What you can do for your country
Last Sunday, according to media reports, Italy passed the United Kingdom to become the European nation with the highest official coronavirus death toll. A few days earlier, New York City’s newspaper of record described the small northern Italian city of Bergamo as “one of the deadliest killing fields for the [virus] in the Western world.” This is regrettably unsurprising because Italy’s long history of cultural brilliance must be balanced against the government’s equally extensive record of inefficiency, ineptitude, even chaos.
From the pandemic’s onset, among the hottest spots in the world was Bergamo, which is about 35 miles from Milan and not much farther from Italy’s Swiss border. The city occupies the site of an ancient Roman settlement, so it is more than 2,000 years old, and its fortifications were built by medieval Venetians a thousand years ago. The Bergamasques have seen both remarkable riches and great adversity for two millennia. Their city was devastated during the catastrophic Black Death of the 1340s, and, six centuries later, survived two world wars between 1914 and 1945. The robust, resilient people of Bergamo survived those crises, and they will recover from this one too. That is one of the most enduring lessons of their history since ancient times. When the coronavirus pandemic is chronicled, the main storyline will be the human toll. According to the recent newspaper report, bureaucratic delays in Bergamo made the death toll “far worse than it had to be.”
The deadly virus has claimed more than 300,000 American lives. In addition, the nation’s economy has been battered since late winter, but it is powerful, possibly indestructible. Nevertheless, one of Congress’ highest priorities must be providing the relief and stimulus necessary to bring prosperity back. Critics of President-elect Joe Biden’s programs are certain to warn of the threat of creeping socialism. The same was said about the most creative reforms of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s. This is Republican trope. During a great crisis that has taken the lives and threatened the livelihood of so many people, we cannot be held hostage to simplistic partisan ideology and rhetoric.
What will postpandemic America look like? The disaster has tested the fundamental institutions and practices of American democracy. Will the pendulum swing toward Thomas Jefferson’s principle of small, simple government or Alexander Hamilton’s vision of activism? Progressive Democrats are calling for significant, possibly even dramatic, policy change, although limits are certain if the Republicans maintain control of the Senate. Ultimately, the Supreme Court may have to decide how far government may go in addressing the pandemic’s many challenges.
In making government policy, the essential national interests are safety, security, and prosperity through widespread economic opportunity. If we are looking for guidance from the past, similar questions were asked after the Civil War, which was the greatest crisis in United States history because it took more than 700,000 lives from a much smaller population from 1861 to 1865. After the fighting ended, the Freedmen’s Bureau briefly provided essential services for many thousands of Black and white Americans who needed far-reaching support in adjusting to the post-war nation. But this visionary federal agency was unwisely disbanded long before completing its important work.
Similarly, Congress passed the pioneering Civil Rights Act of 1875, which prohibited racial discrimination in restaurants, hotels, and other public forms of public accommodation, but it was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1883. After that, there was no significant federal civil rights legislation for 80 years. Some Civil Warera government decisions were painfully short-sighted.
Abraham Lincoln did not live long enough to write a presidential memoir, but his second inaugural address in 1865, at the end of the four-year crisis, just weeks before his assassination, brilliantly combined sorrow for the enormous loss of life and hope for a better society, built on these principles: “With malice toward none, with charity for all.”
The next Inauguration Day will be Jan. 20, 2021. For inspiration, President Biden could invoke Lincoln, but a more recent source is President John Kennedy. This will be the 60th anniversary of his famous inaugural address, given as the Cold War approached what Kennedy called the “hour of maximum danger.” He told the American people, “ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
We are living in our generation’s hour of maximum danger, a time for shared sacrifice: Wear a mask, maintain social distance, and follow commonsense protocols in order to keep yourself, your family, and your neighbors safe.