OpinionCory AlpertFormer White House stafferAugust 26, 2026 — 11:39amAugust 26, 2026 — 11:39amThe machinery of American politics sorts everything that it sees. Every moment becomes a litmus test, where every cultural symbol is judged as either MAGA or its opposite.Artists, companies, cities, sports, and even beer get assigned into these categories. A political age consumes everything it touches.Dolly Parton was one of the last major exceptions. Photo: Marija ErcegovacShe managed a high-wire act of being entirely herself, a vision of American individualism done right, a preacher who could build a congregation without demanding conversion – where its members could briefly see a piece of shared humanity in each other in their shared appreciation of the woman we Americans knew as Saint Dolly.Her first big break on the country music stage was as the “singing girl” on The Porter Wagoner Show. During her first performance, the audience booed her during the commercial break. They were angry at the change that this brash, blonde starlet with an unusual voice represented.The show allowed her star to rise, and eventually she set out on her own. Her break with Wagoner, then the kingmaker of country music, is what inspired Dolly to write I Will Always Love You. It’s a song about leaving someone you love but refusing to hate the person you’re leaving behind.The way that Dolly left Porter became the blueprint for a career as the last great unifier in American politics. Later in her life, when Porter was left poor at the end of his career, she bought his music catalogue and gifted it back to him.By the time she built her empire, she understood how fragile the kind of fame she had developed could be. In her flock were conservatives and liberals, evangelicals and atheists, drag queens and NASCAR drivers.All the while, she refused to endorse anything while embracing everyone. Some of that instinct had been trained into her by country music’s famously possessive fans. When Dolly crossed into pop, she told TV talkshow host Larry King that she was worried that she was leaving those fans behind. But she told them that she wasn’t leaving country music. She was taking it with her.For many artists, that act would feel like cowardice, to never state your beliefs – to just shut up and sing.But Dolly Parton was anything but a coward.Instead, she was fearless about defining herself and refused to define anyone else.In a 1984 interview with Andy Warhol, the painter told her that she could be a great preacher. She replied, “What do you mean? I am a great preacher.”What she preached was nothing short of American individualism done right. The internet today is flooded with her quotes and Dollyisms, using her very body to grant permission for her fans to become whatever ambitious, sequinned thing they are capable of becoming. Her only demand in return for that permission was to afford everyone else the same privilege.In the same interview, she talked about being a star, as finding your own place and shining within it. It does not require a big stage or a big wig. In Dolly’s universe, there was room enough for everyone to shine.Where I grew up in the rural South, imagination could often be hard to come by. Our school system was so underfunded that parts of it became known as the Corridor of Shame.It’s the same world that Dolly grew up in. Her father couldn’t read, and the hard, patient life of the mountains of East Tennessee did not afford much possibility beyond those hills.As Dolly’s star grew, she sent that possibility back. She sent books to every child in her home county until they were five years old. The program slowly expanded across the South, then across America. Last year, the Imagination Library delivered its 2 millionth book in Australia alone. Across the world, more than 300 million kids have gotten books – for many, it was the only way they would receive them.She was giving children the resources to decide who they might become.America often mistakes individualism for abandonment. The version that Dolly preached was that each of our lives belong to us, but she could give us each something that could make it larger.Faith without works is dead, after all.The congregation of Dolly does not agree on every point. Dolly became the great unifier by creating a church big enough for everyone to find room for themselves. To love Dolly was to stand alongside people with whom you share little, and to understand that they have as much right to their place as you do.Dolly gave all of us a place where we could be different together.Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne looking at the impact of AI on democracy. He previously served the Biden-Harris administration.The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne looking at the impact of AI on democracy. He previously served the Biden-Harris Administration for three years.From our partners