Thanks to the Internet, I was closely following the news about America and Oregon even when I was out of the country for two months.
Despite that sense of continuity, after coming home I am simply overwhelmed by health care reform debaters — the informed and uninformed alike.
And yet, I am simply delighted with the cacophony created by these intense and loud — sometimes shrill — concerns over the reform. The delight is for a simple reason — the debates are signs that democracy is alive and well in the good old United States of America. The state of the union is healthy, indeed.
Every time I re-enter this country that has been my home for more than two decades, I feel as if I am following in the footsteps of Alexis de Tocqueville.
The 25-year-old de Tocqueville toured America in 1831. He ended up writing “Democracy in America,” which is even today a wonderfully rich treatise on America’s economic system, its peoples, and the political process and institutions.
De Tocqueville, like many intellectuals of his day, was fascinated with the American experiment — which had no place for royalty and where leaders did not rule because of any divine right. Instead, America was successfully experimenting with representative democracy. De Tocqueville spent a year observing the process and talking with people.
De Tocqueville wrote in the preface to “Democracy in America” that, “It is not, then, merely to satisfy a curiosity, however legitimate, that I have examined America; my wish has been to find there instruction by which we may ourselves profit.”
De Tocqueville wanted to extract an instruction manual for democracy and see if it could be successfully adapted in his country, France. He wrote: “I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought there the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or to hope from its progress.”
Such an approach continues on in the contemporary world, too, and the fascination with American democracy persists. While different people are impressed, or disappointed, by various aspects of this American experiment, I always have been captivated by the American penchant for what sometimes seem to be endless debates about public policies, trivial and profound. I suppose writing opinion columns is consistent with this American trait!
Modern technology has provided even more opportunities for debates and discussions, in ways that de Tocqueville might never have been able to imagine. Talk radio, call-in shows on television, blogs and discussion forums offer us limitless opportunities to put our First Amendment rights to work, and, boy, are Americans expressing their feelings about health care reform. Of course, there are still the “old” ways — town hall meetings, newspapers, etc.
Whatever de Tocqueville might have meant when he referred to “prejudices” and “passions,” we see plenty of both in the health care discussions.
De Tocqueville praises the superiority of democracy, where “the people are invested with supreme authority,” and one of his remarks is quite appropriate in the context of health care reform discussions where we are trapped in details. He noted that, “The thirst for improvement extends to a thousand different objects; it descends to the most trivial details, and especially to those changes that are accompanied with considerable expense, since the object is to improve the condition of the poor, who cannot pay for the improvement.” How true!
So, even if it is an obvious point, let me make it nonetheless: Whether you and your friends advocate a certain plan or are opposed to any reform to the health care system as it is now, take a moment to celebrate the vibrant health of our democracy, the process and the leaders. And yes, celebrate, too, our fellow citizens who refuse to hide their passions.
As I reflect on democracy in America, I cannot but wonder whether world history might have taken a different turn if we had had such intense discussions — from the grass roots to the halls of Congress — prior to the invasion of Iraq.
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