What Lesson Would We Teach Our Country?

A letter to our elected representatives on the occasion of the government as a teacher

Dear Senators Blumenthal, Booker, Hirono, Padilla, Schiff, Welch, and Whitehouse:

I hope you’re well. I live in New Jersey, and I have been grateful for your contributions as Senators. Your oversight on the appointment of Emil Bove is important and welcome, and you establish a clear pattern of bad behavior.

I worry, however, that your June 19th letter to Jay Clayton is another lost opportunity for the Democratic party. 

Your letter may be procedural, but it is also political. It must reckon with the people. It must begin with our ideals and awaken the power and responsibility of your constituents, my neighbors, our fellow citizens. It must show America what you are for, not just what you are against. This is a fundamental problem for the Democratic party. It conjures an America defined by compliance rather than liberty. It is an America with no story, no possibility, no fight.

The Biden administration was no different. We missed an opportunity to show how policies like the Infrastructure Act and the Chips Act and the Inflation Reduction Act changed people’s lives – for the better. When I researched the spending allocations from the Infrastructure Act, I could see the tilt towards so-called red states and communities. Why weren’t Democrats on the ground in Texas, talking to the men and women who were building roads, installing energy efficient lighting, rebuilding our infrastructure? Why weren’t we telling the story that binds their experience with the vision for America that enabled it?

When Senator Schumer sent his “very strong letter,” he resorted to the legalist’s “eight very strong questions.” Rules are necessary, and it’s clear that the Trump administration is breaking them in its race to consolidate power. Yes, the attacks on Harvard and Columbia and Northwestern and others are nakedly pretextual. Anyone can see that. But who are the researchers? What are they researching? Why is it worth fighting for? How does it make America great? Senator Schumer’s “letter” spoke to no one. It was an embarrassment. 

As for Bove, I would expect any number of excuses and refutations to carve out an exception for someone who is just tough on crime, drugs, and terrorism. In fact, his malign, cartoonish toughness is exactly what many confuse for what makes America great. At least he’s fighting for something, they will say.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Your demand for respect for rules and norms, while appropriate, feels technical, alien. It’s not why people care. We care about the spirit of liberty that inflects our American story. We will fight for this, and we ask you to join us. Tell us what you’re fighting for. Show us who you’re fighting for, why you are fighting. Bring the fight to the American people.

Set the role against our ideals – set it against a vision of what we should expect of our government and the justice system. Why do we care? Take a minute before landing your complaints to talk about our heroes. Draw from those like Justice Louis Brandeis who said: “Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.”

What lesson would we teach our country by confirming Bove to the bench? Bove’s order to drop the case against Mayor Adams encapsulated a concern all Americans have – the rule of law is a fiction. What matters is who is in power.

Danielle Sassoon recognized this. She would rather resign than have the government become a lawbreaker, for she understood, as Brandeis continued, “If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.” 

That is not America.

We live in a nation founded on the idea of individual liberty, and it is the spirit of liberty that animates our laws, courts, and constitution. Liberty is not the freedom to make the justice system an instrument of power or recklessly impose upon your fellow citizens. In a speech that would become a keepsake to US soldiers fighting in World War II, Learned Hand described the spirit of liberty as humble, seeking to understand others, and sensitive to the force of bias and the balance of interests among fellow citizens, neighbors. It’s a project – the American project, and it will never be “except as the conscience and courage of Americans create it.”

Hand gave that speech in 1944 on I Am an American Day to an audience of 1.5 million people. With its conclusion, he asked one hundred and fifty thousand of them to raise their hand to pledge their faith in the glorious destiny of our beloved country in Central Park to become citizens. He warned that “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.” The law, the constitution, and the court lack the vigor to protect and ensure liberty. It would rely on Americans, including those new Americans, for the conscience and courage to create it. 

We raise to the court those who share this spirit of liberty, so it may carry on, just as our soldiers in Europe shared Learned Hand’s speech and held it as a keepsake. The law will not save us. Senator Schumer’s very strong letter won’t save us. We rely on the people who can hold this vision of liberty in their hearts – citizens, neighbors – to raise the common cause of being an American. 

Even a letter as formal and prosaic as a request for personnel records can remind us of who we are as Americans and all that is required to make an America that has never been but will someday be. It can awaken the desire to protect and fight for liberty and invest Americans with that responsibility – just as Brandeis and Hand set examples, Sassoon made them her own. That’s an America to believe in. It’s an America to fight for. It’s what makes America great.

Today, the Supreme Court ruled to allow the administration to dismantle the Department of Education. The Department of Education relies on rules, but it is only worth saving if it is invested in a vision for education that will advance America and the American people. We need to answer the American people when they say, why should we care? Why should we fight for it? 

If we don’t answer these questions, we will lose these institutions, our traditions, and what it means to be an American.

Respectfully