Reclaiming Our “We”
“We the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union . . . .” – we are all familiar with the words in the first line of the Preamble to the Constitution. Have you ever wondered how our nation might be different if we took these words to heart? What is happening to the WE in “We the people” these days? It seems that the “WE” is being overshadowed by the “I” and the “MY”: MY country, MY gun, My property, MY rights, MY Fourth of July, MY culture, MY history, MY child. The commitment to “we” has somehow morphed into an obsession with ‘I” – the individual’s obsession with control, power, property, without regard to how that obsession might deter our progress toward a more perfect union. It certainly doesn’t help that the dubious legacy of now departing Justice Kennedy was to reify the individual as the ultimate arbiter of meaning and reality.
In this world view, the social fabric, the relationships that give life meaning and order are all but erased. How disheartening, though not surprising then, that his SCOTUS colleagues would go on to declare that corporations too were “individuals” – with rights to control, possess, and exercise power without regard for the survival and sanctity of other humans or of the environment.
More than 40 years ago, eminent psychiatrist Jean Baker Miller taught that humans grow through relationship for the purpose of relationship, not to become bigger, tougher individuals who don’t need relationship or connection. How might the soul of our nation evolve if we accepted the teaching from our Preamble as part of our moral order? We never have been a perfect union. In fact, only propertied white men were considered to have rights in the original Constitution. While our founding fathers were writing of life, liberty and happiness, Native Americans were sacrificed by our government and its people in the conquest for land and African slaves were considered as only 3/5’s of a human being. In many states white women could not own and control property, and white men who did not own and control property were considered trash.
Despite this dubious and rather disheartening beginning, generations of Americans have fought for the soul of our country; generations of women and men of all races have fought to help us become a stronger, more connected “we”. Their commitment to a more perfect union is evident in the abolitionist and suffragist movements of the 19th century, as well as the civil rights movements of 20th century. These 19th and 20th century Americans bequeathed to us a legacy of hope and the desire for relationship.
Today in the 21st century, we are in just an epic a battle for the soul of our country as were our forbearers. And let me say this: if we betray their legacy of hope, we will lose our soul; if we betray their desire for relationship, we will lose our soul. We will lose our soul if we refuse to reject the soulless politics of national leaders who taunt and blame people who are poor, who live with disabilities, who are marginalized and excluded from the great wealth of this nation. We will lose our soul unless we know that our human family is broken whenever a toddler is snatched from her mother’s arms on the southern border. We will lose our soul unless we know that our human family is broken whenever we give a child lead-tainted water to drink or toxin-loaded yards in which to play. We will lose our souls if we continue to degrade our natural resources and divvy them up like cheap checker pieces amongst the “deserving” and “undeserving” of the population. It is a shame, for example, that many families in my hometown community of Pittsfield sit on poison land because GE exercised its individual right to dump toxic wastes into Pittsfield’s waters.
Being a patriot is to care for the soul of our country. It’s not about thumbing our nose at other nations believing we are better, or the chosen. Being a patriot is recognizing that “MY” right to my land and possessions does not give us the right to selfishly accumulate at the expense of basic nonnegotiable resources like food, water, healthcare, education for all our citizens. Since the SCOTUS saw fit to create a new species of person by conferring individual rights to corporations, being a patriot is for these institutions to have a responsibility to promote the common good. It means recognizing that no, it is not good to poison the land and waters of the people who work in your factory.
Being a patriot is first and foremost respecting the first word in the first phrase of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America: “WE”. As Miller instructs: “WE” for the sake of a stronger more perfect “WE”. Contrary to the popular, dogmatic myths about rugged individualism, no “I” has ever succeeded in this country by “pulling himself up by his own bootstraps” (a feat that physically impossible anyway). Our strength and our success as persons, as families, as a nation requires us to lean into the power of relationship.
We are stronger patriots when we lean on, lean in, and work with other people – people who must be respected as part of our success; people who must be recognized as a part of the Preamble’s “We”. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
Be well,
Bill