Sustainable Democracy

Richard D. Lamm
Denver Rotary
Feb. 5, 2004I would like to begin by thanking you individually and collectively as Rotary for all that you do for our community. I am more and more awed with the concept of community; what makes it work and how do diverse people live together in peace. I am fascinated in why America works as well as it does, but more importantly in how we can strengthen our local and national communities. We, here at this luncheon, are more diverse than many other countries that are engaged in civil war, civil strife, or civic turmoil and I wonder why we have been successful in the United States in creating a unified nation and if and how we can continue to be successful.

I believe there are many new tensions pulling at the American community. We are getting more diverse all the time and the melting pot in places is becoming a pressure cooker. Twenty to Twenty-five percent of California, New York and New Jersey are foreign born. (8.6% of Colorado) We have geographic, political, generational, racial, ethnic divisions all tending to pull us apart. Perhaps it is time to go to our original roots and look anew at what community is- and what it means.

A great writer once said: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.” Let us look with “new eyes” at community. What is community?

A community is much more than a place on a map. It is a state of mind, shared values, shared vision, a common fate. A diverse community is not a state of nature. A “herd” is a state of nature, a “flock,” a “covey,” a “gaggle,” is a state of nature, but alas—not a community. A community of different religions, races, and nationalities is against most of the lessons of history, as we see daily on our TV sets. Humans bond to families, but not necessarily with their neighbors. A community requires a unique set of skills: social architects, bridge builders, and structural engineers who build bonds, bridges, who remove barriers. It needs shared customs, traditions, values, principles, and institutions.

Colorado and Denver is by definition a place on the map, but it is not intrinsically a community. A community is not geography—it is not who lives in an area—it is the web of human relationships of the people who live in a particular place. As every house is not a home, and every spot on the map is not a community. Houses shelter, homes nurture. Community’s nurture. Communities are forged by commitment, dedication, hard work, tolerance, love and a search for commonalties. Our forefathers and foremothers built a community and passed it onto us, but it is not like the South Platte River or Mt. Evans, which we will inevitably pass onto our children. We will not inevitably pass community to our children. Community is not a guarantee; it is a continuing challenge.

September 11th tested community and most of us are proud of how America responded to the challenge. But the real test lies ahead. Community is a no-brainer when a nation is attacked. Robert Maynard Hutchins observed, “The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference and undernourishment.” Another wise woman talked about the danger of “subversive inactivity”, meaning that if we don’t participate in our civic society, if 50% of us don’t even vote, that is more dangerous that “subversive activity”. We have to care enough about our democracy and community to keep it nurtured and we have to do it year after year.

Given all these new geopolitical, economic and social realities we must ask: How do we define and build a quality, sustainable community? This is an immensely important question. We see daily the results of not building a community:

• In Bosnia and Kosovo
• In Chechnya
• In Sri Lanka
• In Quebec and Northern Ireland
• In Rwanda
• In Afghanistan

What is going on today in former Yugoslavia and Chechnya is not a failure of communism. It is failure of community. The Albanians, Serbs, Slovenians, Croats and Bosnians were killing each other before Marx was born. The people in Bosnia are far less diverse than in the United States—the secret is that we formed a community (E Pluribus Unum) and Bosnia did not.

People who share a geographic area must become a community—or they become Balkanized, fragmented, and fractionalized. We all bond naturally to our families; we bond to our geographic location:

“If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are,” says another well-known poet.

But, we do not bond easily to our neighbors. We seem to instinctively view them as competitors. A community needs a shared stake in the future. It needs a shared language, shared culture, shared norms and values. It needs, in short, social glue that is the essence of community. It must understand that all members to a certain degree have a shared fate. To say my fate is not tied to your fate is like saying, “Your end of the boat is sinking.”

We must give more thought and discussion to those things that build community—that hold us together as a community—and how to minimize those factors that separate us—like race, religion and ethnicity. Diversity carried too far is divisiveness.

I should, thus, like to give you “TEN COMMANDMENTS OF COMMUNITY”—ten building blocks which I believe are imperative as we try to renew and expand our sense of community.

COMMANDMENT I: Do not take community for granted. COMMUNITY must be constantly regenerated, REVITALIZED and renewed.

Too many Americans believe that God is an American who will watch over us no matter how diverse we become or how hedonistic, selfish, myopic, or inefficient we become.

This is a dangerous hubris. No great nation in history has ever withstood the ravages of time. Toynbee warns us that all great nations rise and all fall, and that the “autopsy of history is that all great nations commit suicide.” God will not automatically save America. With God’s help, we must save ourselves.

We cannot rely on past success to insure future success, and we cannot take the future for granted. Successful communities—successful countries—don’t just happen. They are built by dedication, sacrifice and hard work. They must find or build unifying bonds and values. They also are built by caring for each other, helping each other, and working jointly on projects and programs.

A great Amazon legend gives us a metaphor for cooperation and community: it tells of a priest who was speaking with God about heaven and hell. “I will show you hell,” said God. They went into a room that had a delicious beef stew on the table; around which sat people chained to their benches who looked desperately famished. They held spoons with long handles that reached into the pot, but were too long to put the stew back into their mouths. Their suffering was terrible. “Now, I will show you heaven,” said God. They then went into an identical room with the savory stew on the table, around which sat people with identical spoons and handles, but they were well nourished and joyous. The priest was baffled until God said, “Quite simply, you see, these people have learned to feed each other.”

We can create chaos, as in Bosnia, or we can create community. It is up to us.

COMMANDMENT II: A GREAT COMMUNITY NEEDS GREAT LEADERS BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY IT NEEDS GREAT CITIZENS.

Leadership is important. We all know this. Churchill said, “An army of lions led by sheep will always lose to an army of sheep led by a lion.” But citizens are equally important.

America , in many respects, faces more of a “participation” problem than a leadership problem. One wise historian observed:

“To make a nation truly great, a handful of heroes capable of great deeds at supreme moments is not enough. Heroes are not always available, and one can often do without them! But it is essential to have thousands of reliable people—honest citizens—who steadfastly place the public interest before their own.”

—Pasquale Villani

John Gardner, former Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, similarly warns:

“Our society cannot achieve greatness unless individuals at many levels of ability accept the need for high standards of performance and strive to achieve those standards within the limits possible for them. We want the highest conceivable excellence, of course, in the activities crucial to our effectiveness and creativity as a society, but that isn’t enough. If the man in the street says, “Those fellows at the top have to be good, but I’m just a slob and can act like one.”—Then our days of greatness are behind us.”

A quality community needs more than leadership; it needs quality citizens. Men and women like the firefighters and policeman at the World Trade Center. Danger was nothing to them, courage, duty and honor everything. Serving their community regardless to danger to themselves. 388 firemen lost their lives, but 30,000 people escaped before the towers fell in large part because of the sacrifice of these 388. What an eloquent statement of community that was!

A quality community can only be built on the bedrock of quality citizens, who have a stake in their neighbors and give of themselves.

COMMANDMENT III: A COMMUNITY MUST GENERATE TOLERANCE AND YET SET LIMITS ON THAT TOLERANCE. IT MUST BALANCE FREEDOM WITH SOCIAL ORDER, RIGHTS WITH RESPONSIBILITIES, AUTONOMY WITH COMMUNITY.

We have been given the greatest inheritance (patrimony) from what Tom Brokaw called “The Greatest Generation”: social and political stability. They left us freedom but more than that an equilibrium between freedom and order—a first rate infrastructure, small national debt and a tradition of barn raising and tolerance.

Tolerance is a word easy to say—hard to apply. What should the community tolerate and what shouldn’t it tolerate? It often depends on context. It is your right to read your Bible, your Koran, your Torah. It is not your right to force these readings on others. We can tolerate almost any idea and the community should be alive with argument.

But the standards for teaching and tolerance are not coterminous. It may be that you deeply believe that it trees moving that make the wind blow. This is your prerogative, but you cannot teach it to my children in public institutions. You can stage debates in your school between Republicans and Democrats because their differences is a subject open to debate and constantly changing, but you do not give equal time in schools to how trees moving makes the wind blow. Science and rational thought have put to rest certain arguments, and knowledge must move forward if we are to survive in a competitive world. We can tolerate many private beliefs, but should stand strong against institutionalizing non-science and scientific error into our school system.

There are some people who believe the holocaust never happened. They are entitled to be mistaken—even gravely mistaken. They can stand on a soapbox on Main Street and profess that there was no holocaust—but they cannot teach in our schools a viewpoint that all evidence points against. We have pictures of concentration camps and holocaust victims. And, we have pictures in rocks (called fossils), which show us the inspiring story of evolution. Schools must struggle with knowledge, but cannot teach a particular theology—or all minority viewpoints no matter how passionately held.

Even more important is tolerance in the area of behavior, especially where behavior does not hurt others, and/or where no societal consensus exists. What should a community made up of various races, religions and ethnic groups tolerate and what should it not tolerate? The late Barbara Jordan talked about the need to “Americanize” immigrants. How tolerant should our society be and what should we demand of immigrants from other cultures who come here with vastly different ideas of individualism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, rule of law, democracy, separation of church and state, private property? How many conflicting, contrasting and overlapping cultures can live together in peace and harmony? What happens when a separatist cultures clashes with a pluralist culture? When “Why can’t we all just get along? meets “There is no God but Allah”

Certainly there should be freedom of religion, but can people handle snakes, refuse medical care and refuse on religious grounds to salute the flag? People can refuse a blood transfusion for themselves and even all-medical care if they want. We have generally allowed people to do these things on grounds of their religion. In fact, I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read “I’ve just become a Christian Scientist, it was the only health plan I could afford.”

But should they be allowed to refuse medical care for their minor children, can they force their 13-year-old daughter to marry her 45-year old uncle, or submit to female genital mutilation? Should Muslim clerics have the right to broadcast over outdoor loudspeakers the five daily Islamic calls to prayer? Should we give in to demands of some Muslim clerics for publicly maintained prayer facilities in such institutions as schools and airports? Should a Muslim woman be able to get her drivers license picture taken while in purdah.

Does the State have to maintain kosher kitchens in its prison system? Or can Hispanic students demand a separate graduation where the Mexican, not the American flag, is flown? Should the ritual slaughter of animals be forbidden under our animal rights laws? Do we grant a zoning variance to allow a Mosque to build a prayer tower? Should Sikhs we allowed to wear their daggers, so central to their religion, on airplanes? Louisiana cockfighters are suing the federal government over a new ban on shipping fighting birds, saying it discrimination against Cajuns and Hispanics. They claim that the ban is “moral imperialism” and that cockfighting is integral to their culture. All these examples challenge us to think about the limits to tolerance and multiculturalism.

Certainly there can and should be some reasonable accommodation to diversity. Someone in our public hospitals can’t refuse to be treated by a Black or Jewish doctor? We say no. But how about our Muslim immigrants where their religion forbids another man from seeing or touching the body of a wife/woman? Why not allow her request for a woman doctor for reasons of public health? But we are not going to let her perform female genital mutilation on her 12-year-old daughter.

Finding a balance between tolerance and chaos, rights and privileges, freedom and community will always be a work in progress.

COMMANDMENT IV: A COMMUNITY CAN BE A JOSEPH’S COAT OF MANY COLORS AND CREEDS, BUT IT MUST HAVE MORE THINGS IN COMMON THAN DIFFERENCES. IT MUST STRESS THE “UNUM” NOT THE PLURIBUS.”

“Diversity” is a word sweeping America and, in particular, sweeping college campuses. It is appropriate to “celebrate diversity” but I suggest we must celebrate unity even more. I recently went around the world and in no place, with the possible exception of the United States, did I see “diversity” working. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other—that is, when they are not killing each other. A “diverse,” peaceful, or stable society is against most historical precedent. It cannot be achieved with slogans or happy talk. It is much harder to achieve than most Americans acknowledge. A nation is not a rooming house where we all live separately while we make our livings. I believe that a society can be a Joseph’s coat of many diverse people, but they absolutely must have more in common than what separates them. We must share something with our neighbors besides a zip code.

I am sobered by how much unity it takes. Look at the ancient Greeks. Dorf’s World History tells us:

“The Greeks believed that they belonged to the same race; they possessed a common language and literature; and they worshiped the same gods. All Greece took part in the Olympic games in honor of Zeus and all Greeks venerated the shrine of Apollo at Delphi. A common enemy Persia threatened their liberty. Yet, all of these bonds together were not strong enough to overcome two factors . . . (local patriotism and geographical conditions that nurtured political divisions . . .)’

Our culture doesn’t have to be (and shouldn’t be) the culture of 1776 or 1950- but it must have a unified core. The United States runs the very great risk of creating a “Hispanic Quebec” if we do not develop the right “social glue.” As Benjamin Schwarz said in the Atlantic Monthly recently:

“…the apparent success of our own multiethnic and multicultural experiment might have been achieved not by tolerance but by hegemony. Without the dominance that once dictated ethnocentrically, and what it meant to be an American, we are left with only tolerance and pluralism to hold us together. He observes, “’Americanization’ was a process of coercive conformity according to which the U.S. was a melting pot, not a tapestry. We took immigrants and turned them into Americans.”

Tolerance and pluralism is not enough. The history of multiple cultures living together without assimilation is not a happy history. Another scholar bluntly put it this way: “Americanization, then, although it did not cleanse America of its ethnic minorities, it cleansed its minorities of their ethnicity.” Blunt but true. We took Irish, Indians and Italians, Cambodians and Chinese, Europeans and Ethiopians and made them into Americans. A nation must be more than a diverse people living in the same place and sharing only a standard of living.

There are three factors that begin with “D” which helped America assimilate. The first is “ Distance.” Immigrants came from a long distance and often couldn’t go home. They had to become Americans. Today, a substantial percentage of our immigrants can go home for the weekend. The second is “ Diversity”. Immigrants came from so many different places that they had to learn a common language to communicate. Today, almost seventy percent of our immigrants come from Spanish speaking countries and you can live your whole live in West Denver and never speak English. The third is “ Discontinuity,” where times of large immigration were followed by wars or depression that virtually stopped immigration and allowed those here to assimilate. Today, we take unprecedented numbers of immigrants and we do so year after year. America faces a new and serious assimilation challenge.

I thus suggest that “diversity” is only an asset if it is secondary to unity. The emphasis must be on the “Unum,” not the “Pluribus.” We can be composed of many ethnic groups and religions, but we must be one nationality. We should respect diversity, but we should celebrate unity.

COMMANDMENT V: A COMMUNITY WILL REMAIN A COMMUNITY ONLY AS LONG AS IT HAS JUSTICE AND HONORS PEACEFUL CHANGE.

There is nothing more important to community than justice. People must feel that they are fairly treated and that when justice is administered it is even handed and proportionate. If I don’t spend a lot of time recounting the reasons justice is needed is not that it isn’t important, but that it is obvious.

A community needs institutions to mediate individual and group differences. That includes both substantive justice and procedural justice. A community must be to some degree self-governing. Community needs citizens not subjects but it needs citizens who recognize and honor democratic institutions. We must believe more in the bloodless revolution we call “elections” than who wins the election. As one thoughtful person wrote:

“A democratic community enjoying political liberty is only possible when the attachment of the majority of citizens to political liberty is stronger than their attachment to specific political doctrines.”

Some institution must engender enough loyalty and authority to prevail when interests and factions conflict. Many people see public schools as wellsprings of civic virtue. That discussion takes more time than we have today.

What a lesson we have had in loyalty to community in the last Presidential election. We didn’t need to like, or even agree with the Florida voting procedures or the U.S. Supreme Court decision to accept them. Our attachment to Democracy was greater than our partisanship. Etizoni says Democracy is where we all fight with one arm tied behind our backs.

COMMANDENT VI: A QUALITY COMMUNITY IS ONE THAT ANTICIPATES THE FUTURE.

A community must care about and anticipate its future. Citizens must anticipate major changes, which will take place in their society. It must foresee and forestall. Public policy is like a kaleidoscope and time turns it to present us with whole new patterns. Let me discuss a couple of possibly community damaging issues we face. The first is the “aging of America.”

America is getting older — fast. In 1900, we could expect to live 47.3 years; by 2000, we could expect to reach the age of 77 It is likely those born early next century can expect to live to 85. In 1900, only 4.1 percent of Americans were over the age of 65. Today, 13 percent are over the age of 65. Yet, by the year 2030, it is likely that 20 percent, or 1 in 5, will be 65 or older. It may go even higher. The over- 65 population for the last fifty years has been growing four times faster than the rest of the population. The U.S. today has more people over the age of 65 than Canada has people. In the next forty years, we will add over 40 million people over 65 to the 31 million we presently have. This is essentially adding yet another Canada, plus all the people in the Rocky Mountain States to our elderly population.

“This is the first time humans have altered the age structure of the population,” says University of Chicago demographer Jay Olshansky. Sam Preston estimates that over two-thirds of the improvement in longevity, from prehistoric times to the present, has taken place in the 20th Century.

We are not only increasing the number and percentage of elderly, but the elderly themselves are getting older as modern medicine performs its miracles and a larger percentage of our population lives beyond 75. The fastest growing demographic cohort in the U.S. is people over 100; the second fastest growing cohort is people over 85. These two trends have a great impact on the general demographic growth of the 20th Century. Since 1900, the population of the United States has tripled. The population of those over 65 grew 10 times, and the population of those over 85 grew 30 times. This trend will continue. Over 10 percent of the elderly have at least one child who is over 65. These realities will push us into uncharted territory for public policy.

Extended longevity is clearly good news for us individually. Eighty percent of babies born today will live past their 65th birthday, while fifty years ago less than 40 percent lived to see their 65 birthday. Today’s senior citizens have unprecedented and wonderful opportunities for a dignified and active retirement.

But public policy views this with mixed emotions. Compounding the increase in life expectancy and the sheer number of elderly is a third demographic revolution taking place: the drop in the birthrate. People age from the moment they are born, but societies do not automatically age. Societies age mainly by a drop in the birthrate and an increase in longevity. This is what is happening in America and much of the world. In 1957, the American woman, on average, would bear 3.8 children. Today, she has 2.0. Twenty percent of the baby boomers have no children, and 25 percent will have only one. During the last half century, an extraordinarily large generation was followed by an extraordinarily small generation. The average American adult has more living parents than children. Since 1983, for the first time in history, America has more people over 65 than it has teenagers and more people over 85 than under 5. It is this higher proportion of both elderly and “old old” (over 85) that so compounds the challenges facing an aging society.

Soon America will be a vastly different society. One set of authors observes:

“By the middle of the next century, when this revolution has run its course, the impacts will have been at least as powerful as that of any of the great economic and social movements of the past — movements such as the conquest and subsequent closing of the frontier, the successive waves of European immigration, the development of our great cities, or from more recent times, the post -WWII baby boom, the civil rights and women’s movements, the massive influx of women into the paid labor force, the revolution in sexual mores, and the decay of many of our large urban centers. All these developments have had a profound effect on our nation, but the aging of the population will certainly have an equal, if not greater impact…”

The United States is not alone in this demographic challenge. Worldwide, approximately 500 million people, 9 percent of the present population, are age 60 or above. The World Bank warns that “the world faces a looming old age crisis,” and it estimates that, by 2030, individuals over age 60 will number 1.5 billion, making up 16 percent of the population. The problem will be particularly acute for developed countries where pension funds are headed toward bankruptcy under this demographic avalanche.

The results are of this demographic change are in some ways predictable, in others, unknowable. Without change in the current trends, America in 2050 will be a very different place:

Very high proportions of elderly persons and very high dependency ratios accompanied by continuing low fertility and very low mortality could have profound social and economic consequences. Education, health care, housing, recreation and work life would be affected by the changes in age structure described. There could be severe dislocations in the economy as it tries to adjust to the changing needs for jobs, goods and services. Tax rates could become oppressively high and serve as a disincentive to work. Younger workers will be called on for larger and larger financial contributions to the federal treasury on behalf of older non-workers.

In all cultures, in all nations, and in all religions, there is a universal theme against profligacy and urging justice for future generations. A community cares about posterity. An old Middle East proverb observes,

“The beginning of wisdom comes when a person plants a tree, the shade under which he knows he will never sit ” Wise words.

COMMANDMENT VII: A GREAT COMMUNITY IS ONE THAT HAS DEVELOPED A GREAT COMMUNITY CULTURE.

We need a community culture, which gives diverse people a stake in each other. A community can celebrate differences, but they must have a certain level of trust in each other and feel some sense of commitment toward each other. A community must have things they do or honor in common: voting, volunteering, donating blood, attending town meetings, trusting their neighbors and co-workers. There has to be a substantial degree of “civic engagement” in community and some common loyalties.

America has come a long way since we questioned electing a
“Catholic President”. It is not even a stretch to imagine a woman, a Black and/or a Hispanic elected President this century. But “try to imagine a Turkish Chancellor of Germany, an Algerian President of France, a Pakistani Prime Minister of Britain, a Christian President of Egypt, an Arab Prime Minister of Israel, a Jewish President of Syria, a Tibetan running China and anyone but a Japanese in power in Tokyo.” (Harlan Cleveland)

I think more and more about “social capital” and community culture these days. Social capital is where people work together to solve problems, have a habit of trusting each other and working out their problems peacefully. A great community is one that has developed a great community culture. James Fallows puts it this way: “In the long run, a society’s strength depends on the way that ordinary people voluntarily behave.”

A successful community culture encourages certain traits:

• Citizen participation
• Community leadership
• Volunteerism and philanthropy
• Civic education
• Community pride
• Justice

When de-Tocqueville visited America in the 1830s he observed:

“These Americans are a peculiar people. If, in a local community, a citizen becomes aware of a human need, which is not being met, he thereupon discusses the situation with his neighbors. Suddenly a committee comes into existence. The committee thereupon begins to operate on behalf of the need and a new community function is established. It is like a miracle because these citizens perform this act without a single reference to any bureaucracy or any official agency.”

He goes on to compare how Europe and America solve problems. He suggests that giving, volunteering and joining are mutually reinforcing and habit forming, what Tocqueville called “habits of the heart”. In Europe he said, they would wait for the King or Prince or Government to fix it. In America, he observed people would form an association and solve the problem themselves.

A community must have adequate “social capital”—physical capital is our physical infrastructure: roads, bridges, and water systems. “Social Capital” is the social networks: the habits of neighborliness and patriotism, the trust we developed with working and relating to others. It is the whole network of reciprocal social relations.

Societies run on reciprocity to some extent. Yogi Berra once said, “If you don’t go to peoples funerals, they won’t go to yours.” Successful communities have successful community cultures. Winston Churchill said:

We build our buildings and then they build us.

Likewise, we build our community culture and then it builds us.

COMMANDMENT VIII: A COMMUNITY NEEDS A STRONG COLLECTIVE IDENTITY, INCLUDING A SHARED CULTURE AND SHARED LANGUAGE.

John Gardner says:

“If the community is lucky, and fewer and fewer are, it will have a shared history and tradition. It will have its “story,” its legends and heroes, and will retell that story often. It will have symbols of group identity—a name, a flag, a location, songs and stories… which it will use to heighten its members’ sense of belonging.”

He goes on to say:

“To maintain the sense of belonging and the dedication and commitment so essential to community life, members need inspiring reminders of shared goals and values.”

I am convinced that one of the “shared values” we must have is a shared language. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual—it is a curse for a society to be bilingual. We need a common currency so we can pay our debts to each other in understandable form, and we must be able to articulate our differences and celebrate our commonalties. Societies must be able to talk to each other. One scholar, Seymour Martin Lipset, put it this way:

“The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension, and tragedy. Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon—all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with its Basques, Bretons, and Corsicans.”

The United States, in my opinion, is at a crossroads. It must move toward either greater integration or toward more fragmentation. It will either have to assimilate much better all of the peoples within its boundaries, or it will see an increasing alienation and fragmentation. Bilingual and bicultural nations are inherently unstable. We found in the 1950s that “separate was inherently unequal.” But, we must also find that separate is also inherently divisive.

COMMANDMENT IX: THOU SHALL NOT ASK WHAT YOUR COMMUNITY CAN DO FOR YOU. THOU SHALL ASK WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COMMUNITY.

A quality community is one which balances rights and privileges with duties and responsibilities. No society can live on rights and privileges alone, and we have tried too long. Our community and our nation—which nurtured us—now needs something in return. A community must demand some duties and responsibilities from its citizens. We must ask, “What we can do for our community?

Just as a boat needs a sail and an anchor, a community needs freedom and some restriction on that freedom. Freedom is a wonderful word, but it does not “trump” all other considerations.

Saul Bellow postulates that “ America is as threatened by an excess of liberty as Russia was by the absence of liberty.” Those are important words. An 18th century philosopher put it another way:

Freedom is the luxury of self-discipline.

“ America, the Beautiful” mirrors that same thought when it says:

“Confirm thy soul in self-control by liberty and law.”

A free republic demands a far higher degree of virtue than any earlier society. It demands a profound sense of personal responsibility, a willingness to govern one’s own passions, a capacity for initiative and self-reliance, a taste for personal independence, and a sustained spirit of civic cooperation.

In short, tolerance in moderation becomes a safety net. Tolerance stretched too far becomes an apathetic vacuum where the holes are larger than the strings are strong—a vacuum which invites the criminals and the narrow moralists rather than the truly moral to rush in.

We cannot ever pass enough laws and ordinances to substitute for a sense of civic virtue. Communities need standards as well as laws. Admiral Nelson, off of Trafalgar, hoisted these words:

“ England expects every man to do his duty.” And so must every woman; and yes, every child old enough to feed a younger brother or sister with a long spoon.

COMMANDMENT X:

I shall not give you a Tenth Commandment I give you a challenge instead. I have missed important elements of community. What else is needed for community? Let us have a dialogue right now.

CONCLUSION

An old Presbyterian hymn out of my youth says:

New occasions teach new duties.

Time makes ancient good uncouth.

Community is both an ancient and modern “good”. But we can no longer take “community” for granted in the United States. We have too much evidence that we are unraveling and becoming unglued. There is too much tension, too much misunderstanding. Too many separate tribes yelling at each other. Our civic dialogue is too often a “dialogue” between the blind and the deaf. It is dangerous and we must attempt to salvage that elusive concept of community.