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.