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10 Political Rhetoric and the Un-American Tradition Philip Wander Some say a cavalry corps, some infantry, some, again, will maintain that the swift oars of our fleet are the finest sight on dark earth; but I say that whatever one loves, is. 1 Sappho Sometimes I feel ashamed that I've written so few poems on political themes, on causes that agitate me. Then I remind myself that to be a poet at all in twentiethcentury America is to commit a political act.2 Stanley Kunitz In the foundation myth of this nation, there is a story about the rights of humanity or, as it was then known, the rights of "Man." It tells of freedom from domination, individual joy, life itself. These rights were to be secured by a nation to come, but they did not depend, for their existence, on a new state. Rather they lived in the human breast. When government interfered with these rights, people had a God-given obligation to revolt and to fashion a new state, one ruled not by an elite few or by a monarch, but by the people. The purpose of this state would be to make government more responsive to human rights. Such is the meaning of phrases like "all men are created equal," and the claim that they are endowed, not by the state, but by their "Creator" with certain "unalienable rights," and that these rights included "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. " The foundation myth, however, concealed a conflict. It had to do with "human" rights. Human rights in contrast to the rights of colonial rebels in America conveys a generous and expansive vision. This is part of its 186 Philip Wander rhetorical force, its inclusiveness. But at the moment of utterance, in the here-and-now of its being spoken, heard, and acted upon in the late eighteenth century, it also served as an ideological tool. It provided an umbrella under which a coalition ofdisenchanted colonists could cooperate to, in their words, throw off the chains of British imperialism. After the Revolution, and with the writing of the Constitution, the conflict between agitational ideals and established authority became apparent. Slaves, women, and unpropertied men discovered that they were not as equal as others in the newly founded republic. The contradictions between American ideals and actual, political inequality left the privacy of individual suffering to become a public, nationwide political struggle toward the middle of the nineteenth century. A"war between the states," a "civil war," struck at the myth of a unified nation-state, along with its commitment to freedom, equality, and human rights. This myth could not be sustained, as President Abraham Lincoln argued at the time, in a nation that was half-slave and half-free. With the end of the war, the victors reaffirmed a national commitment to human rights-the right, for example, not to be whipped, or maimed, or held as property; the right of black men to run for office and vote in elections. This commitment, limited as it was, did not last long. Less than twenty years after the war, a counterrevolution arose that opposed political equality and "human" rights. The turning point came after the Tilden-Hays election in 1876, when federal troops left the South as part of a political agreement which allowed the Republican party to remain in office. The effect was catastrophic. A resurgent white power structure removed black politicians from office, took the right to vote away from black citizens, and divided the working class into black and white, leaving it unable to organize and therefore to protect itself. Between 1870 and 1920, upwards of 20,000 black people were lynched-shot, hanged, beaten, burned to death-in the United States. The terror this spread throughout the population, the wild and gUilty fantasies about race that this promoted, the terrible suffering that this caused cannot be measured. As the promise of political progress faded in the United States, a new engine for progress took its place. It appeared to transcend race, religion, and national borders, and did not depend for its success on armed struggle. This new mechanism had its origins in Europe and in a reunited United States where, because of the need to gear up for war, the northern states had rapidly industrialized. It was known by different names: "Yankee ingenuity," "free enterprise," "industrialism." But what it promised was a "modern" world. Walt Whitman wrote about this world and its political...

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