Preserving Our Values As We Celebrate Our Revolution

A release from the office of State Representative Michael Day:

As we approach our 242nd Independence Day in the United States, I thought it might be a good time to take stock of what we in the birthplace of the revolution are doing with our system of government.

There hangs in the State House a portrait of every individual who has served as Governor. Among these paintings, and perched just outside of the formal entrance to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, is the portrait of Henry Joseph Gardner who served as Governor from 1855 until 1858. Gardner was the standard-bearer of the “Know Nothing” party, a group about whom I’ve written before. He won election with 79% of the vote in 1854 and brought with him a slate of candidates who swept to almost complete control of the state legislature, seizing 397 of the 400 seats and eleven congressional seats.

In their brief run in power, the Know Nothings deported more than 1,000 individuals for being poor, investigated Catholic nuns for sexual immorality and attempted to pass a constitutional amendment severely restricting voting rights. The Know Nothings preached many of the sentiments heard in the demagoguery that now captures headlines today. They claimed the mantle of the “common man” by degrading reasoned deliberation. They made baseless accusations to the populace that government was being run by, and for, only a select few. They whipped up passions by stating that immigration was itself a danger to our country.

In short, they found success by appealing to popular prejudices and desires rather than to rational thought or debate, as do all demagogues. Our representative democracy, which is by many accounts the most successful experiment in self-governance the world has ever known, is particularly susceptible to demagogues. Alexander Hamilton sounded this alarm in the general introduction to the Federalist Papers, writing that history shows that those who have overturned the liberties of republics are most often those who begin as demagogues “by paying an obsequious court to the people” and end as tyrants.

Our shared history is replete with the blight of demagoguery. The period of the Know Nothings in Massachusetts colored our Commonwealth’s proud history and tradition of equality. So, too did Senator Joseph McCarthy’s “Red Scare” hysteria and the false populism of our current President, each of whom achieved a modicum of success here in Massachusetts. They all preyed upon popular anxieties but offered no long-term solutions to the problems they trumpeted.

Thankfully, time and again these individuals have been unmasked not as populists but as the true threats to our democracy. Time and again the people these individuals sought to divide have risen up and removed them from their positions of power.

Within four years of capturing almost every single elected position in the Commonwealth, the Know Nothing party met crushing defeats as Massachusetts voters recognized the harms caused by a government based on prejudice and the limitation of civil rights. Senator McCarthy’s reign was all but ended with a simple question about his lack of decency. While history remains to be written about our current President’s tenure, the residents of Massachusetts have so consistently and emphatically rejected his brand of petty politics that most of the nation is watching what we do in the Legislature as a guide to how to rise above the morass that now defines the federal government.

I can say without reservation that my colleagues and I, no matter our party affiliation, feel the full weight of our responsibility to preserve our system of equality before the law every time we enter the House chambers to debate policy. There was some discussion about removing Henry Gardner’s portrait from its place of honor outside those chambers a few years ago. I vehemently disagreed with that effort. In fact, I try to make sure I walk by Gardner’s portrait every time I enter the House to vote. His bemused gaze is a reminder to me of just how precarious our grand experiment of representative democracy can be, and how easily it can be perverted by those seeking short-term political gain.

Happy Independence Day.