Human Dignity & the American Experiment
Our country has reached yet another fork in the road of fundamental disunity and cultural collision. Debates are raging over America’s history, its future, and its fundamental ideals. This is not in itself new, but the cauldron of social media platforms and other mediums of rapid, decentralized communication has created what can authentically be called an unprecedented social milieu with no clear direction forward. With declining trust in traditional institutions ranging from government to religion, it isn’t clear where the new modus operandi for the American project will come from. What can or should unite us?
Momentarily putting aside the reality that religion and national identification are important, critical opportunities for social cohesion and well-being, deep at the center of the American story lies both the death and salvation of the American future – the rights and dignity of the human person.
America is unique in that its defenders and its discontents typically rely on similar foundational principles – individual rights or individual responsibility. Take for example the debate over abortion. One side of the debate calls for individual responsibility for the unborn life developing in the womb while the other side champions an individual’s right to deny carrying a child to term. Within that debate is the debate over the legal personhood of the developing human being as well, and the rights it may have.
Recently the debate over masking has taken a very similar dichotomous positioning, pitting the individual’s responsibility to protect society from contagious disease and an individual’s right to be free of government coercion against each other. For a final example, take taxes, the quintessential American battle, over an individual’s right to the fruits of labor against an individual’s responsibility to provide revenue for collective benefit. At the heart, the battleground of all these questions is the human being. Implicit in these positions is the reality that there is something unique and demanding about the existence of a human being – a human being is required to give some things (responsibility) and deserves to receive some things (rights) based solely upon coming into being. What we often fail to realize as Americans is that this is what sets us apart.
There is no doubt that America did not live up to its founding ideals at the time of its founding. Within Western philosophical thought, various trends militate against the supremacy of the dignity of every human person. “Might makes right ” colonialism that left many broken treaties in its wake exemplified putting national destiny over the rights of non-belonging peoples. The Transatlantic slave trade allowed for the dehumanization of people primarily of African descent to a degree that human people appeared as sub-human objects rather than subjects with their own story, history, or trajectory.
The Aristotelian notion of natural slavery that philosophically supported these actions on the part of various monarchies and colonial peoples was in direct conflict with the Declaration of Independence’s natural law starting point of, “that all men are created equal […] and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” But this contradiction between actions and ideals has been a ripe field of renewal for American reformers for years, with some of the most notable being Frederick Douglass and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. These reformers held America accountable by citing the foundational documents and calling on America to find itself once again.
It’s time again for America to do some soul searching. As Americans we have a unique tradition that has unfortunately caused as much division as unity since our founding. This principle of the dignity of the human person, hidden behind the shadows of historical trends, is an opportunity to restore a value system that doesn’t simply keep the government in check, but holds in check all of our worst impulses as human beings prone to put power, pleasure, and prestige over others. Although we may continue to debate policy, Rev. Dr. King reminds America of the vision that should unite us all as a nation with his powerful words at DePauw University in 1960:
“[…] God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and yellow men.’God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race and the creation of a society where all men will live together as brothers, and all men will respect the dignity and the worth of all human personality.”