An Earlier Prophet

Those occasions still inform against me: I’ve returned to my rant! 

On July 4, 1834, Orestes Brownson, at the time a Unitarian minister, delivered an address at Dedham, Massachusetts on the Fifty-Eighth Anniversary of American Independence. He spoke in advocacy of a democracy he feared endangered. He warned “There is a worm gnawing into the very heart of that tree of liberty which our fathers have planted.” Brownson spoke on that Independence Day about the danger to American democracy that had arisen when “a large portion of our community lies at the mercy of any political demagogue who knows how to veil his liberticide designs under a pretended love of the dear people?” He had never met Trump and his Republican lackeys but he certainly seemed to know them! Brownson decried the growing inequality that had arisen in the United States from the consolidation of wealth by the few­—the recent proposal to increase the tax advantage to the billionaires who corrupt our society only the most recent example of their insensitive greed--and to the economic and political oppression suffered by the majority of ordinary citizens. In the address he urges the citizens to grab for that democracy they have envisioned “but have not yet created.” 

     Ironically, however, even as he exhorted the populace to make such a democracy, he despaired of the willingness and capacity of the people to effect such creation. Brownson said, “We sometimes express fears for our government, we sometimes fear that our free institutions may become a prey to some aspiring demagogue who will succeed in erecting a throne of despotism on the ruins of our temple of liberty. It may be so.” Such is the conversation now swirling in the public spheres today regarding the demagoguery of the present despicably indifferent, incompetent and corrupt administration. If I didn’t know that Brownson was speaking in the early decades of the 19^thcentury I would say he was our contemporary speaking about our present government. How prescient he seems to me. How sad that we have come to this.
     But Brownson lays the blame finally where it belongs: on the nation’s everyday citizens. Our democracy may be endangered by such aspiring demagogues. But it will not be because he (oh, it is only Trump here) is so talented or powerful or even wicked, “but because the people will have become corrupt, because liberty will no longer be written in their hearts and because they will have ceased to have any freedom in their souls.” I watch the attendees at the Trump rallies and I am appalled by the repulsive behaviors of Trump’s enthusiasts: their revealed cruelties; explosions of violent and offensive vulgar languages; and willing displays of ignorance and acceptances of lies and distortions. If I didn’t know that Brownson was speaking in the early decades of the 19^thcentury I would say he was our contemporary speaking about the current horde of Trump supporters.
     Remarkable then is Brownson’s call for the means to introduce equality and moral and social reform—EDUCATION. Brownson speaks of education as the formation of character, which shall “accustom the child from the first to see things valued according to their worth—not in the market—but in themselves; an education which shall raise our children above the factitious distinctions of society, which now pervert our judgments, and which shall teach them to value every man according to his intrinsic worth . . .” The present government prepares for an educational system that teaches our children to covet wealth and social distinctions.”  If I didn’t know that Brownson was speaking in the early decades of the 19^thcentury I would say he was our contemporary speaking about the current management of our educational system by such sinister likes as Betty DeVos and the accountability movement.