Summoning Whitman, Yeats, and Holmes to Revive America’s Democratic Spirit
March 17, 2025
The preservation of our constitutional system rests on three foundational predicates: government has only that power granted to it by the Constitution, governmental officials will obey the Constitution and the laws of the United States, and the judiciary is the final arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution. In the past week, President Donald Trump has broken ranks with the historical practice of presidential compliance with judicial rulings, including those they have considered mistaken, when he brazenly defied four federal court orders, the effect of which is to subvert the judicial system, lay waste to constitutional cornerstones, and confirm fears among legal scholars that Trump has no respect for the rule of law.
White House border Czar Tom Homan spoke for the Administration: “I don’t care what the judges think.” Homan’s bone-chilling words have raised, squarely, the question of whether the American Constitution and the rule of law will hold.
President Trump’s violation of his oath to preserve and protect the Constitution, and his solemn duty to “Take Care” to faithfully execute the laws – essentially the subversion of the rule of law – has prompted additional questions from readers about the tools they possess to hold governmental accountable, an overarching , bipartisan responsibility of the citizenry, at every juncture, no matter who sits in the White House. The preservation of constitutional government, built upon republican principles and values, means that the phrase “freedom, liberty and the rule of law” – to borrow from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes – must become a “fighting faith.” Holmes was referring to the intense passion of ideas that reflect one’s most heartfelt desires and wishes, those that you fervently want to be enshrined in law and policy.
Those citizens fighting passionately for freedom, liberty and the rule of law will not, in the words of Walt Whitman, America’s poet of democracy, resemble those “with hearts of rag and souls of chalk,” those afflicted with a moral indolence that renders them indifferent, say, to violations of freedom of speech and press and due process, executive aggrandizement, and legislative abdication. “Tyranny may always enter, “Whitman warned, “there is no charm, no bar against it – the only bar against it is a large resolute breed of men.” Whitman’s admonitions reflect those of the founders, including those from Thomas Jefferson, whom he deeply admired. There was hope among those who launched our republic that an educated and virtuous citizenry, engaged, as Jefferson said, in “eternal vigilance,” could preserve our liberties. As James Madison asked, rhetorically, who more than the people themselves have a greater incentive to protect the Constitution that protects their liberties.
“The exercise of Democracy,” Whitman believed, could save democracy. American citizens possessed the tools – indeed, the means and rights – to defend and preserve democracy through the creation of a “large resolute breed of men,” who act as individuals but also as a community. To be sure, Whitman’s aspirations, undercut in his later years by societal indifference to democratic principles, nonetheless did not want the “Democracy of human rights” to be reduced to mere “humbug.” Nor should we.
William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” written in 1919 amid the hopelessness of post-World War I Europe, shares his fear of an impending apocalypse and the end of civilization. Yeats wrote that “Things fall apart,” as “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” so too, the “blood-dimmed tide,” and in the face of this assault, “innocence is drowned,” while “the best lack all conviction.” In the end, “what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?” We should want “the best” to find their “fighting faiths” to revive the spirit of democracy, fight for governmental integrity, protect human dignity and prevent the “blood-dimmed tide” from being “loosed” to drown American constitutionalism.
There is within the citizenry the seeds of an alliance, one to be forged among advocates of civil liberties, the rule of law, and democratic processes for determining the policies of the nation, to hold government accountable. Steadfast purpose and crucial compromises can be spurred by the approaching “blood-dimmed tide.” Those filled with a “fighting faith” can rally the citizenry and lead through the “exercise of Democracy.” The starting point is discussion of the importance to Americans and America of the rule of law, which we undertake next week.
-David Adler