The Great American Experiment

History and philosophy are comparative matters. Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, signed by 56 delegates, created the great political boom: The Great American Experiment. Before the United States of America’s founding, Thomas Hobbes declared that the natural state of man was warm marked by an insecurity of people, their things, and their autonomy. Hobbes writes without subjection to laws, there would be “no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no culture of the earth...and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2022). How dire would that be! So man created politics, then political institutions, and used stratification to define ethical codes to protect our natural rights, which Lockean philosophy conceives as privileges or claims that an individual is entitled to, including life, liberty, and property.

Yet, when writing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson added a key element: the pursuit of happiness. America was founded and endowed by our creators with these certain unalienable rights. It would be right to observe that these rights were not endowed to the poor, women, the enslaved, minorities, and LGBTQ+ people. The Constitution and congressional amendments added these elements to our experiment through political dialogue and civic engagement. This engagement is wavering.

Pew Research Center found that in 2023, 4% of U.S. adults say that the political system is working extremely or very well. Six in ten express little confidence in America’s political future and most find politics exhausting, divisive, corrupt, and polarizing (Pew Research Center, 2023). The foundations of our republic are shaky; for a republic, as Plato wrote, should be built on the will and interests of the people. Tressie McMillian Cottom, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a New York Times Opinion columnist, wrote “academics and laypeople alike, rely too heavily on historical precedent to safeguard our electoral present” (Cottom, 2024). The study of history and philosophy allows us to compare our present and imagine a new, innovative way forward. This way can be inclusive, just, legal, and marked by the happiness of our citizens. We can imagine new ethical dimensions rejecting the original sin of the ⅗ rule that counted each enslaved person as less than their natural right to life and democratic participation. We can imagine new ethical dimensions using intent, equality, and the rejection of historical expectations, arguing as Justice Neil Gorsuch did for the equal protection of LGBTQ+ people in his Bostock v. Clayton opinion. We can work within our electoral system. We can create a popular vote. We can and must imagine new historical interpretations, unbound by dated means of exclusion, limitation, and disenfranchisement.

As I write this, I sit at the first public university. I sit in our hub for social justice. I stare at a photograph of onlookers and construction workers removing a Confederate statute. The Great American Experiment has been grand. We have fought against and within. America and Her ideas sent shockwaves through the world, leading to revolutions in Haiti, France, and Vietnam, and cementing democracy and self-determination as man’s great aim. 

If we are to continue this experiment, we must not just rely on the history of the Constitution or the rhetorical musings of the Declaration of Independence. We must declare that we hold these truths to be self-evident that all people, regardless of race, gender, sex, national origin, color, or age, are citizens of this republic. The aim of this Great Republic is for its citizens to find the means to the ends of their happiness and grace others with their service to provide all with the means to achieve their happiness. These citizens are endowed by their founders and their Creator with the right to be cogent elements in the Great American Experiment. 

Sources

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/#StaNat

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/americans-dismal-views-of-the-nations-politics/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/06/opinion/biden-debate-scotus-immunity.html?searchResultPosition=7