After the election, we all need to find our ‘better angels’
By Tony Pederson
Last week a student in my communication law class at SMU asked me if I had a prediction on the outcome of the presidential election. The student knew that I had never said for whom I’ll be voting. I typically alert students not to expect anything political from me, and it’s my desire that, at the end of the class, students will not know anything about my political leanings.
Several years ago during the pandemic when we were teaching on Zoom, after the semester ended a student emailed me about my politics. She and her mother had been listening to my lectures all semester in the class in media ethics, and both wanted to know where I stood. I was honored by the question, because I knew my aim to be nonpolitical had succeeded. And I responded with some detail.
For the student last week, I told her and the class that I had only one prediction. That whichever side lost, a certain hysteria would set in, and we possibly would be in a period of some controversy and tumult. I added that I sincerely hoped violence would not be a part of the controversy. Whatever happened, I added, I knew that democracy would survive.
In the next class, which occurred the day before the election, I showed a slide that I’ve shown on numerous occasions. The slide displayed the famous quote from Abraham Lincoln made in a speech to the Lyceum in Springfield, Ill., in 1838.
Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.
Lincoln was 28 years old at the time and a member of the Illinois legislature. He was just beginning to establish a reputation for oratory. Many other of his speeches, particularly the one at Gettysburg, have been used much more and parsed more frequently by historians. But this speech, titled “The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions,” has also received much attention, especially in recent years.
The speech was a warning about dangers from within, but it was also a strong affirmation of our institutions. The speech was made amid mob violence associated with slavery. Lincoln urged the nation to develop a strong reverence for the rule of law and justice, and that it become a “political religion.”
In the moment, warnings might well be issued about any beliefs that cross the threshold to a political religion. We can’t predict what lies ahead after this election. We know that passions have been especially strong, that rhetoric has been heated and at times full of disrespect and even hate. Both sides in this campaign have made “extremist” the quotidian accusation about the opposition in speeches and political ads.
We’ve received daily reminders in the news media about the stress this election has put on us. There are recommendations about therapy that will be needed afterward. There are suggestions about how teachers are to address the divisions in classrooms, especially to younger students who may not fully comprehend specifics of the campaign but who surely feel the tension that is palpable in so many households.
Our institutions have been challenged before. And we have faced constitutional pressures every bit as great as what lies ahead. Our institutions will hold. Our government will stand. Every decision will surely not please many in the country, but the voters have spoken clearly. We are still a government in which the people decide.
My message to students post-election is simple. If your candidate won, help that candidate do the right thing and create the more perfect union we all want. If your candidate lost, then get to work. There are more elections coming, and that’s how we change things.
At the risk of overdoing the Lincoln homage, it seems appropriate to close with a famous segment of his inaugural address in 1861. He had just been elected our 16th president and took office only a few months before the first bloody battles of the Civil War.
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
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Tony Pederson is professor emeritus in journalism at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and managing fellow of the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics.