In his book Reconstruction, historian Eric Foner wrote:

“From the enforcement of the rights of citizens to the stubborn problems of economic and racial justice, the issues central to Reconstruction are as old as the American Republic, and as contemporary as the inequalities that still afflict our society.”

Those issues have afflicted America long before reconstruction and aptly describe our times.  Somehow, we got the idea that democracy has to be perfect to be good. It has never been perfect, and is not likely ever to be perfect. That’s the price to be paid when everyone gets a say.

The country was born in conflict and is in conflict still, we are so diverse, geographically and culturally different and idiosyncratic. We have this fantasy about democracy that it is a noble, clean and just process, and historians remind us that every bit of progress was drenched in sweat conflict, haunted by terrible injustice, often covered in blood and corruption. The Democratic process is much like watching an animal get slaughtered, everybody wants the meat but nobody wants to see how it is made.

Scholars say there is often something disillusioning and disheartening about democracy, the noble citizen is rarely all-wise and noble. That is why our system is so riddled with checks and balances and counterweights, nobody really trusts the other to be rational and moderate.

Fine, people say, but but if you control the entire government then that is especially terrifying and different. Then there are no checks and balances. I think we will soon see otherwise, as we have seen so many times before.

Our current president was said to have rewritten the demographic and electoral map for a generation, our next president is said to have done the same thing. Our media has no memory, knows no history.

The democratic man is nothing if not fickle and restless, today’s landslide is tomorrow’s rout. It isn’t that we have the perfect system – a democracy is no more perfect than we are – it just seems to be the best system around, and the one with the noblest aspirations.

I am hearing every day of panic attacks, terror and anxiety, plans to move to New Zealand or Canada or Australia. People say they don’t want to live in a country where so many people have made a different choice than they might have made.  I wish I had more patience and empathy for the panic.

The patriot is no sunshine soldier, he or she hangs around, win or lose. The patriot dusts off his or her jacket, washes away the bloodstains, takes a deep breath and prepares to fight again. There will be some long and hard days, the summer soldier wants them all to be fine.

“The summer soldier,” wrote Thomas Paine,”will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

I’m going nowhere, this is my country, too.

In my mind, and with all due respect, the people planning their fight and spreading panic and raging on Facebook are the new summer soldiers. They love liberty, but don’t wish to pay for it or struggle for it and they don’t wish to accept it. My idea of liberty is this: when the people vote a different way than I do, I am consoled by the glorious challenge, and the prospect of a glorious outcome, if my cause turns out to be just.

In 1920, wrote H.L. Mencken in his wonderful book “Notes On Democracy,” many Americans began to blame the country’s ills on their newest bogeyman, the Soviet Bolshevik.”

In 1920 alone, federal agents arrested 6,000 alleged communists in 33  cities across the nation. Many were arrested without warrants or the right to contact lawyers or their families. Hundreds of innocent people were clubbed or jailed for demonstrating publicly against the violation of the Bill of Rights.

“The average man doesn’t want to be  free,” wrote Mencken. “He simply wants to be safe.”

We have a new bogeyman today, the helpless refugee.

Mencken called these fearful citizens “Inferior Man.” The chief mark of the Inferior Man, he wrote, is that the values he holds the most dear are false: patriotism, conformity, respectability. Mencken wrote that he could understand patriotism, but he also made it clear that there must be a genuine reason for it, the country must deserve it.

He wrote often about the periodic hysterias that have racked America, from the Salem Witch Trials to the Internment of innocent Japanese citizens to the war on Communism, to the assaults on public education by religious zealots.

Mencken saw the government hound men and women in blatant violation of their constitutional rights.

Citizens abandoned the principles of the Founding Fathers and instead blindly followed leaders whose legacy included waste, the savage persecution of opponents and critics, the open bribery of labor and business, the reviling of the enemy, the manufacture of false news, the degradation of public institutions to partisan uses, the abandonment of decency decorum and self-respect.

The historians are correct. Nothing is really new, even though we are perpetually shocked and terrified by the turning of the wheel.

But as cynical and skeptical as Mencken was, he was also caring and perceptive. For him, the “superior man” (I will call him the Superior Citizen), regardless of gender, race, or background, is simply the man or woman of honor. Honor means high respect and esteem; adherence to what is right or to a conventional standard of conduct.

By Superior Citizen, Mencken meant an independent, enlightened citizen, predisposed toward liberty, on guard to keep his or her freedom from eroding under the pressure of self-styled patriots or unscrupulous politicians or demagogues, who play upon the fears of people in troubled times. Such a citizen travels a rough road,  he is beset on all sides, and every year sees additional woes.

The demagogues and opportunists were “homo boobensis,” said Mencken. The Superior Citizen was part of a thoughtful and intelligent minority. The three qualities Mencken prized the most were decency, honor and courage.

I want to be a Superior Citizen, and I mean to be.

I value honor, courage and decency.

Honor means speaking the truth and seeking the truth and  listening to others. It means respecting the choices of others, and treating opponents with dignity and respect.

It means giving the poor and the weary hope and help. Courage for me means fighting for liberty, not shrinking from service to my country, or running and hiding somewhere else. Decency means empathizing with others, standing in their shoes, accepting disappointment and difference with grace and  humility.

For me, the thing that makes democracy work is that whatever we think about it, the people do get to choose their destiny, for better or worse. Very few people on the earth get the chance to do that, and I am morally obliged to accept these choices and give them a chance to work.  And if it doesn’t work, for me or us or the country, then to replace it with something better.

I have this idea that the Superior Citizens will get to work soon and find one another, rather than panic and wring their hands. You will not find them arguing on Facebook or Tweeting their beliefs in 140 letters.

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.