I am on reflection overload about the still-unfolding failure of the United States to anticipate and prepare to respond to an inevitable global pandemic. My thoughts go far beyond the grotesque image of our bloviating president and his ingratiating lapdogs. I know I am in good company. For me, the crisis reveals the terrible American irony: We don’t hold the truths enumerated in our Declaration of Independence to be self-evident.
The unconscionable delays violated the first enumerated right, life. Covid-19 does not discriminate. However, without explicit immediate legal action concerning access, care, and economic protection, the impact surely will. Not all of our elected officials are on board. Fortunately, many state and local authorities are at least implementing social-distancing regulations in the absence of coordinated federal action.
The terrible truth is that the denial of rights for some of us leaves all of us vulnerable to and less safe from inevitable danger, whether it be pandemics or the rise of demagogic incompetent authoritarians. The combination is lethal.
Our nation, founded on the principle of inalienable rights –albeit, in a limited fashion in practice– does far worse than most other developed countries to ensure those rights. We cannot agree on what they are. Enacted rights do not include adequate, much less, high-quality health care, food, clothing, shelter, education, sustainable agriculture, and infrastructure, or even equal justice. The broad rights of life, liberty, and happiness depend on those yet to be enacted day-to-day rights.
Indeed, societal help to stay alive to the extent possible is a fundamental right. The callousness, denial of science, and budget-cutting that continues to delay and undermine robust national health and economic response to the spread of Covid-19 vividly lay bare the denial of inalienable rights.
Maybe, inalienable rights was never more than a political slogan for our American Revolution long ago, but it is still a powerful rallying cry that bears continual repetition.
Many have identified slavery and its enduring companion, racism, as the original and continuing cause of the shameful gap between promise and reality. However, there is a complementary idea that makes the realization impossible. It is that rights need to be earned and that it is permissible to distribute them by economic circumstance, race, national origin, or gender. That is the anthesis of inalienable.
Every rights-generated progressive proposal always meets one or all of the following objections.
“Why should They get for free what I had to work hard for? I shouldn’t have to pay for it.”
“Why should the wealthy get for free what they can easily afford, but I can’t?” (e.g., free tuition at public college)
Two denial-of-rights beliefs provide the foundation for these objections. The first is that there is not enough of the stuff that supports a decent life to go around. As a result, instead of E Pluribus Unum, or I am my brother's keeper, it's Everyone's out for themselves. The second is that not everyone deserves life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (e.g., the poor, immigrants, and even innocent children).
It is long past time to challenge these beliefs and resultant politics that perpetuate the terrible American irony. At least since the election of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have actively worked to undermine the self-evidence of inalienable rights and deny their enactment. Too many Democrats have acquiesced in the crucial battle of ideas.
Maybe the crassness of Trump’s denial will finally turn the tide in the 2020 election. Maybe, wide-spread Covid-19 death and destruction will lay bare the bankruptcy of selfishness. Maybe, we can finally argue for the practical reality of the old labor slogan, “An injury to one is an injury to all.”
Arguments about the policies or electability of various Democratic aside, the content of the 2020 presidential contest has been about inequity, justice, and climate change. That is a ray of hope in the darkness. Magnifying that ray into something much brighter will depend on how much all of us rekindle the belief in and finally demand the enactment of our inalienable rights–no matter who is elected.
The recent Biden-Sanders debate illustrated contrasting approaches to the current Covid-19 crisis. Both, of course, advocated rapid, dramatic non-discriminatory action. However, Sanders argued that the horror of the immediate situation was precisely the time to raise the broader questions of rights. Biden made the case to solve current problems first and worry about the rest later.
Putting off the broader rights issues risks never getting to them.
Regardless of your current presidential preference, in November, vote for the Democrat who wins the nomination. Our lives depend on it.