The real democratic American idea is not that every man shall be on a level with every other, but that every one shall have liberty, without hindrance, to be what God made him.
Henry Ward Beecher
The Dishonest Politician, date unknown
Artist Statement
In a handful of words, Henry Ward Beecher’s statement of “the real democratic American idea” asks far more than it answers. It dispatches the notion of equality, replacing it with a vague, possibly less desirable, concept of liberty to “be what God made” us. It’s a statement that points to the ongoing tension between popular ideology and the historic roots of our politics in enlightenment thinking. It implores us to ask who God is, and what we were made to be. My goal was not to resolve the paradox of Beecher’s idea, but to illustrate it with beauty and provoke others to take part in a discourse on what our democracy does and should mean.
Great Ideas at ChiDM, 2018. Photo: The Office of Experience.
