I took this picture in 2015 in a post mentioning that John B. Castleman was a soldier who fought for the Confederacy. The statue was taken down in 2020.
I think the most dangerous threat to our democracy is the idea that half of the people in this country are fundamentally wrong; the notion that some people hold views that make them irredeemable in the eyes of society; the idea that some people are just pathetically stupid and they will never get "it" (whatever "it" is for you). Even if you grant that half of the people are "all-right", that's a dim view of humanity. Ultimately, why would you listen to such people? And if you can't listen to them, how can you allow them the same rights as you? In effect, they become the obstacle; something that must be dealt with in one form or another. Perhaps they should be barred from voting. Perhaps they should be kicked out of the country. Or maybe just shot. As long as you believe that they are the problem, you can never have a democracy, because in a democracy they are the whole point.
There is really only one principle in a democracy: all people are created equal. The second you lose that principle, you've lost your democracy. Thomas Jefferson tried to espouse that principle before there even was a democracy. He did say all men were created equal, but the principle was in its infancy. They fixed that oversight in Seneca Falls with The Declaration of Sentiments in 1848 seventy-two years later. You might point out that Jefferson didn't even mean all men were created equal when he wrote it. He did own men after all (including his own son). But I've taught U.S. History, for many years, and while I've always taught the facts, I don't damn the principle that he tried to espouse and failed to live up to. He's dead after all. And so are his slaves. They can't own us any more, so I leave them where they belong- in the past.
It wasn't until the 13th Amendment that all men were politically equal, and not until the 19th Amendment that women were included. This doesn't invalidate the revolutionary nature of Jefferson's words. It rather illustrates the nature of democracy: that it is a work in progress. Since the beginning, whenever we get closer to it, we can see that there is more work to be done. We do not bemoan the incompleteness of our democracy, but simply push forward in making it the perfect union that it was meant to be.
You can argue that Jefferson didn't really mean it. He was just trying to get a rebellion started. To which I would reply that it didn't matter what he meant. It only matters what the men and women who fought on behalf of the American Revolution meant. It only matters what the generations who came after believe that his words meant. Meaning is a living thing. It is not some artifact that gets frozen in time. It is born, matures and sometimes dies.
The idea that we are created with inalienable rights is another bedrock principle of democracy. This was really John Locke's idea, but even he wasn't a practitioner of egalitarianism as we understand it today. Still, the idea is pretty revolutionary. Locke was arguing that humans had natural rights, and thus if a people were to be severely injured by their ruler(s), they were justified in rebelling against him/them (Locke was not to be confused with a feminist).
A question I often ask my students is: where are your rights? They are usually confused by this question. They initially think I'm trying to suggest that rights don't exist. But when they reply, "We don't have any rights," I go, "Of course, you do!" Then I bring up our school's "right to learn" policy, which is essentially that no student may interfere with another student's right to learn. I point out that if a student is being rowdy and distracting, I have to send them out of the room for violating the rights of the other students in the class. Concrete actions were taken as a result of an intangible right. Ideally they come to realize that a right is a living thing, and that it needs to be maintained and nourished, or it will die.
As we dig deeper into the concept of rights, we learn that rights change over time. Prior to the 19th Amendment, women had no right to vote. Now they do. Not only do some rights come and other rights go, but rights are interpreted and reinterpreted all the time. I typically have to remind students that legally they have no say in who has what rights, but that they should start thinking about it now, because they will, and that it won't matter what their ancestors view on the subject was anymore than it mattered what Jefferson's ancestors thought about the subject. Only the living get a say in a democracy.
I must say, I have had a lot of success with kids, and I wish I could be as successful with adults. Most adults think that their rights are tangible things that they inherited, and they're stuck with them even if they don't like them, but rights only exist in our hearts and minds. So too, a democracy is not some relic of the past, but a living breathing entity that exists not outside of us, but within each and every one of us. We are the democracy. A government can and should protect your rights, but ultimately you are the guarantor of your own rights.
It can seem like a bit of a paradox. A right is typically viewed as something that we're born with and that can't be taken away, but that is only because some of our rights are so important that we treat them this way. And because humans tend to want the same basic things. In order to have a democracy, people's voices need to be heard. That's as true today as it was hundreds of years ago. People need to be able protest, and freely assemble. These rights have not been in existence since the dawn of humanity, but they have withstood the test of time.
While the particulars of a right are open to interpretation (freedom of speech does not give you the right to yell "fire" in a crowded theatre, for example), I think that you can make at least one general statement about a right: it is only a right if all people can enjoy it. Otherwise it is only a privilege. See, rights and democracies go hand in glove. Just as a rights are living things, so is a democracy. Both need to be maintained, and both must apply to the people as a whole- not just some people- because otherwise, they are not legitimate.
And so, once you begin to dehumanize people, and see them as less than, you should be aware that you are inching away from a democracy. Racism, sexism and homophobia are all inherently bad, but they are especially bad in a democracy, because they force you to fail the universality test. The universality test is real simple: do you believe that all people...(fill in the blank). If you do, then it's universal. Democracy is universal and rights are universal, and yes, I am aware that there is a lot to fleshed out in the details beyond those statements, but if we can agree on those basic principles, I feel like we're off to a good start.
