US Presidential Election

Moral Maze

BBC

Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.5 • 609 Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2016

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On the afternoon of Thursday 19th November 1863, the American President, Abraham Lincoln, delivered what has become perhaps the most important speech in American history. Lincoln was dedicating a National Cemetery for the 50,000 men who'd been killed in the Civil War battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. His address was only 272 words long, but it has become one of the greatest and most influential statements of a national moral purpose "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." America has always seen its Constitution and the Declaration of Independence not just as foundational documents, but as statements of moral purpose. America was to be the "shining city on a hill", a light unto the other nations of the world. At a time of national crisis, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was a reaffirmation of those founding principles that all men are created equal and share rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This November the American people have to choose between two people bidding to step in to Lincoln's presidential shoes: 'Crooked Hillary', the machine politician under an FBI investigation, and the narcissistic self-confessed women-abuser Donald Trump. What has gone wrong with America's moral vision? Were the fine words of Lincoln and the Founding Fathers just that - fine words? Has America ever confronted its problems of inequality, race and class? Have big government and bigger corporations betrayed the founding principles of liberty and the American dream? Where is the moral vision of America in this year's presidential election? Chaired by Michael Buerk with Claire Fox, Melanie Phillips, Giles Fraser and Matthew Taylor. Witnesses are Charlie Wolf, James Kirchick, Carol Gould and Erich McElroy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a program from BBC Radio 4.
0:04.0	Good evening. Americans are not the first people to think themselves somehow chosen to be a moral
0:08.5	example to the world, but that idea was enshrined from birth in the United States Declaration
0:13.5	of Independence and its Constitution, which are each as much a statement of moral purpose
0:18.2	as a template for an infant republic. The concept of American exceptionalism, with its ideals of liberty, equality and democracy,
0:25.9	survived uncomfortable realities.
0:27.9	At least 12 of the early presidents were slave owners, after all, and have been burnished by their successors.
0:33.1	Lincoln, with his Gettysburg address about government of the people, by the people, for the people,
0:38.2	Kennedy and Reagan were their repeating co-opting of the Sermon of the Mount to portray America
0:43.0	itself as the shining city on a hill. In less than a week, Americans face an uncomfortable
0:48.7	choice for who will be the next occupant of the White House, President of the richest and most
0:52.8	powerful democracy on earth and leader of the free world.
0:56.0	Their achingly long political processes have ended up with a machine politician who's viscerally disliked by a large proportion of her compatriots and is under FBI investigation,
1:05.1	and a narcissistic blustering, self-confessed abuser of women. It's not only their enemies that cast them in such an unflattering light.
1:12.6	So what's happened to America's moral vision?
1:15.3	Have the ideals of the founding fathers always been no more than windy aspiration?
1:19.7	Is the shining city, blessed by God, a delusion that cloaked inequality, racism and corporate greed,
1:26.0	not to mention a dysfunctional political process
1:28.3	that could end up with two such apparently flawed people mud wrestling to be their leader.
1:33.5	That's our moral maze tonight.
1:34.6	Our panel, Melanie Phillips, social commentator on the Times, Claire Fox from the Institute of Ideas,
1:39.3	Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA, and the Anglican priest and polemicist, Charles Fraser. Melanie Phillips,
	...

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