Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Sarah,

Thank you for enticing your grandfather into this place.  The admiration expressed here is just a fraction of what so many of us feel toward him.  

Please ask him this: can we be saved?  

I don't mean that in a good "dunked in the creek" sort of way (though, as a Baptist myself, I've been dipped), but in the sense of can we save the ideal of American democracy?

It's been recognized from the outset that Democracy was a fragile ideal.  There were many, even among our founding fathers, who assumed that democracy would soon fail under increasing demands from those at the bottom of the social heap.  However, Americans proved over the decades and centuries to be astoundingly selfless, often placing the good of others and the nation ahead of their own benefit.

Now it appears that democracy teeters again on the razor's edge of failure -- not because it has been eroded from below, but because it has been preyed upon from above.  Those who have the most, craving even more, have used the mechanisms of our government to further enrich themselves at tremendous cost to our nation.  They have isolated and insulated themselves, broken with the public trust, and removed the barriers that are meant to keep such intransigence in check.

While stealing from the pockets of all Americans and ruining our honor around the world, these same people have used the language of patriots, speaking of freedom while they deny it to others, waving the flag of democracy while they drain it of meaning, and talking of faith while they break with that faith.  They have built themselves an empire, and called it liberty.

My question, sir, is can we be redeemed, and what measures must we take to pull our nation back from this yawning abyss?

There were those who, on the brink of the Civil War, felt that America's sins could not be expunged but through the price of blood.  Surely, we need not go through such a trauma again, and yet it seems impossible to see clear to where America is once again America.  

What can we do so that we can once again talk of democracy, and be believed?  What steps should we take to shoulder the burdens generated by the irresponsibility of this age, so that we do not act as a lead weight upon the future?

Many of us, Mr. President, are willing to pay the needed price and face the fight ahead.  In my youth, you were there, showing us that we needed to admit to our problems or face an increasingly bleak future.  But America chose what looked like an easier path, and now everything you warned about is here.

Will you tell us, sir, can it still be done?  Can we be saved?