Today is the Fourth of July, a day deserving of celebration. It’s the 250th anniversary of the momentous events set in motion when Jefferson wrote, “When in the course of human events …” and launched the unique experiment in self-governance that is the United States.
Our Constitution is a document full of compromises and intentional ambiguities, and at its foundation is a very clunky structure with three branches of government that can’t do a whole lot on their own. It’s not a direct democracy, but representative, where “we the people” elect others who are delegated the responsibility for making the trains run on time.
Other countries have since copied parts of it. Parliamentary systems combine legislative and executive powers. Britain still clings to its hereditary monarchy, which seems more anachronistic since Queen Elizabeth died. The real power is in Parliament.
I’m not aware of anybody who does it exactly the way we do. American government is a do-it-yourself system.
Like all DIY projects, there are some successes and some failures. Some of the failures leave shattered glass and leaking pipes all over the place. Not all paint jobs turn out like the sample in the store.
Many of the successes grow out of the process of cleaning up after a failure. The recovery from the Great Depression, the more than a century-long process of attempting to heal the wounds of the Civil War — still on-going.
When things go badly, we are capable of rising up and turning things around. The reformation of the economy to put 100% effort into World War II stands out. The Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act made our cities livable again.
The Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie no longer burst into flames. Bad as it often is, the air in Salt Lake is greatly improved from the days when everybody heated their houses with coal. The Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act from the 1960s were a long time coming and well worth the effort (despite the recent Supreme Court rulings).
We’re in one of those broken glass periods now. Our political system has been co-opted on both ends by extremes that control who gets on the general election ballot. When the ballots come, there isn’t a rational middle option. That needs fixing, and the obscene flow of money on all sides isn’t improving the quality of representation for those of us unable to purchase a congressman of our own.
Self-governance is more complicated than wiring a three-way light switch with a dimmer, but we really can do it. We have to.
The key to any do-it-yourself project, whether it’s plumbing or self-governance, is that difficult first word: “Do.” Someone should do something. That someone is us, every one of us. Putting the trash out is not the upper limit of our civic duty.
For self-governance to work, we have a job to do, too. Citizenship requires paying attention not only to what is happening, but more importantly, to what ought to be happening for ourselves and others.
Someone should do something about a lot of stuff. News coverage has discovered that there’s big money to be made by peddling shock and sensational stuff. It’s pretty difficult to dig through the swill of “breaking news” to find out what’s really happening.
We can’t solve the problems if we don’t understand them. Is the stinking reflecting pool the work of commie vandals or crooked contractors, or maybe that it’s filled with water from the Potamic River that is filled nutrients that grow algae in a shallow, solar-heated pond? It’s a minor issue compared to the war in Iran, or health care, or economic disparity, but emblematic of something that isn’t getting fixed because we can’t have a rational discussion about what the problem is.
There are probably a dozen hot tub guys in town who could solve it in a weekend with parts already in their trucks.
Despite a glum national mood, there is a lot to celebrate. Two hundred and fifty years of trying and failing and re-calibrating and trying again has, on balance, served the country very well.
Life here is pretty damn good. Just listen to the World Cup visitors rave about how amazing America is. It’s great to see signs of life in Congress again. They aren’t stepping up to their full responsibility yet (perhaps neither are we), but they seem to be discovering how to stand on their hind legs again.
Personally, I’d like to see every last one of them replaced in November and start out fresh. That’s not going to happen, so the best we can do is make sure they feel some heat from us for failing to accomplish anything. Their motto seems to be “nobody should do nothing.”
Let’s spend a holiday weekend eating hotdogs and potato salad and pretending to watch fireworks that hopefully won’t get set off in these conditions. Enjoy a parade, find a free concert, take a tractor ride around the farm with a wagon full of wiggly kids and dogs.
And then, between now and the November election, let’s focus on getting stuff done. There are 350 million of us — we don’t all get our own way on much of anything. Compromise, collaboration, and cooperation are what makes the American experiment work.
Someone should do something, and someone is us.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.