New York Blue and Proud

I am relieved that the election is over. I had predicted in my Open letter to Undecided Ohioans that it would come down to Ohio, and sure enough, it did. Still, there is something about certainty, regardless of the result, that allows one to move onto the next big thing. Certainly the process this time was much better than in 2000 (which was marred, ultimately, by the intellectually unsound U.S. Supreme Court decision that decided it, and which very few Americans actually read). So I accept the results this time and am ready to move on. Hail to the Chief!

My fellow New Yorkers, on the other hand, are still trying to get over their bewilderment and grief. I see it in the faces of people, I overhear it on the street. Even people I hardly know say to me “we lost,” making the numerically justified assumption that I am a Democrat because I am a New Yorker.

Despite the attacks of 9-11 (or perhaps because of them), more than 80% of Manhattanites voted for John Kerry. Some op-eds have wondered aloud whether people in the “red” states (where the chances of a terrorist attack are quite slim) voted the way they did because they simply don’t care about New York’s safety. Others, as exemplified by the British newspaper headline “How could 59,239,776 people be so dumb?” attributed the result to ignorance. In the throes of grief, these are seductive theories indeed. But I cannot let myself believe the former, and as for the latter, the exit polls for Ohio and for the entire nation simply do not support this theory (to the extent education level is correlated with intelligence) -- educated and uneducated people split their votes pretty evenly. In short, a lot of smart, caring people voted for George Bush.

So what is it that has New Yorkers feeling so “blue” and feeling so unlike the rest of America? I think, first, it is part of the natural grieving process and will soon pass. Come visit us and cheer us up!

Second, it may be an overreaction to the media’s flavor-of-the-month hot topic of “moral values.” No one likes being told they lost because they don’t have moral values. New Yorkers, justifiably, feel they do have moral values. After all, it is the city that welcomed most of our ancestors to this country (that and the other blue city on the West Coast) -- the city that embraces the moral values of hard work and success, of risking life and limb to rescue lawyers and bankers from burning buildings, of welcoming different peoples into a multicultural environment unlike any other, of respecting the love and commitment two people make to each other regardless of their gender, of welcoming the benefits of science and medicine free of political interference, of avoiding the death and mutilation caused by unnecessary war, of not misleading people into war, of not passing onto our children the accumulation of deficits (the largest as a percentage of GDP since World War II), and of making sure poor children receive adequate healthcare and a decent education. These are moral values of the heart that have real benefits and enhance Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness. And so New Yorkers are taken aback when the Election suggests that the losers have no moral values. New Yorkers should get over this and be secure in their morality. I’m biased, but I think they have upstanding moral values.

Third, there is and always has been a cultural and philosophical divide about what America is about. New Yorkers should get over that fear that the other side is some new menace taking over the country. Our divisions date back to our nation’s founding when Federalists and Anti-Federalists fought over the very structure of our Union. The Federalists -- James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay -- supported a strong federal government and wrote their Federalist Papers to persuade New Yorkers to support ratification of the new Constitution. Anti-Federalists like Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson opposed the Constitution and any form of centralized government. The Federalists eventually prevailed in this philosophical battle over what America would be -- a strong central government versus a confederacy of independent states -- but not without giving in to Anti-Federalists’ demands for a Bill of Rights (which interestingly the Federalists opposed as being capable of too narrow a construction). This first Congress sat in New York just two blocks from my office. When their work was done, the rights of individuals embodied by the Bill of Rights were federal rights, guaranteed by a strong centralized government and promoted by both sides as minimum rights, not a complete list of rights.

Almost a century later, the divide reshaped itself along the Mason-Dixon Line, but the philosophic differences underpinning the American Civil War had a familiar flavor that went beyond the issue of slavery, but to the larger issue of federal power versus states' rights -- the proponents of the former siding with expansive rights for people, of the latter seeking to maintain the bonds of slavery. Again, the former prevailed.

Even after the Civil War, the legacy of slavery left a century-long stain upon the nation that again stressed the divide along the same geographical lines. In the 1950s and 60s, states in the South sought to “conserve” their right to segregate the races, outlaw interracial marriage and make it difficult or impossible for African Americans to vote -- policies justified by states’ rights and Biblical arguments. Federal power and Northern values again triumphed.

The strength of our nation today is in part a result of the way these struggles have gone. It is doubtful that a confederacy of independent states, some still entertaining institution of slavery, could have defeated Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany in world war or stood up to the Soviet Union. Our power comes from our progress. The term “progressive” comes from “progress,” and “liberal” is the entomological cousin of “liberty.” America's predominance in the world is the result of experiment in liberalism. Even the most conservative of our founders were liberals by the standards of the time -- the liberal idea of an elected president with limited terms prevailed over the then conservative notion of monarchs selected by God. (The origin of “conservative” comes from conserving things the way they are, and at the time, monarchy prevailed.)

The moral fabric of our nation is Judeo-Christian; it has been colored and dyed by themes first embraced over 200 years ago in places like New York, Boston and Philadelphia, and later decried in places like Richmond, Montgomery and Birmingham.

And yet, as a nation, we cannot rest on our “progress.” We know that bad ideas and ideologies can take hold FROM WITHIN and destroy a country, especially when we are asked to stop thinking and just believe what we are told. It happened in 1917 in Russia, it has happened in many of the non-secular nations of the Middle East -- once the cradle of Civilization -- and it can happen here too. But I think this Election should provide some comfort, however slight, that it won’t happen here, because people won’t rest when they perceive their nation threatened, whether from within or without. We saw this in the voter registration and protection efforts and the huge election turn-out.

Some of the “they” that New Yorkers don’t understand are Evangelicals and Born-Again Christians, but they are neither to be overestimated nor feared, but rather understood. Despite the rumors to the contrary, New Yorkers are human, and humans fear what they don't understand. In fact more than 20% of Evangelicals and Born-Again Christians (self-identified in exit polls) voted for Kerry -- not quite the expected monolithic block.

If New Yorkers and New-Yorkers-at-heart are secure in their morality, then they should share the word with others. This is what the other side has been doing with their morality with great effectiveness.

Third, even though the Electoral map, at least in the eastern third of the nation, is pretty much divided along the same Mason-Dixon line that divided us a century and half ago, the margins are not so huge as to present a geographical divide as a philosophical one that does not respect boarders. Although in Ohio, 49% of voters chose Kerry while 51% chose Bush, even in Virginia and North Carolina, close to 45% of voters chose Kerry. If the colors of the map truly represented these close margins, the map would be various shades of purple throughout.

While it’s hard in any given moment to see the grand lay of the land, trends past and future, the worldwide trend is towards greater freedom. Much of the industrial world (in large part the progeny of our post-WWII policies) is more liberal than the United States, and most Americans, even those who voted for Bush, oppose criminalizing abortion and support civil unions for gay couples (at least in the younger demographics). Even if we naturally become more conservative as we age, it is unlikely that we will abandon these ideals. Older conservatives are often former liberals who won their battles and don’t want things “to go too far.” If you doubt this, ask your conservative friends if they oppose Social Security, Medicare for the elderly, desegregation, and any number of programs and ideas that were originally opposed by conservatives of their times, but are now the accepted norm.

Ultimately our allegiance must not be to any president or party, but to the ideals (yes, moral ideals) on which this country was founded (in the blue Northeast, I might add) and on which we have made the greater part of our progress over the last two and half centuries. New Yorkers deserve to be proud of their great role in that legacy.

So despite all the glum faces in blue New York, I am optimistic for our country. If history is any measure, I have good reason to be. I can also now say, I am a proud New Yorker.

And yes, I am glad the elections are over. And no, I'm not leaving New York to move to Canada!



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