I have expressed my perspective that President Biden, being handed the keys to power, endeavors to hand them back to the people.
This act is not merely unusual. It is rare. It signifies to me that he is endeavoring to make education, health, and rewarding work possible for all of us as American citizens. He is emphasizing the possibilities for sustainable growth within our nation's future so that we can fully reclaim our country as a place of great opportunity -- and not just for the privileged, but for everyone.
This vision of a peaceable and prosperous nation can only be realized if the civil liberties and human rights of American citizens are defended from those on the far right.
It is to our greater peril as a nation that much of the American electorate does not yet perceive the source of the far right's bid for autocratic control over the social and economic life of our country.
Yet, President Biden understands the source of that push toward totalitarianism.
Quite by chance, so do I.
A few nights ago, I happened to watch a film set within East Germany in the 1980's, entitled The Lives of Others. At the outset of the narrative, we learn the stated mission of the Stasi -- or secret police -- during its decades of autocratic rule.
Its institutional goal was simple: to know everything.
Every word of the East German populace. Every gathering. Every joke. Every confession. Every hope. Every fear. Every thought.
And what is wrong with the ambition of a nation's security forces to know everything?
What is wrong with this goal is that we are all immeasurably diminished by the loss of our privacy. To be watched and assessed in our every waking and sleeping moment is also to be owned, in a very real way. It is to relinquish our sovereignty to those who may monitor us, record us, surveil us -- and even, if they so desire, lie about us.
In this way, the success or failure of an individual becomes unmoored from her efforts and defined instead by her compliance, by her solicitude, by her obedience, by her silence.
Yet, some of the greatest Americans throughout history were not particularly compliant sorts of people.
Harriet Tubman wasn't compliant. Thomas Edison wasn't obedient. Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn't silent. Nikola Tesla didn't conform. Georgia O'Keefe wasn't solicitous. Ansel Adams wasn't derivative. Jennifer Doudna didn't imitate others.
And perhaps it bears pointing out that the founders of our nation weren't particularly compliant types, either. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams -- these men, and the women who risked everything to found a new nation alongside them, believed in the independence of the individual -- in freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and the right to privacy.
Our greatest artists, scientists, innovators, leaders, and entrepreneurs have stood against the crowd in creating what no one has created before, in inventing what no one has invented before, in leading as no one has led before.
And if we allow certain far right factions within our own national security apparatus to know everything about us as American citizens, we will deprive ourselves not only of our freedom, our privacy, our innovation, and our independence, but also of our greatness.
Because it seems to me that the territory of the human soul, where our greatness resides, cannot be catalogued, recorded, or surveilled.
Rather, the human soul insists on its sovereignty. Its private joys, its private griefs, its private loves, its private struggles, its private faith are entirely unknown to others -- and that is as it should be.
Our dignity, our nobility, our generosity, our goodness -- all reside within the soul -- and these cannot be taken from us -- no matter who seeks to appropriate them in the name of knowing everything.
It is our differences that render us strong. It is our multiplicity of voices that renders us magnificent. It is our uniqueness that renders our gifts unlike any others'.
President Biden knows these truths -- as the wisest men and women know them -- through living them himself.
He is striving not for his own freedom or sovereignty or privacy. He is striving for yours and mine. He is striving for the freedom and sovereignty and privacy of our children and grandchildren and the generations that will follow them so that they might claim the sanctity of their souls with as much vigor as I claim the sanctity of mine.
God, in His infinite wisdom, can know everything.
Mankind? No.
Our goal should not be to gain absolute knowledge about other Americans. Only dystopian regimes seek to control the public in this manner.
Our goal should be to extend respect, civility, honesty, integrity and kindness to other Americans, in recognizing that the sovereignty of each individual merits these gifts.
President Biden understands this difference with a clarity that allows him to take this principled stand in democracy's defense.
That takes courage in limitless quantities.
Only one in one million people possesses such willingness to advocate for others in the face of an autocratic threat. The fortitude required is heroic; the steadfastness required is superhuman.
Yet, our President possesses these gifts.
It is difficult for me to express how deeply I respect this noble man.
But if I can lend illumination to the reasons why President Biden is irreplaceable to democracy, to civil liberty, to the sovereignty of each one of us -- I promise to dedicate my heartfelt labors to that effort.
Lane MacWilliams
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