Habits for a new year in a democracy

 Habits for a new year in a democracy

January 6, 2021

~a column by Colleen O’Brien

In a college course on American history, I was given the opportunity to memorize and recite before the class the Preamble to the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, or the Gettysburg Address. I chose the shortest, in typically freshman behavior, but I’ve been reading them since, reminders during times of greed or war or civil unrest that we’ve endured a lot, that there probably will be, always, a lot to endure, that enduring is what humans know how to do, and that we can indeed keep the principles within these three documents working.

I came to love these three famous writings – never so much as during these last four years – understanding at some late date that in each rereading I was polishing my commitment to democracy, that form of government that best honors a sense of decency toward everybody so we can all live in dignity.

The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America

We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

[the second line of] The Declaration of Independence

“…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….

Or the Gettysburg Address, written and read by President Abraham Lincoln in the middle of the Civil War of the 19th century, on Nov. 19, 1863, that relates to this civil war of words of the 21st century, and which reads in part:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent,  a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal….

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure… It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion— that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain— that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom… and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Stirring language — simple, compassionate, hopeful . . . and possible. I read them again and again, I memorize them, I whisper them to myself as I walk in the park and say them aloud when I sweep the floor. The words and thoughts sink into me, make me better, more thoughtful, more aware that it’s not up to somebody else, it’s up to me, in this new year.