Let’s give harmony a try

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss have recorded two albums together. Krauss and Plant have had long and successful musical careers, but in very different arenas. While a gospel/bluegrass musician should be a discordant partner for the legendary lead singer of Led Zeppelin, it is not. It is Krauss that makes it work so well.

The unlikely duo recently sat for an interview with PBS. Their respect for each other is evident, and their appreciation for having bridged music’s distant poles to earn multiple Grammy Awards is clear. In the interview, Krauss hints at how they pulled it off. She explains that bluegrass is all about harmony. She learned at a young age that listening, and adjusting to your partner’s mood, pattern and voice, is how beautiful music is made. In a chorus of individual voices and instruments, each must seek to synchronize, but not standout. Plant, she describes with his smiling agreement, is nearly the opposite of harmony. His musical career advanced a style that seeks to surprise and shock. Always experimental and impulsive, his early musical career was more raucous than refined; more argument than agreement.

That these legendary figures from very different backgrounds found not only musical agreement, but success in doing so, holds a lesson for America. If freedom must respect all its expressions, or risk slowly silencing all but the loudest, wealthiest and most powerful, it must guarantee 330 million opinions have equal say. Freedom must reasonably accept the entire set of individual actions our opinions guide or walk precariously close to the fragile cliff above the abyss of totalitarianism.

Retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, whose replacement on the Court is due for Senate hearings this week, recently remarked that the beauty of our democracy lies in the harmonious coexistence of 330 million unique individuals — a lesson he attributed to his mother. Like Krauss’ mastery of musical harmony, social harmony comes from listening and adjusting to our American partners — all of them.

Increasingly, the keen observers of American culture who write books and op-eds for a living are suggesting that we could be headed toward another civil war. I see the same signs — a well-armed society too anxious to solve disagreement with violence; leaders without the courage to calm the rage; mistrust in institutions; and charlatans all too willing to gain power and profit from the discord. Still, I hope the pundits are wrong, as most of us do. Yet, our hope does not relieve the discomfort we find in knowing that we would be mostly powerless to stop what would follow if the next Fort Sumter were fired upon.

When Alexis de Tocqueville toured America, our great experiment with harmonious freedom had survived its first 50 years. He coined the word “township” to describe the American towns he visited collectively. Each, he observed, were places that stimulate a “real, active, altogether democratic and republican political life.” In other words, he observed places that engendered a powerful sense of duty within individuals to work for the welfare of all citizens. He judged it to be a uniquely American trait — that social harmony that comes with listening to our fellow Americans.

The Founders debated, among other points while crafting our Constitution, whether the harmony and selflessness de Tocqueville observed would happen without a strong central government or would be hindered by one. Self-determination was little more than a theoretical construct for a culture, and none of them knew if it would work. But freedom from a totalitarian monarchy was primary, and they had the theory of Natural Law to guide them. Yet, opposing viewpoints said Natural Law must, or need not, have a strong central government to guard against the natural rise of selfish versions of freedom, in which we strive for our own wants without the responsibility of listening to our neighbors. Would free people suppress actions contrary to the greater good on their own, or would laws be needed to do that?

De Tocqueville found the former to be true. The townships he observed, I imagine, were places whose people found harmony by listening, observing and fulfilling their obligations to each other. Sure, laws were needed to rein in those that stepped out of line, but largely, freedom worked because we once cared more about our community than ourselves, and that was enough.

If a rock star and a bluegrass princess can find harmony in song, why can’t we in life? If our experiment in freedom once worked so well that it became a model for democracy around the world, shouldn’t we honor our ancestors and be willing to put others first, listen to each other, adjust to other’s concerns and find again the harmony they knew?

Much is at stake. Let’s give harmony a try.

Timothy Hullihan is an architect and freelance writer living in North Palm Beach, and the president of the Kevin Clark Hullihan Foundation.

Supreme Court nominee must be confirmed

Ketanji Brown Jackson’s credentials are impeccable. She’s a Harvard law graduate who served with distinction on the U.S. Court of Appeals. She previously served for more than eight years on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She has the experience and ability and looks like a good percentage of our country.

We’ve heard no whispers of misconduct. All of us need representation. I am a Caucasian woman and I welcome someone with her qualifications to our Supreme Court. On the federal bench, Judge Jackson has shown her commitment to upholding laws that protect people with disabilities, workers, immigrants, and freedom of speech. She has devoted years to public service, including representing low-income people in Washington, D.C. as a public defender.

Judge Jackson’s experience means she brings to the court the perspective of someone who has seen the justice system through the eyes of our society’s most vulnerable. Any senator who votes against a person of her ability is voting against Americans and not voting for our best interests.

Sunrise

Keep standard time

Re: Rubio is right: Stop shifting those clocks | Editorial

Nearly everyone agrees it’s a hassle to turn the clocks ahead in the spring and back again in the fall. It upsets our routines, and it gets some getting used to for about a week thereafter. A change was needed.

Leave it to our illustrious legislators in Washington to do exactly the opposite of what should be done. What they should do is keep the real, natural sun time as it relates to our geographical longitude. Instead, they now want to keep Daylight Saving Time in effect year-round.

I hope workers have fun commuting to work before the sun comes up. Parents will see their children off to school in the dark.

I guess we should be used to it. We’re bombarded by politicians with propaganda, half-truths and outright falsehoods. Now they make us have to live with our actual time of day being a complete lie. The joke is on us, as usual.

Margate

Long overdue

Ms. Jackson has the most professional qualifications to be selected as our next Supreme Court Justice.

In our multiracial country, it is long overdue for a brilliant mind such as that of Ms. Jackson, a Black woman with her intellectual curiosity and credentials, to be welcomed onto the highest court in the land.

Boca Raton

Safety first on the tracks

I travel almost daily from west to east on 18th Street in Boca Raton. A few days ago, as I approached the railroad tracks at Dixie Highway, the red lights flashed and the alarm rang, but the arms had not yet come down. Because I value my life and safety, I stopped.

The driver behind me had the audacity to blow his horn in an effort to have me “run” over the tracks. Of course I stayed put. Neither Brightline nor the government can save anyone from their own recklessness. It’s time to recognize that we have a responsibility to keep ourselves as safe as we can and not rely on others to save us from ourselves.

The only tragedy in these deaths are those caused by mental illness or suicide, an illness that unfortunately government doesn’t seem to care about. There’s a lot of talk, but it hasn’t caused any real change in how the country treats mental illness. These are sad stories with no happy endings.

Boca Raton