During the Civil War, George Frederick Root wrote a song called the “Battle Cry of Freedom” in favor of the unionist cause. It featured the phrase “rally round the flag,” which is where we get the political science term “rally round the flag effect” for spikes in popular support for national leaders during times of war or crisis. It’s an observed fact of political nature that countries often feel a special sense of unity when there’s something important to be done.
Well, usually. Right now, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell and New York’s Andrew Cuomo are in a fight that is deeply divisive to what Root understood to be the still-live cause of unionism. McConnell noted that states including New York may be in for such financial hardship that they will either need to get federal bailouts or file for bankruptcy, and he encourages bankruptcy over what he predicts would be “their first choice … for the federal government to borrow money from future generations to send it down to them now so they don’t have to.”
A pissed Cuomo replied, “How ugly a thought. I mean, just think of what he’s saying: ‘People died — 15,000 people died in New York, but they were predominantly Democrats, so why should we help them?’ For crying out loud, if there was ever a time for you to put aside your pettiness and partisanship.” Then Cuomo went in for something a bit worse than partisanship: “His state, the state of Kentucky, takes out $138 billion more than they put in,” Cuomo said. “New York puts in more money to the federal pot than it takes out. … Your state is getting bailed out, not my state.”
The meaning of “America” and the union is obviously too large a subject for a dinky words column. What I can add about America from the verbal angle are only these things: First, “America” is the feminized Latin first name of explorer Amerigo Vespucci, referring in a formal, traditional way to his wife. So, if you think about the two continents, a Spanish woman actually called Maria got basically a third of the world named after her for doing very little.
Second, the meaning of “America,” the country, is nothing more and nothing less than whatever ethereal political attachments make New Yorkers and Californians and Kentuckians and Louisianans and Minnesotans think giving money to one another is beyond question. These are radically, culturally different societies, such as Germany and Greece are. The survival of the belief that makes America’s regions part of the same unit after all is a kind of fragile, ongoing miracle. Imagine if the European Union wasn’t just a lie and a series of bureaucrat-filled office buildings, but was instead something people actually could be counted on to believe in when it counts. That’s America. Are Greeks in a sense less citizens of the EU than Germans? Of course they are. Are Kentuckians less citizens of America than New Yorkers? Of course not.
It’s the job of politicians to wrangle over spending. But I wish the governor of my once-Copperhead state would shut up with any rhetoric that someone from the 1860s would recognize as anti-unionist. There are about to be bailouts and compromises that won’t be fun for me or you or McConnell or Cuomo. Americans at the individual and state level should remember the words Root wrote to boost morale when half of America tried to bail out of the union. “Although he may be poor, he shall never be a slave.”
The union forever.
