Democracy – the
recurrent suspicion that
the people are right
In July of 1943, the Writer’s War Board (According to wikipedia, the Writers’ War Board was the main domestic propaganda organization in the United States during World War II. Privately organized and run, it coordinated American writers with government and quasi-government agencies that needed written work to help win the war. It was established in 1942 by author Rex Stout at the request of the United States Department of the Treasury) reached out to E.B. White at the New Yorker Magazine and asked for a statement on the meaning of democracy.
Mr. White started out by writing, “It is presumably our duty to comply with such a request, and it is certainly our pleasure. Surely, the board knows what democracy is.”
Mr. White continued:
It is the line that forms on the right.
It is the don’t, in don’t shove.
It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; the dent in the high hat.
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right, more than half of the time.
It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths; the feeling of communion in the libraries; the feeling of vitality everywhere.
Democracy is the letter to the editor.
Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth.
It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet; a song, the words of which have not gone bad.
It’s the mustard on the hot dog, and the cream in the rationed coffee.
Democracy is a request from a War Board – in the middle of the morning, in the middle of a war – wanting to know what democracy is.
On the one hand, I feel called upon to play my part of good loser.
Fought the good fight and lost but ready to go on.
I want to admit that maybe, just maybe, Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right, more than half of the time.
But I can’t.
I feel the picture Mr. White paints of America in World War 2, believe or not, was a much sunnier place, a much more hopeful place than America today.
I wish my feeling for Democracy had the elasticity that the faith of those on other side has that allows them to bend their faith and their beliefs to embrace that guy.
I want the country to feel the feeling of vitality everywhere.
But it sure seems we are, to quote Mr. Churchill, about to enter a new dark age.
I am going to have faith in the Constituion.
And hang on and hold my breath for the next 4 years.
Still thinking about 1943 and the era Mr. White writes about that FDR won again, again and again.
I am reminded of an anecdote that I have written about before.
I like the story, but I cannot recall where I read it or the citation for it but here it is.
This author was a kid during WW2 and grew up in the Republican strong hold of Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
He reminded a spring evening once where all the people in the neighborhood built bonfires and danced in big circles, joining hands around the fires to celebrate.
Looking at a calendar, he puzzled out that this had to have happened in April or May of 1945 and he asked his mother if she remembered and was the celebration for VE, Victory in Europe, Day, the day Germany surrendured.
“OH NO,” said his mother, “We danced because Roosevelt was dead.”
