Want to save democracy? Listen to the poets

“A child said, What is the grass?

…....................................

“Growing among black folks as among white,

“Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff,

“I give them the same, I receive them the same.”

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Recent expert panels point to voter suppression efforts, legislative bodies that don't bother that much with the issues that concern citizens, and rancid partisan politics as “flaws” in American democracy. Each of our major parties agrees that the other party has become an existential threat to democracy itself. But what exactly is the democracy we mean to save, and can we really save it from each other?

We need to listen past experts and politicians to poets like Carl Sandburg, “The People, Yes,” and Woody Guthrie, “This Land,” and Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream.” Every one of those dreamers would have immediately recognized the vision of the others. And every one of them would understand that Walt Whitman, the first great singer of American democracy, has more to teach us than any expert report. Starting almost two centuries ago, and continuing for half a lifetime and thousands of lines, Whitman meditated on the America he saw and on the spiritual work needed to fulfill the American democratic promise.

Of course, it would be best to go now to Sandburg, King, Guthrie and Whitman, for no retelling can reveal what you will learn swimming among the lines. But, in case you are not yet ready to dive in … the first part of Whitman's answer is, not just acceptance, but celebration of absolute equality and every diversity.

Whether Kanuck (Canadian), Tuckahoe (Southern plantation owner), Congressman, or Cuff (slave), we are as much the same, and different, as one blade of grass to another.

Diversity and equality are probably more acceptable values today than in the time of Whitman's first readers in the years just before the Civil War. Many of his lines are simply a celebration of difference and equality of men and women in every trade, rank and stage of life from birth to death, though he is extreme about it — welcoming to the “pursed lipped judge,” as well as to the unrepentant murderer.

The poet's notions of what you and I must do, and be, for democracy to exist, however, are as radical today as when he first spoke in 1851.

“I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,

“And what I assume you shall assume,

“For every atom belonging to me as

“good belongs to you.”

Generations of students have complained that it is difficult to tell when Whitman is talking about other people, and when he is talking about himself, or even about democracy or the “leaves of grass.” Actually, it is impossible, because he is talking about all at the same time.

Foreign as that way of thinking may be, especially to the us versus them of politics, it makes sense if you stop a while. Democracy depends on our trust in other people, people who may not look or think like us. What would be the perfect condition for democracy? That would be a world in which, what matters to you, matters just as much to me.

Like King's speech only 50-some years ago, Whitman's poetry is a “dream” (the same dream really). The actual world Whitman lived in was every bit as divided as our own. In his day, political factions did not merely deplore one another, they beat each other up in Congress. When Whitman was young, the president didn't just talk about shooting people who annoyed him, he had killed one in a duel. For the first half of his life, Whitman himself was very much a part of that brawling world, a New York newspaper writer, an ardent abolitionist and a Democratic party activist.

Yet, from the outset of his poetry, he declares that to realize the American promise means putting “Creeds and schools in abeyance,” setting aside any division of religion, of party, or of region. It is remarkable how well he sticks to that decision. He worked in Army field hospitals during the Civil War and wrote about it. He wrote two great laments on President Lincoln's assassination. Yet I cannot remember a line of hatred toward Lincoln's killer or the Confederate enemy.

More than any other imaginable way of living, democracy requires mutual respect. We have real differences about the future of America that must not be forgotten, but Whitman teaches us that democracy will not grow while we fight each other over which party is its true defender.

——

Will Rawn of Havre is a retired Montana State University-Northern professor.