Walt Whitman's "Democratic Vistas"

My only purpose in going online for this work was that I am cleaning out papers and one thing I had in my possession was a photocopy of a 1949 edition of this book with an introduction by John Valente. I have no memory of why I made this copy, but it presumably dates from my interest in political theory. In any case, I didn't want to discard this without first establishing that it was, as one would expect 35 (40?) years later. And, so it is, I refer to Bartleby.com's reprint in five documents, as part of the a complete set of Whitman's prose works. (Or, for a somewhat harder to read but all in one web page, see this hypertext version from the American Studies program at the University of Virginia, although the hypertexts table of contents does not include this document).

Of not particular relevance to my endeavor, I do note that one of the Google hits is to a 2004 collection of essays taking Whitman's title as its own, but at least including one essay on Lincoln and Whitman. According to the publishers, "A dozen contributors consider the nature and prospects of democracy as it relates to the American experience-free markets, religion, family life, the Cold War, higher education, and more." I guess the question is whether it is any better to read any of these instead of just charging ahead into Whitman's own "Democratic Vistas"?

­

One wonders what Whitman would have thought of the democratic vista offered by the Internet for his words and all the other words that are out here. He has at least one fan in George H. Jensen, Jr., Chair of the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, who has taken Whitman's title for his own blog and, in introducing his title, promising to "quote from this work often, as well as from Leaves of Grass, as I drive around the United States, searching for America and the American character.":

In Democratic Vistas, Whitman says something that most Americans would find startling: America is not yet a democracy. Before we can have a democracy, he argues, we must have a people who are capable of democratic behavior. Whitman truly believed (and hoped) that we, as a people, would one day be able to develop original ideas and yet respect the ideas of others. Without that respect, we would never be able to enter into a democratic dialogue. We could not have a democracy.

Not sure that Jensen has followed up on quoting extensively from Whitman, since Steinbeck seems to be his real focus as he travels America, so let us conclude with our own quote from Whitman:

For our New World I consider far less important for what it has done, or what it is, than for results to come. Sole among nationalities, these States have assumed the task to put in forms of lasting power and practicality, on areas of amplitude rivaling the operations of the physical kosmos, the moral political speculations of ages, long, long deferr'd, the democratic republican principle, and the theory of development and perfection by voluntary standards, and self-reliance. Who else, indeed, except the United States, in history, so far, have accepted in unwitting faith, and, as we now see, stand, act upon, and go security for, these things?

How would Whitman evaluate the "results to come" that we have to show him? Have we progressed any further in our democratic principels in the 130 or so years since these words were written?