I’ve been recording commentary on WAMC for approximately 15 years. Christmas and New Year’s are always different. It doesn’t feel like a time for argument, for praising some and condemning others. So I and many in similar positions usually talk about the joys of the holiday season and individual plans for the New Year. I tend to do it a bit multi-culturally but it really doesn’t matter; we all share the same dreams.
In reality, though, I realize that those who govern us have an enormous impact on our health and happiness – whether we’ll die on a war front, as refugees from battle or other disaster, or for lack of roads, doctors or access to health care. So I want to address my hopes for the New Year to those who have those powers.
It’s hard to read or hear the news without finding more evidence that power corrupts. George Mason, a Virginia delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and a slave-owner himself, told his colleagues, on August 22, 1787, that “Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant.”[1] Talking about lessons from slavery seems extreme to some except that we see frequent examples of masters taking cruel, often deadly, advantage of those who are called employees or are otherwise vulnerable. Let us not sire petty tyrants.
The promise of America goes well beyond class, race or religion. Thaddeus Stevens, a Pennsylvania congressman and a Republican leader in the fight for the 14th Amendment, expressed the American dream when he told the House that he dreamed of the day when “no distinction would be tolerated in this purified republic but what arose from merit and conduct.”[2] Our Constitution makes no other distinction. If you’re here you are protected. It protects not only citizens but residents, travelers, visitors, everyone. It does that by using broad terms, “people,” “persons,” without limitation. That’s one of the great features of our Constitution. Our country pioneered the concept of human rights, guaranteed for everyone.
Paul Finkelman, an old friend and former colleague, now a college president, showed me a draft he’s been writing on the point. He goes through each Amendment which make up what we call the Bill of Rights and the language of who gets those rights. The 1st, 2nd, 4th, 9th and 10th Amendments are directed to “the people.” The 5th protects “any person.” The 6th protects “the accused.” Otherwise the Bill of Rights simply prohibits government from infringing rights and the language is again universal. Attacks on people and their rights which depend on where they come from conflict with the great principle which this country pioneered – universal human rights.
The late, great, vice-president, Hubert Humphrey, broadened the point at the dedication of the Hubert H. Humphrey Building, on November 1, 1977, saying “The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”[3] That we may treat each other well are my wishes for the coming year. And, as Pete Seeger sang, “Pacem in Teris, Mir, Shanti, Salaam, Heiwa!” which spells peace in many languages, and in some it also means good health. Happy New Year.
[1] 2 Max Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, 370.
[2] Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st sess. 3148 (1866) (June 13, 1866).
[3] Congressional Record, November 4, 1977, vol 123, p. 37287, available at https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hubert_Humphrey.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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