The Way of Beauty The House We Live In: Some Reflections for Election Day

Oct 29, 2014

As Election Day approaches, once again we see democracy take center stage.  These days, anger with elected leaders runs high at the state of our country. Is the American dream slipping away?  This question overrides all other issues.  

In 1947, Winston Churchill made famous a remark about democracy from another source: “Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe.  No one pretends that democracy is prefect or all-wise.  Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried and from time to time.”

A more pedestrian strain of comparison has described the democratic process as rather like ‘making sausage.’  

Despite these observations about “this worst form of government,” millions of immigrants have come to the United States ‘to make sausage.’  Children of these immigrants have risen to prominent leadership posts in government: Leon Panetta and Mario Cuomo, Joe Lieberman, Luis Gutiérrez, Nikki Haley and Susana Martinez are a few of them.  What we have defined as ‘the American dream’ comes to life and fruition when they offer themselves as public servants.

Because Election Day occurs only once a year, it is fitting to set high our ideals about the country we call America, our homeland, our representational democracy.  As a nation of immigrants, we are linked together by a common language, a common belief in democracy, in the freedoms set forth in our founding documents.  On the one hand, we the Electorate have the responsibility to elect capable, honest, and effective leaders who will carry out the mandates of our Founding Fathers.  On the other hand, those men and women who are slated to be elected next week have a solemn duty to protect freedoms in this country and where possible, in those countries where freedoms are denied.

Freedom to Vote

If we don’t vote, we abdicate our prized freedom.  Is it not a cause for concern—even worry, about an inactive, disinterested, and disaffected Electorate unconcerned about exercising its right?  What if it were taken away?

In an address given on April 4th, 1943, the Venerable Fulton J. Sheen made an observation about freedom:  “A proof that we are in danger of losing our freedom,” he said, “is that everyone is talking about it. Picture a group of men on a roof-top proclaiming in song and story the glories of architecture, while below saboteurs have already knocked out half the foundations of the house–and you have the picture of modern freedom.” 

“The House I Live In”  

In 1945, Frank Sinatra made famous the song, “The House I Live In.”  Intended to oppose anti-Semitism and racial prejudice at the end of World War II, the song pays tribute to America’s treasure, its people. Earl Robinson, the composer of the words and music, compares America to a house, the house we all live in.

“The House I Live In”

“What is America to me?
A name, a map, a flag I see; a certain word, democracy.
What is America to me?”

The house that I live in: a plot of earth, a street,
the grocer and the butcher, or the people that I meet,
the children in the playground,
the air of breathing free, all races and religions,
That’s America to me.  

The town I live in, the street, the house, the room,
the pavement of the city and the garden all in bloom,
the church, the school, the clubhouse, the million lights I see,
but especially the people,
That’s America to me.”

The place I work in, the worker at my side,
the little house or city where my people lived and died,
the howdy and the hand-shake, the air and feeling free,
and the right to speak my mind out,
That’s America to me.
 
The things I see about me, the big things and the small,
the little corner newsstand and the house a mile tall. 
The wedding and the churchyard, the laughter and the tears,
and the dream that’s been a-growing for about two hundred years.

The town I live in, the street, the house, the room,
the pavement of the city and the garden all in bloom,
the church, the school, the clubhouse, the million lights I see,
but especially the people,
That’s America to me.”

On Election Day, patriotism bids us to put to one side the dark outlook, rise above dark events, however difficult, and renew our faith in America, ‘the house we all live in.’ There is a  popular aphorism that serves us well:  ‘Act as if all depends on you; pray as if all depends on God.’  The more contemporary version of this was intoned by John F. Kennedy at the close of his inauguration address in January, 1961: “With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own.”
 

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