebrations and reflection all across the United States, on the 250th anniversary of its founding.

It should have been a reaffirmation of who we are and where we have come from, while fully acknowledging that it is still a work in progress, and that we continue to strive for a more perfect union.

It should have been a week where we examined the meaning of our national motto, E Pluribus Unum: Out of Many, One.

This phrase that seems to have been dumped into the pile of foundational concepts that have been discarded or debased by the current administration and its enablers. Or derided as quaint, outmoded or naive.

E Pluribus Unum is not just an acknowledgement of a truth — the strength of diversity, shared purpose and individuality — it is also a promise for the future; a vision that says we can come from different experiences and places and arrive together at shared opportunity. That we can balance individual rights with common needs and goals.

As Lincoln said at Gettysburg, reflecting on the ideals of our founding:

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

This is a task we have failed to complete. It is THE task that we are being called to take up anew.

We must take it up with vigor. Let’s finish the work started 250 years ago with those individual signers coming together in common purpose and mutual support to defeat tyranny.

They were rebellious and independent and became patriots and founders in congress.

Out of Many, One. A fundamental concept worth defending, and embracing anew.

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“I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.” - John Adams

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” - George Washington

“Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.”

“This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” - Frederick Douglass

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.” - Aldous Huxley