Ecumenical Democracy…
I sincerely hope that this title gives one pause. Ecumenical is commonly used in conjunction with religion. This phrase should not be taken in any way that the two should be merged. Rather, I use the words here to suggest that the survival of our “American Dream” must become much more inclusive, with each voice being heard and pondered in order to re-establish the idea of “a more perfect union”. Having spent nearly forty years teaching law and public policy at the college level, I will not let sit by and watch it die.
This is a completely non-political look at an idea of what it might take for us, together, to preserve our collective “freedoms”, and go forward into the light. Please consider reading this little personal essay in honor of the 250th anniversary of our beginning. (American Dream)
This could be a dangerous site… If taken the wrong way it might seem an attack on “Capitalism” itself. I urge you not to take it as such. It arises from my long experience teaching law and public policy in several business schools. The current state of the Union is precarious to say the least. Much has happened to the American Dream. In the last fifty or so years, the nation has made a significant transition from commonality to individuality, the “New Deal” of the Roosevelt years to Anti-regulation (new morning in America) movement that that took on steam from the Reagan years. Serious questions are being asked about whether “the market economy” has been, on balance, a good thing or an unfortunate evolution. I have written and spoken about these issues through the years and will, on occasion, offer some thoughts that might be of help in understanding where we are and where we might go.
The site is apolitical.
As I indicated in the introduction to this section, this subject is fraught with controversy. I am most interested what it all means for our country. Here I will simply offer a draft of a piece that I have been working on. It will give you a picture of my current thinking.
Ode to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration (The American Dream)
I believe firmly in the power of reason. It is one of the greatest gifts of human evolution. Our ability to analyze available evidence in order to reach conclusions and solve problems seems to set us somewhat apart from other members of the animal kingdom (perhaps there is more yet to learn on this issue). But this power of reason is not all that we are. In fact, if it were, we would be much less than we are. Too great a preference for “rationality” has the power to make us less than we could (should) be. (More later)
In 1776 we had a problem. The vast land between the seas lacked the option of its people to decide how best to live. We were told our limitations by a sovereign state which gave us little, if any, choice of self-determination. When our dissatisfaction with rule by monarchy became unbearable, a large contingency of the “subjects” made demands for change. When they were not met, in fact were dismissed, physical confrontations occurred and were met with force. The leaders of the colonists met and chose a remedy to this problem.
The Declaration of Independence was that remedy. Please read carefully the opening salvo of the rationale for this action:
“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
Is this the foundation of the “American Dream”? Taken as a whole, is this a “rationalist” argument for separation or is it much, much more. This begs the question: what is a definition of the American Dream? I find this question to have more and more significance in this, the twenty-first century. I ask myself: how did we get to this place and in this time. Hence, the existentialist question: is the current governmental upheaval the result of our pursuit of the dream or a sign that we have lost our collective way? To put it bluntly, is our capitalist, market-based system consistent with the declaration or a bastardly aberration of its content?
I would like to argue the latter. Allow me to start with this observation: the declaration declared this: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Nineteen years later in the fifth amendment to the new Constitution the phrase morphed into the unwarranted taking of “life, liberty, and property” by Congress. At the signing of the Declaration, the pursuit of happiness was an “inalienable right”. Suddenly, individuals had the right to “possess” property, rather than a sacred right to pursue happiness. What happened and why does it matter?
If one researches the “pursuit of happiness” phrase, it is a bit more difficult to determine the inclusion of the clause than one might imagine. The sources of the phrase are captured in historical and philosophical sources. The relationship between the two phrases is at best ambiguous, but parsing it is important to the questions being asked in this essay. One source has said:
"It may be that the American Dream, if that is parsed as lots of money and the like, isn't a sufficient definition of the good life or true happiness. It may, in fact, be detrimental," notes Strawn, editor of "The Bible and the Pursuit of Happiness: What the Old and New Testaments Teach Us About the Good Life." (Oxford University Press, 2012). Further: “In the Declaration, "the pursuit of happiness" is listed with the other "unalienable rights" of "life" and "liberty." Those are qualities of existence, states of being.”
If this is of interest, I will leave it to you to do the research and make up your own mind. It is sufficiently troublesome to me as a legitimate reason for some serious pondering about the state of our nation and the meaning of democracy. The second paragraph of the Declaration makes a compelling case in favor of the choice to throw off the rule of a monarchy. (See also other writings in support of the decision, Common Sense by Thomas Paine among many others.) Patriot or not, it is hard to disagree with the case for war if necessary. It just seems to “make sense”; it is a rational decision based on compelling evidence.
However, if looked at another way, as a platform for the American Dream for instance, we should look very hard at the opening. Prefaces come before the rest. They set the stage for the next declaration and does it not make sense that we as Americans should take great head of those words as we consider the rest? Are they not a context for everything that follows? If that has pertinence, what might we conclude about a second major reason to wonder whether the moving force was “merely” rational?
“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them…”
“The separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation”
This statement seems to directly oppose the idea that the declaration is simply a rational political conclusion. In fact, it recognizes and affirms their partnership in the declaration.
This is where the current dilemma requires an inquiring mind to consider the evidence about whether this country, in relying upon a rationally based economic idea, may have wandered far from the “revolutionary” ideas that made the American Dream possible. Who, indeed, are we, and, based on this founding document, should we begin the process of becoming? Have property rights subsumed our unalienable right to pursue our happiness. Alternatively, should we simply redefine the concept of happiness to be rooted in property rights and the individual ability to pursue wealth in our own selfish best interests.
Perhaps this “little mind” is ill-equipped to wrestle with this important and essential issue alone. Allow me to present the reader with some thoughts on that “sacred” topic over the years since our supreme efforts at making the Declaration so.
I begin with a question to the reader. What is the essential idea that has brought us to this moment? Generally speaking, without naming names or actors, we seem to have come a huge distance in the last fifty years from the collective mind of the country that existed at the end of the nineteen sixties. We had won a great war. The economy was booming. We were building towns and cities, owning homes and automobiles, pursuing jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities, and machines were replacing some hard tasks and creating time for play beyond work. It was hard not to think we were “on top of the world”.
Yet cracks were already beginning to form. One side of the public saw this as the culmination of the dream of “opportunity” for all. The other viewed the growth as a threat to our future. Manufacturing, while booming, was devouring natural resources at an alarming rate and destroying the landscapes from which they were extracted. Chemicals were being used to increase farming production and to eradicate infestations of “pests” that ate crops and spread disease. Threats from abroad were beginning to worry policy makers about threats to democracy. Economic reports showed that our burgeoning economy was not benefitting a significant portion of the disadvantaged citizenry.
Suddenly, it seemed, domestic tranquility was suffering blows. Racial inequality had not been ended by efforts at desegregation and threats from abroad were resulting in “saber rattling” in Washington. The economic, corporate community was already voicing concerns about the threat that federal regulation of the marketplace and the freedom to compete. The Environmental movement inspired by Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring” was a counterforce and growing in support. The “hippy movement” among the flower children of San Francisco, though viewed originally as a cultural anomaly, became an irritant—especially after it joined the anti-Vietnam War movement. Then the new president who promised to end the war signed two significant bills: the Endangered Species Act and another creating Environmental Protection Act giving two governmental agencies significant powers to interfere in private activities.
Several prescient academic economists had seen this coming and began writing papers urging that the Roosevelt New Deal needed to be cut back, that too much power to regulate business activities and severely hinder the ability of the free market to operate “efficiently”.
The push back had begun.
It does not take an education in economics to understand the next move. The leader of the ”free market” economic movement was Milton Friedman from the University of Chicago. In a 1970 New York Times Magazine essay, he is famous for having said:
“…there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits…” and argued that free markets are essential for preserving both individual and economic freedom”. He and his colleagues had been writing and publishing papers along these lines since the late nineteen fifties and this was their true and clear clarion call to the public economy.
Captains of industry haled it and business school faculties adopted it gladly and preached it to future managers. It also struck a chord politically. Future Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and then the younger Bush campaigned on these principles, and an ever more affluent population also took it to heart. Federal judges appointed by these administrations were also steeped in the idea that government regulations were hindering freedom of action and expression. Some of them reached the Supreme Court and, when they reached a majority, gave us the famous Citizens United case which they announced in the majority opinion written by Justice Kennedy, that limiting independent political spending based on corporate identity is a form of censorship and violates the First Amendment's protection of the free flow of ideas (asserting that the latter does not pose a substantial risk of corruption [!] that would justify a ban on speech.)
(One might counter that ideas supported by inordinate amounts of money are hard to counter for us with less access to media of all kinds).
As we now know beyond little doubt that it opened the gates to millions of dollars by corporations or their captains, which influenced individual elections in many jurisdictions. It seems that some opinions and ideas are not truly “free”. One person standing on a street corner is perhaps a bit overmatched. It has been reported that at least one election featured handing out checks to voters in plain sight.
All right, time for us to ask questions. Is this our destination? Is this the “market” that we truly want, a market society in which all decisions are transactional, not just those in the commercial world. Should politics, in which we choose our current and future leaders, be based on “the highest bidder” Or should we prefer a system in which the common good is equally important so that each has the freedom to pursue the individual’s “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness”.
How free do you feel in this version of the American Dream? A philosopher once said: “the best definition of a good free market society is one in which you can only get rich by making other people better off.” ( Ezra Klein, podcast with Jonathan Haidt, April 1,2025)
This writer says without hesitation that the Declaration and Constitution clearly support a system that stands for a much higher respect for universal rights to give us boundaries for rational thinking which favors unfettered individuality—even though it was clearly “right” to throw of authoritarian power no matter how it arises. (But I have a strong feeling that I “might as well try and catch the wind”.)