The term, “woke”, is one of the new buzz words thrown about in politics today. It is used by one side, usually Republicans and conservatives to criticize, and at times, condemn the other, generally Democrats and liberals. The Miriam Webster dictionary defines woke as being aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues. Its use today is generally linked to being alert to injustice in society, particularly racial injustice. Based on its definition, one would think this would be a good thing. Everyone in a functioning democracy should be aware of facts as they relate to the major issues and in a society based on the principle of equality for all, we should all be alert for signs of injustice in our society. Well, for some, not really. Being woke is a bad thing. For some, being woke is a synonym for being unpatriotic, for focusing on America’s faults rather than on its accomplishments.
So, which is it, bad or good? To help answer that, I would like to go back to America’s original woke document, the Declaration of Independence. Yes, the Declaration is woke. In the 18th century, the recognized concept of sovereignty was that power emanated from the top. Monarchs ruled by divine right and while there were some limits placed on their power such as in Great Britain, the true power in a nation resided at the top, with the monarch and the nobility. People were considered subjects, not citizens. Across the globe, hierarchy, not equality was the norm. You had the king, the nobility and maybe the clergy and wealthy middle and then everyone else. Where you were born was where you would stay and where you were born would dictate in large part what rights you enjoyed.
Beginning in the late 17th century and continuing into the 18th, a new idea began to emerge. Men like John Locke and the Baron Montesquieu began to challenge the status quo and suggest that sovereignty resided with the people and that they were born with certain rights rather than having rights bestowed upon them by a king or bishop or prince. Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers held that all people were, in fact, born with natural rights. These were the right to life and security, liberty, the right to acquire and hold property and the right to pursue their happiness. Humans formed themselves into society and invented government to protect those rights. What was inferred was another natural right, the right to whatever is needed to protect their natural rights. Simply put, government derived its power from the bottom up, from the people, and government’s sole purpose was to protect the people’s natural rights. All very radical for the 18th century. Very woke.
In the British North American colonies in the 18th century, men such as George Mason, Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams took up the Enlightenment cause. What Mason, Adams and Jefferson saw as injustice in the mid-18th century was the deprivation by the King and Parliament of England of the natural rights of people on a continental scale. They saw the natural rights of 2.1 million people in the American colonies as being threatened by the tyranny of George III and his Parliament. Popularly elected assemblies were being dissolved and laws passed by these assemblies were not being executed, property was seized without the consent of the owner, taxes were being levied without the colonist’s consent and judges and courts were coming under the control of the King. The perception was that the King’s government was no longer protecting the natural rights of the colonies and were, in fact, taking them away. Deprivation of one’s natural rights, social injustice in its most basic form.
The response of Mason, Jefferson and Adams was to take the “woke” ideas of the Enlightenment and apply them in response to the social injustice they saw in the colonies. George Mason kicked things off early in 1776 when he drafted The Virginia Declaration of Rights. Referencing directly the woke Enlightenment ideas he wrote, “That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact, deprive or divest of their posterity; namely the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” He went on, “That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people.” “That government is, or ought to be, instituted form the common benefit, protection, and security of the people”. Thomas Jefferson would borrow heavily from Mason’s work later in 1776 when he was asked to draft a document declaring to the world the independence of the British colonies in America.
Jefferson went to work and with the help and advice of John Adams and Ben Franklin produced the document we are all familiar with, The Declaration of Independence. This document is essentially a memo stating the principles upon which the new American nation would be formed. The words we know, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” In this one sentence, Jefferson summed up the woke ideas of the Enlightenment and in effect said these are the principles upon which to build a new nation. Jefferson is saying that anyone examining and thinking about the facts will all reach the same conclusion; that all men are created equal and have the natural rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Mason and Jefferson became aware of social injustice on a massive scale and responded. Out of their response rose a nation.
The United States is unique among the nations of the world in that it was founded on an idea, the idea Jefferson eloquently expressed in the Declaration. You did not have to be Anglo-Saxon or native born to be a citizen of this new nation, you just had to examine the facts and accept those “self-evident” truths. Being a citizen of this nation, you not only have a right to a government dedicated to protecting your natural rights but a right to have a say in its formation.
Today, we seem to have forgotten this. For some, “all men are created equal” means only some men are created equal, others not so much. Government of, by and for the people has been replaced by government of, by and for only a select few, that some are indeed, above the law. Self- evident truths have been replaced by alternate “facts”, as if a fact can have multiple versions and you get to pick the one which represents your world view. To be labeled woke is the same as being labeled un-American.
Being woke simply means you can recognize injustice when you see it and being woke demands you do something about it. When Jefferson began the declaration with the words, “When in the course of human events”, he meant there was a recognizable pattern of behavior leading to the predictable conclusion that the colonies were in danger of losing their liberty. Jefferson then provided a list of behaviors by the King and Parliament which he thought were leading to a loss of liberty in the colonies. In our present case, looking at the events of January 6, false elector slates, voter suppression laws and election deniers leads to the predictable conclusion that we are at risk of losing one of our most basic natural rights, the right to have say in the choice of the government we live under. Losing that very basic right may have dire consequences, one group being subject to the tyranny of another.
Condemnation of being woke is merely the right’s code for silencing anyone who sees and speaks out about the systematic erosion of everyone’s natural rights, white and non-white, Christian and non-Christian, immigrant or native born. If one group’s natural rights are taken away, where does it stop? So, back to our original question. Yes, being woke is a good thing. Being woke in 1776 formed a nation, being woke now may help save it.