Getting what we deserve

It's a more important commitment of American life than we have given credit during this period.

The war over Lincoln

"So who can really claim Lincoln’s mantle? In some ways, both sides can. Both parties embrace Lincoln’s vision of America as a model of democratic government to the world, and both want to be more inclusive. The Republicans do appear to understand that they cannot survive as the party of white southern voters. Mr Bush appointed more members of minorities to his administration than any previous president, including two black secretaries of state in a row. Mr Steele’s election is a sign of the party’s continuing commitment to expanding its base.

But, in other ways, both sides have shortchanged one of Lincoln’s most important ideals: that of self-help and upward mobility. Lincoln was not just content to be a personal example of upward mobility—born, in the poet James Russell Lowell’s phrase, "out of the very earth, unancestried, unprivileged, unknown". He believed that the essence of the promise of American life was “to lift artificial weights from all shoulders" and "afford all an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life."

The truth is that all of the most important debates going on, right now, are about this more fundamental fact of American and liberal democratic life.

Just too many people too proud to admit that maybe all of the "warfare" undermines peoples' opportunities and their confidence in themselves and those opportunities rather than supporting them.

Perhaps we are too stupid and stubborn, all of us, to allow more reasoned discussion and more meritocratic commitments to guide our politics.

Perhaps we are too foolish to reconsider our pride.

If so, we surely deserve the world we get.