I love being at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Among other exhibits, it houses America’s official presidential portraits, which I find so compelling I visit and revisit them. I’m especially intrigued by the unfinished Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington and the life-size portrait of Abraham Lincoln.
I am profoundly grateful to these two men and to those who along with them founded a nation on the improbable idea that a diverse people can live free and self-govern. Originally meant only for landed white men, historian Jane Kamensky called our founding idea “leaky” in the PBS Ken Burns series “The American Revolution.”
People of every color and creed both in America and in unfree corners of the globe heard this big idea 250 years ago and believed it could also be for them.
The Portrait Gallery was once a patent office where the creativity of this free people shined bright. The building hosted Lincoln’s second inaugural festivities, right around the corner from where he would be assassinated a month later.
One evening when I left the gallery, I heard drums from across the street at the Capital One Arena, where a Washington Capitals hockey match was about to begin. I don’t know a thing about hockey but I love hockey nights downtown as they’re alive with fans — friends and foes alike.
A hockey match isn’t a bad metaphor for the hard-fought disagreement that is a necessary condition for our freedom — our rivals becoming uneasy partners in what is a far higher purpose than whether you win one battle.
This particular evening there was a drum line along two edges of the sidewalk where the fans streamed into the arena as a young band of Black musicians danced and drummed in unison. A group of gussied-up white kids happened by and they became a part of the performance, dancing joyously through the drum line.
It was the perfect snapshot of the beauty of the city’s diversity, and that night it felt like just a little more proof of concept for the American idea.
As I turned to leave, I came across a group of National Guard soldiers patrolling the streets. I spoke to them, “This is a wonderful city, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” one of them answered.
It was a beautiful moment, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to ulterior motives. My welcoming them to the city I so dearly love was partly to make the point that their deployment here was unnecessary.
My heart still breaks that after my experience a gunman targeted and shot two of these young people only a few blocks away from the gallery, while they were simply doing their duty to a country I love. Since then, still another gunman has killed more of our young leaders at Brown University.
Because we are a people who keep “more perfect” in our sights, our response to these heart-wrenching tragedies matters.
Hate gains traction inside this much pain, and history is littered with misjudgments that escalate the pain of tragedies into a hatred that is “leaky” too.
In the work I do to decrease political division, I see close up how hate rolls — when it’s on the rise, the laws of physics give accelerating momentum to equal and opposite reactions on each side of whatever divide the fury spans.
Hate also flattens — it disposes of complexity in favor of understanding huge groups of people with broad generalizations and simplistic inaccuracies. These qualities of hate have been tragic determinants of much of human history.
There won’t ever be any excuse for crimes like these and they must be punished justly to the full extent of the law. We should also do diligent screening of those seeking asylum in America to decrease risk as much as possible.
But these lone gunmen are as different from other immigrants as Americans are different from each other. One day an Afghan refugee drove my Uber from Reagan National as he told me the story of how he came to America to save his family. An attorney in Afghanistan, the light of our big idea in America was visible to him as he was working long hours to become a paralegal in his new country.
Lincoln’s better angels call us to remember that many Afghans are here having risked their lives to support American troops, and returning them may be a death sentence.
As we consider how our leaders ask us to respond to each other in this tinderbox of a nation, we can be guided by Lincoln’s plea — made on the very ground where his portrait now hangs — “let us strive on to finish the work we are in.” And let’s remember that we are a free people with a big idea that remains revolutionary in all the best ways. Because of that, we can refuse to be goaded into hate.