The past is prologue

They found him.

Andrew Breitbart put together a montage featuring Edward T. Hall, III, the young trust fund baby whose histrionics have dominated talk radio and conservative blogs, beseeching the camera to, “Save us! Save us!” in a pitch which would make you think he was protesting in Iran, and the Basij had just taken his wife and daughter in for questioning. The kind of stuff that makes you roll your eyes. The kind of stuff that perfectly fits the narrative of the Occupy Wall Street protesters as rich kids and professional Communists with too many piercings and not enough gumption, asking for a handout instead of a job.

Everybody can feel better now, the same way everybody else felt better when video of tea party protests focused on those angry old folks who called Mr. Obama a socialist and then said he’d better not touch their Social Security. Or the ones of people making overtly racist comments. The ones who had poorly spelled signs. The ones who were obviously only barely familiar with the text and history of the Constitution, despite the dandy tricorn hats they wore.

Of course, once you’ve dismissed either movement and determined that all its participants are stupid, deluded, useful idiots, then you return to real life. Where many of your friends have been “downsized,” your son’s VA benefits just got cut, your grandmother’s retirement account is decimated, many of the homes on your street are in foreclosure, your unemployment benefits are running out, and your nephew’s using that expensive degree in international business to drive the cash register at the local Quik-Stop – and glad to have the job.

Cognitive dissonance isn’t comfortable. The old paradigm which worked so well to make sense of your world just doesn’t work any longer, no matter where your comfort zone is on the political spectrum. But it’s hard to let go of that easy, familiar story where all things bad are the fault of that Other Guy and his Band of Merrye Miscreants. The hot rhetoric of “blame” is warm and welcoming, a friendly distraction from plummeting assets, overdrawn accounts, and hostile debt collectors. The downside, of course, is that it doesn’t actually accomplish any substantive change to the circumstances we’re all living in.

A very wise friend asked recently: “Does it really matter who’s to blame? Let’s put the forest fire out first before we go on finger-pointing binges about who started it.”

Probably most Americans agree on the need to do that, but in the next breath will come the objection that it’s impossible; that the country is too divided; that all our institutions have proved inept, at best, and at worst, thoroughly corrupt; that all the things we used to trust are demonstrably untrustworthy, from our elected officials to our financial institutions to all levels of law enforcement; that an election is coming, and there’s just too much hostility, too much anger, too much polarization, not enough trust.

To which I cheerfully reply: Baloney!

In May of 1787, delegates from the 13 old colonies began debating what sort of system should govern this collection of 13 very different states. Mistrust was rampant. Some wanted to fix the problems apparent in the Articles of Confederation; some agitated for a whole new system; all could be reasonably expected to want to protect their own interests, even at the expense of the whole. The monetary system was chaotic, and the various state economies hadn’t yet recovered from the effects of a revolution to throw off the chains of central government. The Federalists wanted a stronger system than the Articles of Confederation provided for, to protect the whole; the Anti-Federalists believed a stronger central government would just invite the same abuses of state and individual liberty they’d just escaped. Talk about a divided population, hostility, polarization, mistrust!

Here is the miracle; here is our heritage.

Those two groups, the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, set out to persuade – with reason, with history, with respect. They wrote, both of them, a series of arguments, set out in coherent form, published across the country, to explain why their approach was the most beneficial for everyone. They wrote not just a Utopian dream of a perfect society, but a careful exploration of the different risks inherent in every approach, and which risks they believed were worse, and how they hoped to minimize the effects. They wrote eloquently, with reason and passion; and most importantly, they wrote trusting that the people would be able to read, understand, and digest what was written, and then decide.

In Federalist 1, Alexander Hamilton addresses the very zeitgeist vexing the nation both then and today. First, he points out that the future success or failure of the nation will answer whether men can, indeed, establish good government based on reflection and choice, rather than anger and accident. Most importantly to our circumstances, he acknowledges the polarization already driving the parties, and the tendency to reject opposing opinions as being prompted by selfish motives. He then points out that even the best of people can be wrong for all the right reasons, and the worst of people can be right for all the wrong reasons, and there’s no real way to tell until later which is which. Having thus acknowledged and then set aside the bias on both sides, and having generously offered to assume good intentions and reasonableness on the part of all, he invited everyone to participate.

It would be lovely, but wrong, to pretend that those published articles were the total of the wrangling. They certainly were not. Dispute and outright hostilities preceded the Constitutional Convention, and then characterized it throughout; ratification wasn’t final until July of the following year, after a lot of compromise language had been offered, and civil war narrowly averted in two states. The final draft at the Convention was only approved after Ben Franklin, aging and sick, indicated that despite what objections he still had to the document, he had grown old enough to realize he’d been mistaken on occasion. “I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best.” It was time to begin.

And so, after a painful and protracted labor, this nation was born.

That’s our heritage, America. Not just the passionate conflict and extreme rancor, driven by fear in a changing world, but that strand of real courage, that trust in our own ability to use reason, to consider all the issues which appear to confound us. And then to move forward, with the purpose of securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. That’s our legacy, and also our charge.

This Thanksgiving, that uniquely American holiday, as families or friends or churches or shelters gathered to table, those gatherings were comprised of individuals who, in other circumstances, oppose each other. The Republican uncle broke bread with the Democratic aunt; the Libertarian nephew passed the cranberry sauce to the young socialist second cousin. The faithful tea party member savored a long, loving hug from the grandson he adores, whose Occupy Wall Street sign rides in the back of the car his parents, the RINOs, helped him purchase. At all those tables, all across the country, we not only found who we’re fighting with – but what we’re fighting for.

Come, ye thankful people, come.

Fry is a frequent contributor to The Sun News’ Opinion Blog, at thesunnews.typepad.com/opinionblog.