April 21, 2017      2:28 PM
Smith: Donner Party or City Upon a Hill?
QR’s Liberal Columnist Glenn W. Smith argues that the vision of America of today’s dominant GOP leadership has more in common with the doomed Donner Party than with a “Shining City Upon a Hill.”
In
1984, then-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo
gave the keynote address at the Democratic Convention. Cuomo spoke
of Americans’ shared vision of the nation as “a shining city upon a hill.” It’s
a favorite metaphor of our politicians, from John Winthrop in the 1600s to John
Kennedy and Ronald Reagan in the
20th Century.
Cuomo,
however, used the reference to point out that in America, there is a part of
the city that does not shine, places where the elderly huddle in unheated
basements, where the young can’t afford college, where people can’t get health
care. The New York governor received a lot of attention for his “Tale of Two
Cities” talk.
But
there’s another part of that speech that’s even more powerful. In it, Cuomo
uses the great U.S. Western migration of the 1840s to paint a vivid picture of
Democratic moral values and hopes for America:
The full column by Glenn W. Smith is in the R&D Department.
By Glenn W. Smith
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