Healing America’s Narratives: Justice Souter’s Warning
[Part of a series, this essay focuses on the words of Retired Supreme Court Justice, David Souter, as cited at the beginning of Healing America’s Narratives: the Feminine, the Masculine, & Our Collective National Shadow — Now available]
On Friday, September 14, 2012, Retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter engaged in conversation with journalist Margaret Warner at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, NH. The conversation was the opening event for a series entitled “Constitutionally Speaking,” the intention of which was to engage “New Hampshire citizens in spirited, yet civil, dialogue about the Nation’s founding document.”
The full conversation video is available here.¹ The seven-plus minute excerpt that is the focus of this post is available here.²
The retired Justice’s insights during the conversation, while pointing to specific concerns he had about the then current state of the nation, effectively predicted what the citizens, elected officials, and performance news commentary celebrities of the United States would invite and manifest over the course of the next decade-plus —right up to the moment you read this.
Justice Souter said, “I don’t believe there is any problem of American politics and American public life which is more significant today than the pervasive civic ignorance of the Constitution of the United States and the structure of government….an ignorant people can never remain a free people. Democracy cannot survive too much ignorance.”
Ignorance is arguably the foundational element of the nine that inform America’s collective national Shadow.³ Often, ignorance invites arrogance, fear, bigotry, violence, excess, and other traits to the surface, as we see in the histories of women, Native Americans, African Americans, the Vietnam War, and the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Justice Souter goes on to say, “I don’t worry about losing republican government in the United States because I’m afraid of a foreign invasion. I don’t worry about it because I think there is going to be a coup by the military as has happened in some other places. What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed, people will not know who is responsible. And when the problems get bad enough, as they might do, for example, with another serious terrorist attack, as they might do with another financial meltdown, some one person will come forward and say, ‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem.’ That is how the Roman republic fell. Augustus became emperor not because he arrested the Roman senate. He became emperor because he promised he would solve problems that were not being solved.
“If we know who is responsible, I have enough faith in the American people to demand performance from those responsible. If we don’t know, we will stay away from the polls. We will not demand it. And the day will come when somebody will come forward and we and the government will in effect say, ‘take the ball and run with it. Do what you have to do.’ That is the way democracy dies. And if something is not done to improve the level of civic knowledge, that is what you should worry about at night.”
Most of us — elected officials, performance news commentary celebrities, and citizens — are in over our heads in a country stunned and staggered by everyday violence, destructive weather patterns exacerbated, if not caused, by ambivalence about the planet, a for-profit insurance-pharmaceutical-medical-government-financial-lobbying industry (IPMGFL), a persistent insistence on dehumanizing others who are not enough like us, the increasingly disproportionate power of a handful of very rich folks who have the access and the platforms to sway public opinion — especially, but not only, those members of the public who are easily swayed, and, finally, increasing anxiety, fear, and depression due to all of the above.
While Justice Souter spoke specifically about a civic ignorance regarding how our democratic republic works, his warning accurately extrapolates to a more general ignorance that is exacerbated by our apparent inability as a nation to engage in civil conversation when we disagree.
Increasingly popular and effective mis- and dis-information campaigns are effected by bad actors both within and outside of America. A presidential candidate — as if living up to Justice Souter’s warning about one person coming forward — claimed that no one knows the system better than he does and that therefore he “alone can fix it.” He went on to prove as president that not only could he not fix the system, he was an integral part of it, and he understood it only to the extent of manipulating it for his own gain from the time he was a young heir to his father’s millions.
Recognizing, owning, and integrating what we deny — both individually and collectively — is the Shadow work that calls to America. Again, while Justice Souter was speaking about a particular kind of civic ignorance, a more general cycle of ignorance beckons to be broken, and as long as ignorance-based divisiveness feeds reelection campaigns and news commentary bottom lines, money and profits will continue to trump human beings.
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- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVJhXQB1TAk&t=4175s
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWcVtWennr0&t=7s
- As developed in Healing America’s Narratives, America’s Shadow includes at least these nine elements: ignorance, arrogance, fear, bigotry, violence, greed, excess, bullying, and untrustworthiness
