There is a patent humane expression about social behavior, sociability and what amounts to normal decency and compassionate behavior. It has been attributed over the centuries to many different leaders such as Mahatma Ghandi and Winston Churchill, but factual attribution for the statement is undetermined.
That happens with deep human truths.
The expression says, “The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens.”
It promotes a social trait that lies at the base of heroism, leadership and character of the person promoting the trait (or enacting it into statute or policy).
So, about 100 years ago when women were granted fully enfranchised citizenship and voting rights — not based in their merit but in their simple human existence and citizenship — it was not erroneous. It was a deeply heroic and compassionate act. Women have since proven their mettle and capacity for dutiful service — public or private — with each advance toward equality from where we were to where we are now. Giving them relief was instrumental in women gaining a foothold and achieving their individual greatness, adding to our national greatness.
When the U.S. passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 it was another step in that direction, further promoting our principled national identity. When the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act was passed in 1974 to protect veterans, it promoted the organized reintegration of soldiers to civilian life, to relieve the difficulty faced in that pursuit.
With each of these statutory “breaks,” we have found that our productivity increases because we have a larger pool of productive citizens. We bred them for success, nurtured them patiently, and we received benefit from that risk. That merit is valuable.
It is declared: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness … laying (the government’s) foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect (citizens) Safety and Happiness.”
Soldiers and patriots die for these principles: We all righteously pledge allegiance to a sworn duty of citizenship. We as a nation become truly greater by our willful duty. As John Kennedy said, “Why choose this as our goal? … Why climb the highest mountain? … Not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.”
We dutifully pledge to self-evident, non-trivial, non-negotiable principles. The founders promoted them with wisdom and courage. They are the root causes for our organization as a social construct into a nation, and particularly, into a nation of good people with principles to dutifully uphold.
All naturalized citizens should know this from lessons on the path to citizenship. Native U.S. citizens like myself learned them in a few civics courses from primary and secondary education. They are the principles we are bound to as citizens, whether we remember them or not.
Caution is advised. Merit is a dubious measure, biased by the specific merited parameters of the whomever bestows such merit. It’s also somewhat unearned. Nobody arrives at their personal condition without some amount of good or bad fortune. Being born into a real estate fortune can be a watershed to be squandered, or lost to disastrous behavior, or to be nurtured and grown. But fate (and sometimes the largess of the state and city of New York) always has a hand. To ignore this deep truth about personal experience is delusional. What is achieved is a product of luck, skill, fate and careful/careless behavior.
An example of how bias affects merit is the assignment of a sportfighting/entertainment CEO to lead the Department of Education, but that is only a single among dozens of high-visibility examples. The current administration is embracing a form of merit based on attributes unrelated to demonstrable knowledge about education.
There is no heroism or humanity in subsuming unalienable rights to unstated, fungible attributes that dare compete with these rights. Unprincipled behavior is borderline criminality. Moral disengagement leads people to act immorally and justify their unprincipled behavior.
The decay we witness from failing to uphold these truths is evident.
There is no honor in promoting unstated and flawed attributes like merit as superior to unalienable rights. It is foul for any leader, or self-promoting leadership guru, to distort the meaning and essence of our nation and its foundational principles.
With pride in a decent, principled America …
Christopher Lucero
Saugus
