Toward a New Republic

I am a lonely voice crying out in a wilderness of political waste and special interests; a tired voice that has watched the tone and tenor of public discourse sour over the years; an angry voice that has witnessed the disintegration and senseless devaluation of the special dream that transported whole generations through World Wars, economic collapse and personal travail. I was born in the center of the last century, at the edge of a new era, a new promise, a new challenge. That challenge, taken up by returning veterans of foreign conflicts and their families back home, was the challenge to improve on, and carry forward the dream of a secure, credibly functioning Republic that stood for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness–a Republic that offered the fulfillment of a promise to its citizens, and to the citizens of a world (who looked to it for leadership and direction).

The mechanism through which these dreams would continue to be effected was political process that political process had been stretched, tweaked and reworked for more than two hundred years. That mechanism has been a dedicated road map for public debate and legal recourse, a rough-hewn quilt of laws and directives that would guide three hundred million men, women and children–the next generation and the next generation, and the next, into new decades and new centuries. 

For many of these decades our democracy was known as “an imperfect Republic,” a work-in-progress wholly dependent on the wisdom of its citizens and the good behavior of its leaders and politicians. And there,  my friends, may be the heart of the problem we face as a nation.

These days, I look out onto that vast landscape on which the hopes and dreams of so many Americans have been invested, and I feel an aching loneliness, a special sorrow, a special disappointment, even, a fierce anger. The dream and promise of this country has seemingly been bartered away for the smallest of prices by the smallest of men and women–the entrenched political class that has taken over the debate and is taking its marching orders from the special interests whose only currency is it’s own political, financial and powerful wellbeing.

I weep for this land of Democrats and Republicans when I recognize that the average American citizen is no longer being fairly represented by either political party–and when I realize that so many voters have chosen to accept and simply go along with the blather and bombast spewed as a matter of course by each of the parties.

Americans are divided as never before in the long history of this nation–with one appalling exception (the Civil War). We are aligned along party lines that appear ever immovable and intractable. The reasonable conversation has left the room, gone out of our politics completely, and has been replaced by an angry, aggrieved wallowing wailing that has drowned out sensible debate and polite, respectful discussion.

Someone has got to provide a forum for moderate discussion and debate, a conversation conducted in restrained and temperate tones, an exploration of the political space into which we've landed as Americans–the landscape into which we’re headed. In the next weeks and months I will take a journey into the heart of America, into the heart of the American Dream–or whatever it’s being called these days. It promises to be thrilling, sometimes aggravating and infuriating but always fascinating, an eye-opening journey through the dazzling prism of American political life in this twenty-first century. I hope you decide to come along for the rough ride.