Democracy in America

Chris Stevens

Episode 3.15, "Democracy in America"

Friends, Romans, registered voters, lend me your ears. Holling Vincoeur has picked up the gauntlet thrown down by Edna Hancock. We have a mayoralty race folks, to which I can only add, alea jacta est, the die is cast, the battle is joined, hold on to your hats, Cicely. We're about to bear witness to that sacred rite when each and every one of us become acolytes before the altar of the ballot box, our secular shrine. Fellow Cicelians, my heart is pounding, dancing to the drum of a free people, a city on a hill, E Pluribus Unum. I feel at one with Whitman, shepherd of the great unwashed:

O Democracy! Near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and joyfully singing.

[Download Fanfare For The Common Man, which Chris plays during the mayoral announcement.]

My friends, today when I look out over Cicely, I see not a town, but a nation's history written in miniature, inscribed in the cracked pavement, reverberating from every passing flatbed. Today, every runny nose I see says 'America' to me. We were outcasts, scum, the wretched debris of a hostile, aging world. But we came here, we paved roads, we built industries, powerful institutions. Of course, along the way we exterminated untold indigenous cultures and enslaved generations of Africans. We basically stained our Star Spangled Banner with a host of sins that can never be washed clean. But today, we're here to celebrate the glorious aspects of our past. A tribute to a nation of free people, the country that Whitman exalted:

The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislators, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.

I've never been so proud to be a Cicelian. I must go out now and fill my lungs with the deep clean air of democracy.

[At several points in this episode, Chris plays music from the American Boychoir's CD, This Is My Country (1983). The CD is no longer available online, but you can download The Phoenix Boys Choir's version of America the Beautiful, which plays during this segment.]

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the last generation.

Abe Lincoln, ladies and gentlemen. But the sentiment goes ditto for your KBHR correspondent. Democracy is not a spectator sport. That means your presence is going to be required tonight at the candidates' debate. Be worthy of your heritage. It's like Justice Holmes said:

It is required that a man shall share in the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.

Enough said. Debate, 7:30, be there.

[Download Appalachian Spring, which plays during the voting scene which follows.]

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, the bonds of our affection.

Lincoln's words to a divided nation, my counsel to a divided Cicely. Holling Vincoeur, you know you're still first in the hearts of your fellow Cicelians. Today people simply said they just want Edna to run things for a while. Hey, that's cool, and if it doesn't work out, we'll have another election, right? It's not perfect, but it's the best system anybody's come up with. It's like Justice Holmes said, the Constitution's an experiment, like life's an experiment. Apropos of that, final words tonight belong to Thomas Jefferson, third president of these United States, who gave us this to chew on:

Sometimes it is said that a man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he then be trusted with the government of others; or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.