How does the word “democrat” make you feel? Given the Democratic Party’s total ineptitude at present, and the current state of American “democracy” chances are you’re not feeling too good about it. I know I’m not.
In December of 1949, 80-year old Frank Lloyd Wright, descended upon Radio City Music Hall and The Mary Margaret McBride Show. While discussing his organic architecure and his Middlewestern sensibilities, he said the Midwest is the heart of the country and the heart of democracy.
If democracy has a heart, of course, that’s the thing that particularly distinguishes it, isn’t it, from other -isms? The fact that it has a heart. The fact that it insists upon the individual as such and defends him. It has to live on genius–democracy. Democracy can’t take the handrail down the stair. A democrat has to have courage–keep his hand off the handrail and take the steps down the middle. That’s a democrat.
As with most things Wright, I’m blown away. The man could really think and he had an undying passion to care a great deal about important things. Nothing is more important than freedom and nothing is more American than freedom. Democrats–affiliated with the political party of that name, or not–need to be free to stand up and tell it like it is. I, for one, am not loyal to a man nor an office nor a political party. I’m loyal to my country. A country that needs me to be an agent for change, to speak up against institutional injustice, to offer better ideas.
Here’s one: Let’s stop paying oilmen to invade other countries and start paying teachers to educate our youth.