The Past as Roadblock to the Present: Holding Our Moral Center

“The past,” said the minister, “must not be a roadblock to the present.” Immediately I thought, ‘Great Again.’

It is easy to forget, in the current political climate, what American Society has accomplished. Our history is a series of communal traumas followed each time by moral improvement. The Great Again Movement would have us believe something else.

 Through a civil war we abolished slavery. The Great Depression led us to bring a starving populace back to life with the New Deal. After WWII, we made a thriving middle class thanks to the GI Bill and to a focus on education and affordable housing. Our reaction to the Civil Rights Movement abolished segregation laws and finally gave Blacks the vote. At each turn, national trauma led to another step forward in moral reckoning. Each time, national trauma led to another step forward in our moral reckoning.

The Great Again Movement is today’s roadblock. It says, let’s chip away the legal framework of progress and go back to a time of narrower opportunity. It says, too many ordinary people are voting, so let’s corral their rights. Let’s shrink the dialogue in schools, so that upstarts know their place. In their mythical past, a few special people knew better than all the others. Today, members of the Great Again Movement believe they are those special ones.

The present is too far along on America’s journey toward moral decency to give in to such a past. We know more now, and we will not unlearn. We know the importance of ordinary people. We know the strength a diverse society builds. We know what stabililty and decency feel like. Living in our moral center means is no going back.

The current state of the body politic, marked by cruelty, dishonesty and a preference for dogfights, is the product of the Great Again Movement. Facing that havoc, we are called to believe in our moral roots that will not be severed. Once again, in answer to trauma, to a roadblock, moral good sense must rise like yeast. When it does, we will prosper like so many generations before us.