“When Dissonance is a Virtue”

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“When Dissonance is a Virtue”

March 5, 2012
Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine is known for her centrist views; so her decision to leave the Senate raises the question as to whether polarization has reached a point that the Senate has become too dysfunctional to be practicable. Her call for conciliation in her letter of resignation, as published in last Thursday’s Washington Post, has received sympathy as well as praise.

Yet, it seems to me that Ms. Snow eschews the real reason for the disharmony that exists – why the bipartisanship? It is a myth that the Senate has always been a body of centrist men and women deliberating above the fray of politics. Because the Senate is composed of two people from each state, regardless of population, it importantly serves as protector to minority rights. Additionally, six-year terms supposedly allow for wisdom and compromise. Often that has been the case, but not always.

Today, the United States is at a crossroads between those who would lead us toward a form of European socialism and those who desire to keep separate the rights of individuals from the demands of the state. The differences in these two directions are enormous and are widening; they have engendered great passion, and they may not be compatible with compromise. The debate is ongoing. Thomas Paine wrote: “Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.” Great issues have always elicited strong passions, and they should. The best examples being in those disharmonious days and years leading up to the Civil War when the evil of slavery was at the forefront of discussion. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 did not save the nation from a Civil War. Forty-three years earlier, the compromise that was brokered in Philadelphia over how states would account for slaves ultimately proved unworkable.

The issue today concerns which path our democracy will take. Will the rights of individuals be subsumed to the demands of an increasingly all powerful state? Amid an expanding central government, with its tentacles reaching ever further into our lives, is a fear that the price we must pay for the benefits provided is a loss of our individual rights. As Americans, we live at peace and in comfort today; we take our democracy for granted. Most of us have little understanding of the price our ancestors paid for freedom, which reflects a failing of our schools and a lack of curiosity. The further removed we are from the clutches of tyranny, the less we comprehend the true meaning of freedom. It is one reason why those in Eastern Europe, recently freed from the yoke of Communism, are far more skeptical about the promise of Socialism than those in Western Europe.

There is a tendency among those on the Left – especially among the coastal, comfortably-off, well educated elite – to believe that the state has a responsibility to care for the less fortunate. While it is true that there are those – the elderly, the very poor and the sick – to whom the state does have an obligation, such paternalism should not expand further up the income scale. When it does, it becomes insultingly like the attitude of 19th Century British colonialists who bore what they termed the “white man’s burden” – to treat the natives as children, as though they were incapable of governing themselves. It is an attitude both arrogant and supercilious. In origin, the concept may not have been mean-spirited, but its consequences are demeaning. Such “compassion” brings increased dependency, and dependency is the death knell for democracy.

That we are moving in that direction should be clear to all. A state that is financially supported by only half the citizens is a state that, in time, will be supported by a small minority – widening the gap between the haves and have-nots – exactly the opposite of what its proponents believe or, at least, argue. When Congress passed, and the President signed, Dodd-Frank the purpose we were told was to protect the consumer and to punish the big banks. The consequences appear to be to have put at risk small banks, because of the costs of complying, and of making big banks larger. The effect will be increased costs to consumers. A nation that mandates that its citizens must buy a product is a nation that has crossed the threshold of violating human rights.

What causes these thoughts to be personally so pertinent, besides a concern for the country in which we live, is that I have committed to writing my grandchildren on their tenth birthday (I have one coming up on Sunday!), and I keep asking the question: What can a seventy-one year-old grandfather say to help guide a child more than sixty years his junior? I recently read the reflections of a headmaster of a private school outside of Boston, a man whom I admire and who I knew more than a quarter of a century ago when he taught history at my sons’ school. He begins one passage: “One of the great ironies of schools is that they exist to educate young people for the future, yet their content and methodology are firmly rooted in the past.” That is the conundrum I face with pen poised above paper considering the next grandchild to turn ten, especially given that the present is so different than the one I knew in the early 1950s.

The future is never knowable. Thus, history, personal experience and a fundamental set of values are our only guides; so we must use them to the best of our abilities and to the greatest extent possible. History teaches us the importance of freedom, accountability and responsibility. Through experience we learn the importance of hard work and the value of friendship. Values provide the core of our beings – character, independence, self-reliance, honesty, integrity, humor and compassion. Of these – history is subject to interpretation and is constantly enlarging; our experience may provide wisdom, but what we once thought was wise may not turn out to be so. Thus, it falls to values that are perpetual and unyielding, no matter the future. As much as I would like to protect my young grandchildren against a world that can be cruel and unjust, I know that I cannot. I also have no interest in indoctrinating them in my personal political beliefs. I only want to provide them the tools, so they can make intelligent, informed opinions, based on a set of values that transcend generations, and then pray they can see their way forward.

I do know – to borrow the old Chinese proverb – that it is far better to teach a child to fish than to give them a fish. And, it is that difference, writ much larger, which is creating such dissonance in Washington. There are two camps, both passionately believe in their way. One side believes in a more paternalistic society; the other in a self-reliant, free and independent individual. (I should add, parenthetically, that I also fear those who too avidly avow Christian fundamentalism and those xenophobes who push to limit immigration whatever the cause.) But mostly I worry about the direction our President and others are taking the country. Barry Goldwater used essentially the same words as did Thomas Paine, when he said: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” So, while we may deplore the lack of civility in Washington today and we may wish, as Senator Snowe writes, “to engender public support for the political center,” the cause of freedom may well be worth today’s discord.