Senator Arthur Vandenberg (1884-1951) of Michigan delivered a celebrated “speech heard round the world” in the Senate Chamber on January 10, 1945, announcing his conversion from isolationism to internationalism. In 1947, at the start of the Cold War, Vandenberg became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Asserting that we must stop “partisan politics at the water’s edge,” he cooperated with the Truman administration in forging bipartisan support for the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and NATO. As recalled by Francis Wilcox, the first chief of staff of the Foreign Relations Committee, Vandenberg’s Senate career stands as a monument to bipartisanship in American foreign policy. Vandenberg died in 1951, but his legacy continues. In 2000 the Senate bestowed a unique honor on the Michigan senator, voting to add his portrait to a very select collection in the Senate Reception Room.
How can we, as citizens of the greatest democracy in history, stand against the viral, vitriolic partisanship which threatens the stability of the very fabric of our republic? Blind partisanship prevents us from defending our nation from the Russian cyber-war that continues to undermine and attack the very essence of our democracy, our free and fair elections.
STAND!
STAND against those who have no conception of stewardship.
STAND against those who by their rabid, unquestioning partisanship for political and material gain attack the Four Freedoms which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt extolled on January 6, 1941 in his Annual Message to Congress (State of the Union Address), when we, as a nation, were on the brink of World War II.
“As America entered the war these ‘four freedoms’ – the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear – symbolized America’s war aims and gave hope in the following years to a war-wearied people because they knew they were fighting for freedom.” https://fdrlibrary.org/four-freedoms
As an attorney with a career in public ethics enforcement, I know that the appreciation for government ethics and the honor and stewardship of public service undergirds the legitimacy of government action. We all share the public duty to be citizen critics and to remain vigilant that government act to benefit all of our citizens. In order to be citizen critics, we must conduct debate with civility in public discourse.
Recently, traditional standards of propriety and regard for those who may oppose our viewpoints or values have been abandoned. The erosion of civility in public discourse has emboldened extremists to bring their hate speech and corrosive rhetoric into the mainstream. This disturbing development undermines efforts to encourage political speech where opinions can be fairly and openly expressed and heard with respect, dignity and public graciousness.
Without public graciousness, there is no civil public debate. Without civil public debate, there is no opportunity to listen and to be heard. If we will not listen and cannot be heard, we destroy the Four Freedoms which we, the citizens of these United States, fought so long and so hard to defend across the globe in World War II, the most catastrophic violence in history.
We must stop “partisan politics at the water’s edge,” as Republican Senator Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg did and support and maintain the Four Freedoms that FDR so eloquently expressed, the foundational assurances that became the American beacon of freedom and human rights throughout the world.
