Broken guardrails, faulty welding

In our time, the United States suffers every day of the week because there are now so many marginalized people among us who don't understand the rules, who don't think that rules of personal or civil conduct apply to them, who have no notion of self-control.  Wall Street Journal, 03/18/93

The entire editorial, which leads off David Frum's must-read article, The Seven Broken Guardrails of Democracy, in the current Atlantic, is essential reading.  It pinpoints the key broken guardrail as the August 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, when the city went crazy after the people's choice - anti-war candidate George McGovern - was deep sixed by the party Establishment, which nominated Hubert Humphrey.  

The editorial is an engrossing read.  It lays responsibility for what came after the summer of 1968 at the feet of "the intellectuals--university professors, politicians and journalistic commentators--who said then that the acts committed by the protesters were justified or explainable. That was the beginning. After Chicago, the justifications never really stopped. America had a new culture, for political action and personal living."

It got me thinking back to 1968.  I was sixteen years old, with friends who served in the military, in Vietnam, with friends who were part of the anti-war movement.  I was part of a staunchly Republican family, who believed in God, church, nation, community, school - and Richard Nixon.  That said, my semi-adult memories of the summer of 1968 are different from what's described in the WSJ editorial.

Everyone - of every political stripe - had our emotions rubbed raw.  It wasn't just the people rioting in the streets of Chicago, on the floor of the Democratic Convention over party chicanery.  It was ALL of us.  Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated in April, Bobby Kennedy murdered in June.  We were in the midst of a war we didn't understand, losing friends & family for reasons we couldn't fathom.  Civil rights was still an affront & insult to many throughout our country.  And - also unmentioned in the WSJ editorial - the seeds of racial animosity sown the far right were being cultivated by the GOP's Southern Strategy.  

That last is especially relevant, although unmentioned.  The well-strategized rise of hatred is always a broken guardrail.  

Sometime today or tomorrow, will write a posting on David Frum's excellent article, but since he leads off with the WSJ editorial, seems I've got to get that out of the way first.

Before we start bringing up the mess that got us to where we are, let's look at all of it.  Have we ever, as a nation, recovered from the wounds of 1968?  No how, no way.  Our national psyche was riped into an open wound that never fully healed, was broken in ways that never properly set.  

When we look at how we got to where we are, I have an answer, as hard to deny as it is to accept - we're here because, from our beginnings, our words & our actions have been hopelessly compromised, with high-sounding ideals countered by often utterly reprehensible actions.  

The guardrail in the WSJ editorial, I suspect the seven in David Frum's article, broke because their welds were compromised from the start.