Nobody Daily - 5308

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Nobody Asked Me But:

Argue! Listen! Argue! Listen! Probably compromise! Decide!

According to Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman’s current best seller, “The Thirteen American Arguments,” (Random House, $25.00) that’s the democratic way and, throughout the best moments of our history, that’s the American way. For weren’t the colonies born in argument? My religion or my politics or my prosperity is just as important as yours.

But it started even before this. The roots of modern argument and, thus, modern democracy can be found in the Enlightenment and the Reformation. These movements were the great turning point arguments as individuals claimed independence from authority both religious and political. Luther, Newton, Bacon, Milton, Locke. All these men and more were great arguers.

So too were the revolutionaries and the founding fathers. And they found an eager audience. “Common Sense” sold 600,000 copies to a population of 3 million. The Declaration of Independence was a legal brief straight out of Blackstone’s Commentaries. The Constitution was Newtonian clockwork – the gravitational pull of checks and balances, its open-endedness, its brevity, all arguments waiting to happen.