Free Our Divided Political Heart by E. J. Dionne Jr. Page B

we acknowledge both sides of our national character. Our history is compelling, after all, because we are neither a simple nor a single-minded people.
    At the end of a book insisting that no single trait can be seen as defining us, some readers might be tempted to write off Americans as philosophically contradictory and hopelessly opportunistic in our values and commitments. But to do so would be to misread both America and human nature. Most Americans are aware of their contradictions. The dualities of the American creed and the balances we seek to strike reflect an underlying realism about our conflicting desires and hopes—and about the difficulty of arriving at any settlement that can permanently resolve these tensions. We refer to the “American experiment” for a reason: we are an experimental people constantly searching for provisional answers. The British philosopher Isaiah Berlin has argued that “ the very idea of the perfect world in which all good things are realized ” is both “incomprehensible” and “conceptually incoherent.” Americans have largely been saved from the idea that we could create a perfect world. But we have also been saved
by
the idea that we can create a better one.
V
    It was my interest in the Tea Party that led me on a recent July 4 to sit down and read our Declaration of Independence in its entirety. Whatbecame abundantly clear from Jefferson’s words is that our forebears were not revolting
against
taxes or government as such. On the contrary, they were making a revolution
for
self-government.
    In the long list of “abuses and usurpations” the Declaration documents, taxes don’t come up until the seventeenth item, which is neither a complaint about tax rates nor an objection to the idea of taxation. Our Founders remonstrated against the British crown “for imposing taxes on us without our consent.” They were concerned about “consent”—that is, popular rule—not taxes.
    The very
first
item on their list condemned the king because he “refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” Note that the signers wanted to
pass
laws, not repeal them, and they began by speaking of “the public good,” not about individuals. They knew that it took public action—including effective and responsive government—to secure “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
    Their second grievance reinforced the first, accusing the king of having “forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance.” Again, our forebears wanted to enact laws; they were not anti-government zealots.
    Abuses three through nine also referred in some way to how laws were put in place or justice was administered. When the document finally does get around to anything that looks like big-government oppression, its language against the king is delightful (and far above the norm for the typical anti-government screed in American politics these days): “He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.” Note that the Founders don’t even get to this until grievance number ten.
    All of us—from the Tea Party’s most resolute supporters to its most ardent foes—praise our Founders annually for revolting against royal rule and for creating an exceptionally durable system of self-government. We can lose this inheritance if we forget our Founders insisted upon a representative form of national authority robust enough to secure the public good. Our institutions are still perfectly capable of doing that if we turn our attention to making them work again.
    If we do not accept responsibility for our own democracy, if we pretendinstead that we are living in Boston in 1773 and facing an obdurate king who rules far from our shores, we will draw all the wrong conclusions and make some remarkably foolish choices. If we wish to end our fears of decline and honor our character,