Great stuff here. Fareed Zakaria writes about possible scenarios that might take place on election night. It may also all come down to John Roberts. Here is a taste of his Washington Post column:
All of us need to start preparing for a deeply worrying scenario on Nov. 3. It is not some outlandish fantasy, but rather the most likely course of events based on what we know today. On election night, President Trump will be ahead significantly in a majority of states, including in the swing states that will decide the outcome. Over the next few days, mail-in ballots will be counted, and the numbers could shift in Joe Biden’s favor. But will Trump accept that outcome? Will the United States?
First, an explanation of why this is the most likely situation. Several surveys have found that, because of the pandemic, in-person and mail-in ballots will show a huge partisan divide. In one poll, 87 percent of Trump voters said they preferred to vote in person, compared with 47 percent of Biden voters. In another, by the Democratic data firm Hawkfish, 69 percent of Biden voters said they planned to vote by mail, while only 19 percent of Trump voters said the same. The firm modeled various scenarios and found that, based on recent polling, if just 15 percent of mail-in ballots are counted on election night, Trump would appear to have 408 electoral votes compared with Biden’s 130. But four days later, assuming 75 percent of the mail-in ballots are counted, the lead could flip to Biden, and after all ballots are counted, Biden would have 334 electoral votes to Trump’s 204.
And this:
Is there a way out of this national nightmare? Two powerful forces could ensure that the United States, already tarnished by its handling of covid-19, does not also end up as the poster child for dysfunctional democracy. The first is the media. We have to abandon the notion of election night and prepare the public for election month. In fact, states have never certified winners on election night. News organizations do that on the basis of statistical projections. It is time to educate the public to wait for the ballots to be counted.
The second and decisive force will be Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. If this type of scenario unfolds, it will end up in court. Ordinarily, this would not get to the Supreme Court. The Constitution is crystal clear that it is the states, and the states alone, that get to determine their electors. But the Supreme Court abandoned its restraint in 2000 with Bush v. Gore. That means a disputed election could quickly move up to the Supreme Court, where Roberts would be pivotal as both chief justice and the swing vote. So it might come down to this: One man will have the power to end a looming catastrophe and save American democracy.
Trump seems desperate after the wildly successful DNC convention. Granted, Biden and his team did not have to do any magic tricks to define themselves over and against Trump. The bar was pretty low. The Biden campaign claims to have raised $70 million during the convention.
Trump’s convention begins this week. This morning on Twitter we got a pretty good sense of what we can expect:
In New Jersey they want you to certify that you asked for the Universal Mail-In Ballot that they sent you. But you never asked for it. Disaster in the wings!
If there is a problem here, why isn’t Trump working with New Jersey to fix it so as many people as possible are able to vote in November? Instead, he continues to claim that mail-in ballots will lead to a “disaster.” Next week you can expect more attacks on mail-in voting. Here, again, is Barack Obama:
Well, here’s the point: this president and those in power — those who benefit from keeping things the way they are — they are counting on your cynicism. They know they can’t win you over with their policies. So they’re hoping to make it as hard as possible for you to vote, and to convince you that your vote doesn’t matter. That’s how they win. That’s how they get to keep making decisions that affect your life, and the lives of the people you love. That’s how the economy will keep getting skewed to the wealthy and well-connected, how our health systems will let more people fall through the cracks. That’s how a democracy withers, until it’s no democracy at all.
Trump is responding to this tweet from June 15, 2020:
The FDA is revoking its emergency use authorization of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for treating COVID-19 amid growing evidence that the drugs are “unlikely to be effective” in treating the coronavirus. https://t.co/XXuYkWg6m8
Today he is accusing the FDA of participation in a “deep state” plot to slow clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines in order to hurt his re-election. Expect to hear more of this next week.
The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics. Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives! @SteveFDA
Why would Suburban Women vote for Biden and the Democrats when Democrat run cities are now rampant with crime (and they aren’t asking the Federal Government for help) which could easily spread to the suburbs, and they will reconstitute, on steroids, their low income suburbs plan!
First, let’s remember what is really going on in this tweet. American history tells us that this is a racist dog-whistle. But it is also a bad political strategy since many white low income people, who Trump is trying to keep out of the suburbs, voted for him in 2016.
Second, Trump is working with a 1950s definition of “the suburbs.” Check out this interview with historian Thomas Sugrue.
Wisconsin is a major swing state in November. So we get this:
Biden and the Democrats have greatly disrespected the Great State of Wisconsin by not even paying a small visit to Milwaukee, the designated site of the DNC. The State & City worked very hard to make sure things would be good. Not nice. Vote Trump Wisconsin!
Trump won 28.6% of the vote in Milwaukee in 2016 (Hillary Clinton got 65.5%). Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 by 22,748 votes. Right now Biden is leading Trump in Wisconsin by about seven points.
And don’t forget God:
The Democrats took the word GOD out of the Pledge of Allegiance at the Democrat National Convention. At first I thought they made a mistake, but it wasn’t. It was done on purpose. Remember Evangelical Christians, and ALL, this is where they are coming from-it’s done. Vote Nov 3!
Here is what really happened. By the way, if you are an evangelical Christian who believes that removing “God” from the Pledge of Allegiance will leave to the collapse of Western Civilization, here are a few things to think about:
First, Christian socialist Francis Bellamy wrote the Pledge of Allegiance. He was an ordained Baptist minister who worked for the promotions department of a popular family magazine called The Youth’s Companion. Writers for the magazine included Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, Booker T. Washington, Jack London, Willa Cather, and Winston Churchill. The magazine asked Bellamy to prepare a patriotic program for schools in the United States as part of the 400th anniversary (1892) of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in America. Here is Jeffrey Owen Jones at Smithsonian Magazine:
A key element of the commemorative program was to be a new salute to the flag for schoolchildren to recite in unison. But as the deadline for writing the salute approached, it remained undone. “You write it,” Bellamy recalled his boss saying. “You have a knack at words.” In Bellamy’s later accounts of the sultry August evening he composed the pledge, he said that he believed all along it should invoke allegiance. The idea was in part a response to the Civil War, a crisis of loyalty still fresh in the national memory. As Bellamy sat down at his desk, the opening words—”I pledge allegiance to my flag”—tumbled onto paper. Then, after two hours of “arduous mental labor,” as he described it, he produced a succinct and rhythmic tribute very close to the one we know today: I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands—one Nation indivisible—with liberty and justice for all. (Bellamy later added the “to” before “the Republic” for better cadence.)
The Youth’s Companion published Bellamy’s pledge on September 8, 1892.
Second, the words “under God” were added to the Pledge of Allegiance on June 14, 1954. The bill was part of a lobbying campaign by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization. Historian Kevin Kruse explains all of this in his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America.
Third, the Pledge of Allegiance was recited, with the phrase “under God,” on all four nights of the 2020 DNC convention. Here is Cedric Richmond Jr. before the tens of millions of viewers watching the prime time convention on Thursday night (Day 4):
Fourth, let’s remember that the fate of Christianity does not rest on whether or not we have the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Christians, don’t let Trump play you like this.
Watch Barack Obama speak to the nation on Wednesday night from the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia:
Obama’s choice of venues speaks volumes. At a time when many on the Left are disparaging the American Revolution as racist or built upon slavery, Obama chose to give his DNC 2020 convention speech at a museum that commemorates the ideas behind the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution.
Let’s be clear. Obama did not take us on a ride through a rosy and innocent American story in the way Donald Trump did at Mount Rushmore on July 4, 2020. The former president understands the moral complexity of the past. Three sentences into the speech he says:
I’m in Philadelphia, where our Constitution was drafted and signed. It wasn’t a perfect document. It allowed for the inhumanity of slavery and failed to guarantee women — and even men who didn’t own property — the right to participate in the political process. But embedded in this document was a North Star that would guide future generations; a system of representative government — a democracy — through which we could better realize our highest ideals. Through civil war and bitter struggles, we improved this Constitution to include the voices of those who’d once been left out. And gradually, we made this country more just, more equal, and more free.
The American founding was not perfect. But Obama is unwilling to give up on its ideals. This has been a common thread running through Obama’s entire political career. It is also the spirit that motivated the men and women who were part of what Obama called “the early Civil Rights Movement.” These reformers, as Obama put it, “knew how far the daily reality of America strayed from the myth.” They strove to “bring those words, in our founding documents, to life.” They did not abandon the founding ideals, but sought to fulfill them.
Obama painted Donald Trump and his administration as a threat to democracy:
But we should also expect a president to be the custodian of this democracy. We should expect that regardless of ego, ambition, or political beliefs, the president will preserve, protect, and defend the freedoms and ideals that so many Americans marched for and went to jail for; fought for and died for.
I have sat in the Oval Office with both of the men who are running for president. I never expected that my successor would embrace my vision or continue my policies. I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously; that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care.
But he never did. For close to four years now, he’s shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.
Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t. And the consequences of that failure are severe. 170,000 Americans dead. Millions of jobs gone while those at the top take in more than ever. Our worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished, and our democratic institutions threatened like never before.
What is a “custodian of democracy?
At its most basic level, a custodian of democracy makes it easy for people to vote. Here is Obama:
Well, here’s the point: this president and those in power — those who benefit from keeping things the way they are — they are counting on your cynicism. They know they can’t win you over with their policies. So they’re hoping to make it as hard as possible for you to vote, and to convince you that your vote doesn’t matter. That’s how they win. That’s how they get to keep making decisions that affect your life, and the lives of the people you love. That’s how the economy will keep getting skewed to the wealthy and well-connected, how our health systems will let more people fall through the cracks. That’s how a democracy withers, until it’s no democracy at all.
But a thriving democracy also requires a leader who cultivates and models democratic virtues. For such a modern society to thrive, citizens need to learn how to live together with their differences. But not just any differences. A democratic community must be built upon human dignity, the celebration of truth, a belief in science and facts, and a commitment to empathy and decency.
When a leader of a democratic society weakens or seeks to damage this foundation it is our responsibility as citizens to say something about it–both in the public sphere and through the voting booth. In other words, a citizen is responsible for exposing and calling-out those who fail to exalt human dignity, those who refuse to expose lies, those who reject evidence-based arguments, and those who do not practice basic civility. Not everyone is required to share the same political views, but we all should be willing to live, work, speak, and think within such a democratic framework.
We need to reclaim such a society. A democracy needs “informed citizens” (as Obama, echoing the founders, called them in his speech). As Mary Ann Glendon once put it, “A democratic republic needs an adequate supply of citizens who are skilled in the arts of deliberation, compromise, consensus-building, and reason-giving.”
Because we all have our own views and opinions, a civil society requires conversation. We may never come to an agreement on what constitutes the “common good,” but we can all commit ourselves to sustaining democracy by talking to and engaging with one other. As author and activist Parker Palmer puts it, “Democracy gives us the right to disagree and is designed to use the energy of creative conflict to drive positive social change. Partisanship is not a problem. Demonizing the other side is.”
The inner working of this kind of democracy is described best by the late historian and cultural critic Christopher Lasch in his book The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy. His description of the mechanics of democratic conversation is worth citing in full:
The attempt to bring others around to our point of view carries the risk, of course, that we may adopt their point of view instead. We have to enter imaginatively into our opponents’s arguments, if only for the purpose of refuting them, and we may end up being persuaded by those we sought to persuade. Argument is risky and unpredictable, therefore educational. Most of us tend to think of it…as a clash of rival dogmas, a shouting match in which neither side gives any ground. But argument are not won by shouting down opponents. They are won by changing opponents’ minds–something that can only happen if we give opposing arguments a respectful hearing and still persuade their advocates that there is something wrong with those arguments. In the course of this activity, we may well decide that there is something wrong with our own.
Writers at the conservative National Review will, inevitably, argue over policy with writers at the progressive at Mother Jones. The editors of The New York Times are going to opine differently than the editors of The Wall Street Journal. These debates are good for democracy. But the failure to have these debates within a framework of evidence, facts, truth, and decency is harmful to our democratic life. Let’s call this failure “Trumpism.” And there are people on both the Left and the Right who deserve the moniker.
I was struck most by the way Obama rooted John Lewis’s life, and by extension the civil rights movement, in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the vision of the founding fathers, and our failure to live up to these universal ideas. Here are some thoughts:
1:28: Let’s remember that Obama is talking here about John Lewis, a graduate of American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville and an ordained Baptist minister. Lewis’s Christian vocation–his calling, if you will–was to fight racial injustice in a non-violent way. There is something deeply Christian about Obama reminding us that Lewis considered it “pure joy” to suffer as a result of his call from God.
2:17: Obama says, “This country is a constant work in progress. We are born with instructions. To ‘form a more perfect union.’ Explicit in those words is the idea that we are imperfect.” Here Obama is reflecting the founders’ view of human nature. They knew that humans were imperfect people who needed to rise about their passions and imperfections to create a just democracy that celebrated the dignity of all people.
Much has been made of the way Reinhold Niebuhr has influenced Obama. We definitely see some of that influence here as the former president reflects on human nature. Obama’s eulogy combines both a belief in the limits of humanity and a belief in the hope of humanity. As a Christian, I can never fully embrace Obama’s optimism, but like Niebuhr taught us, we should never stop confronting sinful actions, institutions and leaders. (I prefer to see this task in the way theologian N.T. Wright explains it. The work for justice and our defense of human dignity in this world is required of all citizens of the Kingdom of God. Our work in this world is building and preparing that Kingdom, a Kingdom that is “now,” but also “not yet”).
5:00ff: Obama’s discussion of Lewis’s life and his moral courage is so refreshing in the context of our current presidential administration. Obama’s eulogy has pulled many of us, at least for a moment, out of the cynicism of the Trump presidency. It certainly lifted my own daughter out of her cynicism. We watched the speech together. What Obama said has pervaded the conversations taking place in our household over the last twenty-four hours.
13:50ff: Obama connects the Civil Rights struggle to American values. If I hear him correctly, the problem is not with the values themselves, but with the failure to apply them to African Americans.
14:21: Obama references 2 Corinthians 4:8-10. It is worth remembering the context surrounding these verses because the larger passage says a lot about Lewis’s Christian faith and the way it manifested itself in the fight for justice and the dignity of all of God’s human creation. Here is 2 Corinthians 4:
Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. 2 We have renounced the shameful things that one hides; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God. 3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. 6 For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
7 But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. 11 For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you.
13 But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture—“I believed, and so I spoke”—we also believe, and so we speak, 14 because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence. 15 Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
16 So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. 17 For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, 18 because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.
15:00: “The troopers [on the Edmund Pettus Bridge] parted.” (Or perhaps this).
15:30ff: Here Obama starts dabbling in civil religion. This is a kind of Christian nationalism. He uses theological words like “redeem” to describe Lewis’s, and by extensive all American’s, faith in our founding values. As I argued in Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?, this kind of Christian nationalism was a dominant theme in the rhetoric of Martin Luther King Jr. and much of the early civil rights movement. While men like John Lewis put their faith in the God of the Bible, they also put their faith in the Enlightenment ideals that informed the founding of the United States of America.
Obama says Lewis lived an “exceptional” life–a life representative of an exceptional nation. He embodied:
that most American of ideals, the idea that any of us, ordinary people without rank or wealth or title or fame can somehow point out the imperfections of this nation and come together and challenge the status quo and decide that it is in our power to remake this country that we love until it more closely aligns with our highest ideals. What a radical idea. What a revolutionary notion–this idea that any of us, ordinary people–a young kid from Troy–can stand-up to the powers and principalities and say ‘no, this isn’t right, this isn’t true, this isn’t just.
Obama’s reference to “remaking” America echoes Lincoln’s “new birth of freedom.” He is suggesting that the American Revolution was radical in the sense that it allowed people like John Lewis to stand up to racial tyranny. This entire section of the speech reminded me of the recent discussion of the American Revolution sponsored by the World Socialist Web Site. Obama reminds us that the American Revolution is not an event fixed in time, but rather a constant struggle to apply its principles to our daily lives. Each generation must take-up this struggle.
23:00ff: Obama channels Lewis here. His attack on Trump speaks for itself. He says that democracy requires us to “summon a measure–just a measure–of John’s moral courage to question what’s right and what’s wrong and call things as they are.”
25:57ff: Obama quotes Acts 18:9: “One night the Lord instructed Paul, ‘do not be afraid, go on speaking, do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you for I have many in this city who are my people.” While Paul was not referring to the right to vote, the idea of using the ballot box to fight injustice and defend human dignity is a fair application of this verse.
36:40: Obama connects the black lives matter protests in the streets to the ideals of the American Revolution. He uses the words of Martin Luther King Jr:
“By the thousands, faceless, anonymous, relentless young people–black and white–have taken our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.” Dr. King said that in the 1960s and it came true again this summer.
I am not an Andrew Jackson scholar, but I have taught him for more than two decades. In the U.S. survey I usually frame my treatment of Jackson in terms of the tensions between what historian Harry Watson calls “Liberty and Power.” I discuss with my students how different groups in America understood the nullification crisis, Indian removal, and the debate over the National Bank. Some viewed Jackson as a defender of “liberty,” while others interpreted these events in terms of Jackson’s tyranny and unbridled use of presidential “power.”
Donald Trump did not find Andrew Jackson; Andrew Jackson found him. When historians and pundits began to compare Trump the populist with Jackson the populist, the candidate took notice. Moreover, Jackson is a favorite of Steve Bannon, Trump’s former political adviser and campaign manager. [And Dan Feller has recently taught us that much of Bannon’s understanding of Jackson is filtered through conservative commentator Walter Russell Mead]. By the time Trump entered the White House in late January 2017, an 1835 Ralph E.W. Earle portrait of Andrew Jackson was hanging in the Oval Office. In March 2017, Trump visited Jackson’s home in Nashville and laid a wreath on his tomb to commemorate the seventh president’s 250th birthday. There was also, of course, Trump’s misinformed claim about Jackson and the Civil War:
“I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn’t have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, “There is no reason for this.” People don’t realize, you know the Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there a Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”
Historians were quick to jump on the president’s comments by pointing out that the overwhelming consensus is that the Civil War was fought over slavery. Andrew Jackson owned a hundred slaves and had always been a strong advocate for the spread of the institution into the West of this country. Jackson died in 1845; the Civil War began in 1861. And if Jackson had been around to do something about the tensions between North and South, he would have probably sympathized with the Confederacy,
Andrew Jackson was the president of the United States during what historians call the “Age of Democracy.” Universal manhood suffrage (the right for white men to vote regardless of how much property they owned), the rise of something akin to the modern political parties, and the influx of millions of new immigrants, changed American politics forever. Democracy in that era empowered white men. While nothing close to social equality emerged then, political participation did reach an all-time high. Jackson’s life story, which was characterized by a rise from poverty and hardship, made him the ideal man to lead the country in this new democratic age. His popularity among ordinary voters was unprecedented. By the time he entered office in 1829, Jackson had risen above the hardships of his past, had a national reputation as an Indian fighter and slaveowner, and was well known as the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, the last battle of the War of 1812. Jackson was a man of passion who often let his temper get the best of him. His lack of self-control prompted the elderly Thomas Jefferson to wonder whether Jackson’s emotional volatility might disqualify him from the presidency.
Jackson won 56 percent of the vote in the 1828 presidential election and, as a result, believed that he had a mandate to serve the people who cast ballots on his behalf. Jackson viewed himself as a savior of the ordinary farmers and workers who voted form him by the millions, and his commitment to these men shaped his policy decisions, especially when he dealt with the elites who controlled American financial institutions such as the National Bank. Jackson was a strong nationalist: during the nullification crisis, he turned against South Carolina, a state filled with fellow slaveholders, because he did not believe that a state had the right to reject any law (in the case of South Carolina it was a tariff law) over the sovereign will of the American people as represented in the Union. When the passion-filled Jackson asked Congress to pass a “force bill” enabling him to use the army to crush dissent in the Palmetto state, talk of civil war was in the air. In the end cooler heads prevailed and Congress reached a compromise to avoid secession and military conflict. Jackson’s show of force further solidified his support among the nation’s working people.
During his speech at Jackson’s tomb, Donald Trump described the former president as a “product of his times.” This was especially true when it came to race, slavery, and Jackson’s policy toward Native Americans. Much of Jackson’s Southern constituency relied on the president to defend slavery and white supremacy, and the president was more than happy to oblige. As we saw in chapter 3, many of these slaveholders lived in fear of insurrections. Poor whites who did not own slaves worried about what might happen to them if slaves were set free and forced to integrate into white society. For example, in 1835, during his second term as president, Jackson, in a blatant attempt to limit free speech, tries to stop the United States Post Office from delivering abolitionist literature into the South. “Democracy” was white.
When it came to Native Americans, Jackson believed that they were racially inferior and an impediment to the advancement of white settlement across the continent. He eventually developed what he described as a “just, humane, liberal policy toward the Indian” that would remove them from their lands to unoccupied territory west of the Mississippi. He believed that he was a great father to the Indians. He explained his decision to oust them from their ancestral lands by claiming that he was protecting them from a possible race war with white drunk on Manifest Destiny. Drunk or not, the white men who voted for him in 1828 and 1832 simply wanted Indians out of the way. Jackson, as a steward of the people who supported him in a democratic election, needed to act in response to their will. During the 1830s, Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole Indians from Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida, escorted by the United States Army, embarked on what has been described as the “Trail of Tears.” Thousands of natives made the 800-mile trek to Jackson’s new “Indian Territory,” located in what is Oklahoma today.
It is fair to call Andrew Jackson a populist president. By the time he took office, he was a wealthy man, but he always presented himself as one of the people, a defender of the “humble members of society–the farmers, mechanics, and laborers.” Yes, as we have seen, Jackson’s nationalism, populism, and commitment to democracy was deeply charged with racial hatred and the defense of white supremacy. Is this the era of American history that Donald Trump has in mind when he says he wants to make America great again?
As I said in an earlier tweet…. the left is coming after Jesus and the apostles next. Not the statues but the historic faith of Christianity https://t.co/wO8INqFk0v
Graham is responding to this tweet by Mike Huckabee:
Just when I didn’t think Don Lemon could say something any dumber than stuff he’s already said, he “dons” his ecclesiastical hat and declares “Jesus wasn’t perfect.” In the faith world, we call that kind of arrogant comment “blasphemy.” https://t.co/w27lTCHlXw
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) July 9, 2020
I was listening to CNN when Lemon said that Jesus “wasn’t perfect.” I think this was more of a simple theological misunderstanding by Lemon, or perhaps he really doesn’t believe Jesus was perfect. We live in a religious diverse country after all. Don Lemon is free to believe that Jesus was not perfect. (By the way, do Jewish conservatives on Fox News believe Jesus was perfect?) In other words, I did not see this as an attempt to attack Christianity. Lemon was trying to show that our founding fathers were not perfect. He was even calling out liberals. Watch for yourself:
Apparently Robert Jeffress is not happy about this either. But this should not surprise us. He has long believed that we live in a Christian nation, not a pluralistic democracy.
“Don Lemon’s comments are, first of all, heretical, and contradict the most basic tenet of the Christian faith and demonstrate how tone-deaf the left is to faith issues.”
— Dr. Robert Jeffress (@robertjeffress) July 9, 2020
According to Jeffress, anyone who does not believe Jesus was perfect is peddling “fake news.”
.@donlemon’s claim last night on @CNN that “Jesus Christ was not perfect” makes him and his network the uncontested champions of Fake News. https://t.co/QC0TC6WInL
— Dr. Robert Jeffress (@robertjeffress) July 9, 2020
Court evangelical journalist David Brody of Christian Broadcasting Network agrees:
.@donlemon from @CNN said that Jesus Christ, “admittedly was not perfect when he was here on this earth.” Watch. THIS IS A LIE. HE WAS PERFECT ON EARTH. IF HE WASN’T, HE WOULDN’T BE GOD! And @CNN wants us to trust them when they can’t even get this right? pic.twitter.com/WWgruHavRe
Again, the point here is not to argue whether or not Jesus was perfect. That is a theological discussion. 3 points:
The court evangelicals do not care about the larger context of Lemon’s statement because the context does not suit their political agenda.
It is fine to tweet that Lemon does not understand the beliefs of Christianity. I am criticizing how his views (or his mistake) were turned into culture war tweets.
The court evangelicals do not believe in a pluralistic society. The idea that Jesus was imperfect may be a “lie” to all serious Christians, but this is not an exclusively Christian nation. Jews, Muslims, atheists, and people of all kinds of religions watch CNN. Non-Christians work at Fox News (I think). The belief that “Jesus was perfect” is an article of faith and it is perfectly fine in a democracy for people to disagree with this claim. As a Christian, I believe in the incarnation, but I am not offended that Don Lemon may not. These kinds of tweets just make Christians look foolish.
Gary Bauer is using his Facebook page to share an article on the American Revolution that appeared yesterday at The Federalist. Jane Hampton Cook’s essay is a historical and theological mess. It blurs African slavery, political slavery, and the biblical idea of liberty from sin. But at least she was able to take a shot at the 1619 Project! That’s all that really matters. Bauer writes:”>Rather than teaching our children a lie — that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery as the 1619 Project falsely claims — this is what our children should be learning in school.”
Hey Ralph, all you need to do is say “Happy Anniversary.” That’s it:
I was not a fan of his presidency, but congratulations to Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter on an amazing 74 years of marriage. Impressive. https://t.co/qyhDyEbmqJ
Eric Metaxas is trying to get his book If You Can Keep It in the hands of “every high school history teacher in the country. Before your school adopts Eric Metaxas’s book, please read this article and this series of posts.
Tonight David Barton will be making a case for why Washington D.C. should not be a state. I don’t have time to watch it, but I am guessing it has something to do with Christian nationalism.
Is it really true that Democrats don’t care about law and order or the Constitution? Jenna Ellis of Liberty University’s Falkirk Center thinks so:
My latest for @thehill — We need four more years of President @realDonaldTrump to expand a conservative majority to ensure equal justice for all. Democrats don’t care about law and order and the Constitution. Every American should!https://t.co/AAPhBXV2o5
My daughter is home from college. Tonight at the dinner table we were talking about citizenship in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. A lot of our conversation inspired today’s earlier post on that subject.
Both of my daughters are studying liberal arts at a liberal arts college. Caroline, who is now taking classes from her childhood bedroom, is majoring in political science and considering adding a major in environmental studies. Allyson, as a senior, is a double-major in history and psychology. Their coursework is challenging them in good ways. They are learning and growing intellectually. I pray that both of them will draw upon their work in these fields to help them navigate our current moment.
The humanities, a particular branch of the liberal arts devoted to the study of history, literature, rhetoric, theology and religious studies, philosophy, ethics, political philosophy, and languages, to name a few of the subjects that fall under its intellectual umbrella, offer an approach to the world that bodes well for the creation of good citizens in a democratic society.
This is why founders such as Thomas Jefferson valued an educated citizenry. In an September 28, 1820 to William Charles Jarvis, Jefferson wrote:
I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves: and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome direction, the remedy is, not to take it from them, but to inform them their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of the abuses of constitutional power.
The humanities, and especially my own discipline of history, teach students how to think critically about their world. How do we evaluate the information we receive about the coronavirus? What kinds of sources can we trust? In a time when news and information about this virus is changing and developing at a rapid rate, context becomes very important. News that came across our feeds two days ago may no longer be relevant today. Historians are trained to “source” documents. When was the document written? Who is the author? What is the purpose of this document? Does this context give us better insight into the meaning of the text?
Historians are also able to put this pandemic in a larger context. Type the words “1918 Influenza” into your web browser and notice dozens of historians trying to help us make sense of the present by understanding the past. Historians understand the human condition. They can, at times, alert us to potential present-day behavior by reminding us of what happened in an earlier era.
The study of history also cultivates the virtues necessary for a thriving democracy. In his book Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts, historian Sam Wineburg argues convincingly that it is the strangeness of the past that has the best potential to change our lives in positive ways. Those who are willing to acknowledge that the past is a foreign country–a place where they do things differently than we do in the present–set off on a journey that has the potential to transform society. An encounter with the past in all of its fullness, void as much as possible of present-minded agendas, can cultivate virtue in our lives. Such an encounter teaches us empathy, humility, and selflessness. We learn to remove ourselves from our present context in order to encounter the culture and beliefs of a “foreign country.” Sometimes the people who inhabit that country may appear strange when compared with our present sensibilities. Yet the discipline of history requires that we understand them on their own terms, not ours.
History demands we set aside our moral condemnation about a person, ideal or event from the past in order to understand it. It thus, ironically, becomes the necessary building block of informed cultural criticism and political commentary. It sharpens our moral focus and places our ethical engagement with society in a larger context. One cannot underestimate how the virtues learned through historical inquiry also apply to our civic life. The same skills of empathy and understanding that a student or reader of history learns from studying the seemingly bizarre practices of the Aztec Empire might also prove to be useful at work when we don’t know what to make of the beliefs or behavior of the person in the cubicle next to us.
The study of the past has the potential to cure us of our narcissism. The narcissist views the world with himself at the center. While this a fairly normal way to see the world for an infant or a toddler, it is actually a very immature way of viewing the world as an adult. History, to quote Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis, “dethrones” us “from our original position at the center of the universe.” It requires us to see ourselves as part of a much larger human story. When we view the world this way, we come face-to-face with our own smallness, our own insignificance.”
As we begin to see our lives as part of a human community made up of both the living and the dead, we may start to see our neighbors (and our enemies) in a different light. We may want to listen to their ideas, empathize with them, and try to understand why they see the world the way they do. We may want to have a conversation (or two) with them. We may learn that even amid our religious or political differences we still have a lot in common. We also may gain a better understanding into why their ideas must be refuted.
History majors and historical thinkers: we have prepared you for such a time as this!
As always, we began by sourcing the document. Here is my colleague Robin Lauermann‘s introduction from the CCC reader:
Putnam explores the phenomenon of social and political decline in America, apparent today as it was twenty years go when Putnam first published the piece. Putnam’s work extends and affirms observations made by the famous Frenchman Alexis De Toqueville, who traveled the United States in the 1830s and recorded his findings in Democracy in America. Tocqueville noted that civil associations, a hallmark of American life, promoted strong relationships that led to collaboration in other spheres of life, including the political arena. The stronger the civic relationships, the healthier the democratic process.
Putnam applies empirical rigor and thoroughness to Tocqueville’s observations about the relationship between social and political life. Civic engagement does produce a valuable resource, social capital, which in turn generates strong roots for democracy. The shrinking of meaningful social engagement has led to a decline in our political participation. This includes challenges that include limited connections with neighbors and community members, as well as low voter participation at election time.
Putnam’s essay is now twenty-five years old. Does his argument still hold-up? My students overwhelming thought that it did. In fact, many of them argued that the state of civic engagement and the decline of social capital in American life is a lot worse today than it was in 1995.
This article makes for a great classroom discussion, but I found that what the students really needed was some further clarity on the meaning of Putnam’s terms. What does Putnam mean by “democracy,” “civil society,” and “social capital?”
I tried to get the students to expand their definition of democracy beyond simply the right to vote. Putnam seems to use the word “democracy” to describe the social and cultural fabric of the nation. It is used to describe our life together. Putnam believes that people living in a democratic-republic like the United States must exercise certain habits or practices in order for this political experiment to survive. One student noted that we normally thinking about “democracy” in terms of personal rights, but Putnam is suggesting that life in a democratic society also comes with social duties. Bingo.
We then moved to a definition of “civil society.” Once we got beyond the fact that a “civil society” is more than just a society in which people behave civilly toward each other, we were able to distinguish such a society from the government or business sector. We spent time talking about the “voluntary” nature of this so-called “third sector” of society. Civil society is sustained by formal and informal institutions. I asked the students to name a few. They mentioned churches, labor unions, reading groups, library associations, the Rotary Club, neighborhoods, and the Girl Scouts.
Finally, it was time to define “social capital.” Students were quick to point out Putnam’s definition: “‘Social capital’ refers to features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit.” I explained social capital as the glue or cement that strengthens the institutions of a civil society. One builds social capital through relationships defined by trust. When you get sick at 2am and your car won’t start, who are you going to call to take you to the hospital? If your family is not around, you may call a neighbor or someone from church. You might call someone from your bowling league or book club. You will draw upon the social capital you have built-up with that person over time, usually in a face-to-face experience.
At this point, we paused and reviewed. A healthy democracy requires a strong civil society. Civil society requires formal and informal institutions and communities. These institutions and communities are held together by social capital.
Putnam argues that social capital is eroding in American life. It was eroding in 1995 and it continues to erode today. We continue to see a decline in voting. Participation in political rallies and local government is on the decline. Weekly churchgoing is on the decline. As membership in labor unions decline so does the working-class solidarity that such unions cultivate. Attendance at Parent-Teacher Association meetings, women’s clubs, fraternal organizations and, yes, bowling leagues, is dropping. (At this point I asked the students if they have ever bowled alone. None of them had).
By this point in the discussion we were working against the clock. Putnam closes the essay by offering suggestions as to why social capital is in decline. He lists four:
The movement of women into the labor force (which he ultimately rejects)
Mobility
The decline of the nuclear family. (Married, middle-class parents are generally more civically engaged than others).
The technological transformation of leisure.
Due to time constraints, we only had time to talk about the fourth point. My students got a good laugh over Putnam’s concerns with television-watching and the proliferation of the VCR. But they also realized that Putnam’s concerns about how technology has made leisure time more individualistic, and less communal, was more relevant today than in 1995. We talked about how the Internet, social media, streaming services, and video games have undermined social bonds in the United States. Some students, as I expected, argued that the Internet and the smart phone actually enhanced community. Others students pushed-back, defending face-to-face interaction as a more meaningful kind of community–the kind of community that is much better for our democracy.
In the end, we did not solved any of these problems. But that is not the point–at least at this stage of my students’ lives. College is a place where students learn to ask the right questions. If what we do in the classroom sticks, our students will spend the rest of their lives pursuing answers.
On Wednesday we will be reading excerpts from Augustine’s Confessions. Follow along here.
Nancy LeTourneau of Washington Monthly was one of the first journalists to start using my term “court evangelicals” to describe the evangelical leaders who back Donald Trump. In yesterday’s column, she brings our attention to center-right conservatives, many of whom are associated with a new publication called “The Bulwark,” and their role in saving American Democracy in the so-called age of Trump.
Here is a taste:
At some point, these center-right conservatives must articulate a policy agenda that is distinct from the ethnonationalism that currently fuels the Republican Party. To do so they will have to acknowledge the problem and come to grips with their own role in creating and exploiting it in the first place, which could be the most difficult step. Once articulated, they would have to find a way to garner support for that agenda that doesn’t simply exploit white grievance.
That’s a tall order and, at this point, I think the odds are stacked against them. But I, for one, would welcome the possibility of settling differences by debate and argument in an atmosphere where the truth actually matters, because that is pretty much the definition of democracy.
If Lamar Alexander wants to oppose witnesses in the Donald Trump impeachment trial he has that right. But spare us the “history” lesson.
Alexander statement says:
I worked with other senators to make sure that we have the right to ask for more documents and witnesses, but there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the United States Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense.
So it sounds like Alan Dershowitz’s “absurd” and “baffling” argument convinced the senior Senator from Tennessee. In embracing the Dershowitz argument, Alexander has chosen to reject the consensus of legal scholars and American historians.
Alexander continues:
“There is no need for more evidence to prove that the president asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter; he said this on television on October 3, 2019, and during his July 25, 2019, telephone call with the president of Ukraine. There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this with what they call a ‘mountain of overwhelming evidence.’ There is no need to consider further the frivolous second article of impeachment that would remove the president for asserting his constitutional prerogative to protect confidential conversations with his close advisers.
“It was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent and to withhold United States aid to encourage that investigation. When elected officials inappropriately interfere with such investigations, it undermines the principle of equal justice under the law. But the Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate.
So what is the difference between an “impeachable” offense and an “inappropriate” offense? Again, Alexander has been swayed by Dershowitz’s argument. Alexander believes that the president is guilty, but he does not believe that Trump committed an impeachable offense. (Dershowitz doesn’t think Trump is guilty of anything). This is also clear from the next part of Alexander’s statement:
“The question then is not whether the president did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did. I believe that the Constitution provides that the people should make that decision in the presidential election that begins in Iowa on Monday.
“The Senate has spent nine long days considering this ‘mountain’ of evidence, the arguments of the House managers and the president’s lawyers, their answers to senators’ questions and the House record. Even if the House charges were true, they do not meet the Constitution’s ‘treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors’ standard for an impeachable offense.
Alexander goes on:
“The framers believed that there should never, ever be a partisan impeachment. That is why the Constitution requires a 2/3 vote of the Senate for conviction. Yet not one House Republican voted for these articles. If this shallow, hurried and wholly partisan impeachment were to succeed, it would rip the country apart, pouring gasoline on the fire of cultural divisions that already exist. It would create the weapon of perpetual impeachment to be used against future presidents whenever the House of Representatives is of a different political party.
“Our founding documents provide for duly elected presidents who serve with ‘the consent of the governed,’ not at the pleasure of the United States Congress. Let the people decide.”
On the issue of “partisan” impeachments and the founders, here is historian Joanne Freeman:
This is a lie.
The framers said that EVERY impeachment would be partisan, so the Senate should proceed with wisdom.
Moreover, as historian Kevin Kruse has been reminding us, there were no political parties when the founders wrote the Constitution:
There were no parties when the Constitution was written. There were no parties when the Constitution was written. There were no parties when the Constitution was written. There were no parties when the Constitution was written. There were no parties when the Constitution was writ
Alexander also suggests that the “founding documents” teach that “the people” should decide whether to move a president. Here he is connecting “impeachment” with the vote and will of “the people.” But the Constitution makes no such connection.
First, as James Madison made clear in Federalist 39, “The President of the United States is impeachable at any time during his continuance in office.” In other words, the president can be impeached during an election year.
Second, the framers were skeptical about trusting the people to make decisions about important matters such as impeachment. The framers did not trust the “ballot”on impeachment. Read the Constitution as it was written in 1787. Senators were not directly elected by the people. They were appointed by state legislatures. This is precisely why the framers believed that the Senate was best suited to serve as judges in an impeachment trial. The “people” in the House of Representatives brought charges in the president (impeachment), but the Senate, those so called “gods on Mount Olympus,” would decide whether or not the people were right (removal). As Madison wrote in Federalist 10, the passions of the people needed to be filtered through “a medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.” In fact, the framers of the Constitution had such a mistrust of the people that they did not allow them to vote directly for the president. It is worth noting that they did not even record the popular vote in presidential elections until 1824.
In the end, Lamar Alexander can oppose impeachment trial witnesses for all kinds of reasons, but please don’t appeal to the founders.
Alexander’s sketchy use of the founding-era is particularly troubling considering that he has always been a strong advocate for more history and civics in public schools.
Adam Schiff opened the first day of arguments in the Trump impeachment trial with a quote from an enclosure in an August 18, 1792 letter from Alexander Hamilton to George Washington. His choice of texts is getting a lot of attention today.
Hamilton’s enclosure was part of his reply to a July 29, 1792 letter from Washington.
While the president was home at Mount Vernon he heard from fellow Virginians (probably George Mason and Thomas Jefferson) who were critical of the way the Federalist administration was conducting policy and interpreting the Constitution. Washington asked Hamilton to respond to twenty-one popular criticisms of the Federalist-controlled government.
Washington’s criticism No. 14 read: “That the ultimate object of all this is to prepare the way for a change, from the present republican form of Government, to that of a monarchy; of which the British Constitution is to be the model.”
This was a pretty common Anti-Federalist critique. It was also common among the members of the Jeffersonian opposition to the Federalist administration after ratification in 1789. These men believed that the Constitution gave too much power to the national government and relied too heavily upon British political customs. They feared that Washington, Adams (VP), Hamilton (Secretary of the Treasury), and the members of the Federalist-controlled Congress would replace the President of the United States with some form of monarchy.
These Jeffersonian fears are understandable. Washington often acted like a king. And everyone knew that Hamilton was an Anglophile. During the Constitution Convention Hamilton argued that the newly created executive should have a life term. This, he believed, was the only way of maintaining order and preventing the people from having too much power. James Madison, who summarized Hamilton’s six-hour speech at the Constitutional Convention, wrote:
As to the Executive, it seemed to be admitted that no good one could be established on Republican principles. Was not this giving up the merits on this subject. The Hereditary interest of the King was so interwoven with that of the Nation, and his personal emoluments so great, that he was placed above the danger of being corrupted from abroad–and at the same time was both sufficiently independence at home, one of the weak sides of Republicans was their being liable to foreign influence & corruption. Men of little character, acquiring great power become easily the tools of intemedling Neibours, Sweden was a striking instance. The French & English had each their parties during the late Revolution which was effected by the predominant influence of the former. What is the inference from all these observations? That we ought to go as far in order to attain stability and permanency, as republican principles will admit. Let one branch of the Legislature hold their places for life or at least during good behaviour. Let the executive also be for life.
Of course Hamilton’s ideas were not adopted. The framers decided that the executive would serve a four-year term. But some thought Hamilton had not fully abandoned his earlier commitment to an executive for life.
Below is an excerpt from Hamilton’s response to George Washington Hamilton argues that Jeffersonian worries about the Federalists turning the presidency into a monarchy are absurd. The real threat of tyranny is not the current administration and its policies, but the possibility that a leader might emerge who would tap into the passions of the people. I have highlighted the passage used by Adam Schiff this afternoon.
The idea of introducing a monarchy or aristocracy into this Country, by employing the influence and force of a Government continually changing hands, towards it, is one of those visionary things, that none but madmen could meditate and that no wise men will believe.
If it could be done at all, which is utterly incredible, it would require a long series of time, certainly beyond the life of any individual to effect it. Who then would enter into such plot? For what purpose of interest or ambition?
To hope that the people may be cajoled into giving their sanctions to such institutions is still more chimerical. A people so enlightened and so diversified as the people of this Country can surely never be brought to it, but from convulsions and disorders, in consequence of the acts of popular demagogues.
The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy, or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security.
Those then, who resist a confirmation of public order, are the true Artificers of monarchy—not that this is the intention of the generality of them. Yet it would not be difficult to lay the finger upon some of their party who may justly be suspected. When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind…”
The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy, or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security.
Hamilton is saying that the real threat to republicanism is a populist demagogue. You can see why Schiff thought this passage was appropriate for an impeachment trial.
A generation of students has learned of Alexander Hamilton and the Founding Fathers because of a Broadway musical with a Lin-Manuel Miranda score. Millions of middle schoolers have learned about U.S. civics because of video games developed through the vision and commitment of former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Tens of millions of cable TV viewers learn pieces of history not taught in the classroom because of Pawn Stars and the personal passions of its star, Rick Harrison. Each of these and many more like them show that history doesn’t have to be relegated to dusty history books telling the boring stories of generations of white, male landowners. History can, and should, be exciting, engaging, and relevant to the learner and to the times in which they live.
An informed voter driven to cast a ballot because of immigration and border detention facilities will also know about how Native Americans were treated in the 19th century and how Japanese Americans were treated during World War II.
An informed voter driven to cast a ballot because of impeachment proceedings will not only know about the Clinton impeachment but also of President Andrew Johnson’s.
Ultimately, an informed voter will move beyond asking, “What?” and will begin asking the more important questions about our history: “Why? How? To what end?”
For years now, we have been selling the 2020 presidential race as one of the most momentous, most important elections in the history of our representative democracy. If we believe that, then it is imperative that all voters, particularly the Gen Zers and millennials deemed so important to our future, begin to think and act like historians — asking questions, seeking out facts not originally taught, and understanding how we’ve confronted such issues in the past and how we can learn from those experiences, good and bad, in the future.
Trump will be at a Hispanic Pentecostal megachurch in Miami tomorrow afternoon for an “Evangelicals for Trump” rally. There has not been a whole lot of details released about who will be present at the event or what Trump will say, but I think we can expect a lot of contractual language. In other words, Trump will remind evangelicals about his Supreme Court nominations, his pro-life views on abortion, his defense of religious liberty, and his support for Israel and then he will ask evangelicals to vote for him in 2020. I am expecting that there will be some digs at the Democratic candidates and Christianity Today magazine.
I will be on NBC News Now (live stream) with Alison Morris around 3:15pm tomorrow (January 3rd) to talk about the event. Trump is scheduled to speak in Miami at 5:00pm.
Court evangelical Robert Jeffress will be in Miami for the event. He talked about his appearance earlier today on the Todd Starnes Radio Show. Jeffress makes no bones about the fact that the “Evangelicals for Trump” event is a response to Mark Galli’s Christianity Todayeditorial calling for Trump’s removal from office.
Starnes mentions “a couple of professors from Oklahoma Baptist University who have been bashing President Trump and his supporters.” (I am guessing that this is a reference Matt Arbo and Alan Noble). Starnes also references Wayne Grudem’s response to Christianity Today and calls is “terrific.” He also brings up Beth Moore’s criticism of Trump. Here is Jeffress’s response: “[Sarcastic laugh] These people are losing such credibility and its very obvious one motivating reason as to why they are against Trump is that they were wrong about Trump and their pride won’t allow them to admit that.” Jeffress goes on: “It’s those ivory tower elites that just don’t get it….”
I am continually amazed at how this has now turned into a class-based war on “elites.” The assumption is that what “the people” want is always morally correct. There is some truth to this idea. This is why many of our founding fathers feared the growth of democracy. After all, in a democracy 51% becomes the highest moral good.
Let’s remember that the opponents of slavery were “out of touch” with the majority of people of the South in the 1850s. Martin Luther King was also “out of touch” with the majority of people living in the South in the 1950s and 1960s. And Andrew Jackson was “in touch” with the people (white males Democratic voters who wanted to settle on Indian lands) when he sent the Cherokee on the “Trail of Tears.”
This morning I was reading Alexander Hamilton’s June 1787 speech at the Constitutional Convention as recorded by Robert Yates. A taste:
The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government. Can a democratic assembly, who annually revolve in the mass of the people, be supposed steadily to pursue the public good? Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy. Their turbulent and uncontrouling disposition requires checks.
Sometimes I wonder if Hamilton may have been right.
What is causing our political polarization? Can democracy survive our current political climate? Atlantic senior editor Yoni Appelbaum joins others, such as Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (those who attended Levitsky’s recent lecture at Messiah College will find a lot that sounds familiar in Appelbaum’s argument), in suggesting that the GOP is having a hard time dealing with demographic change. I made the same argument for white evangelicals in Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump and Robert Jones argues something similar in The End of White Christian America.
Appelbaum, however, has not given up hope. He turns to history:
The right, and the country, can come back from this. Our history is rife with influential groups that, after discarding their commitment to democratic principles in an attempt to retain their grasp on power, lost their fight and then discovered they could thrive in the political order they had so feared. The Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, criminalizing criticism of their administration; Redemption-era Democrats stripped black voters of the franchise; and Progressive Republicans wrested municipal governance away from immigrant voters. Each rejected popular democracy out of fear that it would lose at the polls, and terror at what might then result. And in each case democracy eventually prevailed, without tragic effect on the losers. The American system works more often than it doesn’t.
The years around the First World War offer another example. A flood of immigrants, particularly from Eastern and Southern Europe, left many white Protestants feeling threatened. In rapid succession, the nation instituted Prohibition, in part to regulate the social habits of these new populations; staged the Palmer Raids, which rounded up thousands of political radicals and deported hundreds; saw the revival of the Ku Klux Klan as a national organization with millions of members, including tens of thousands who marched openly through Washington, D.C.; and passed new immigration laws, slamming shut the doors to the United States.
Under President Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic Party was at the forefront of this nativist backlash. Four years after Wilson left office, the party faced a battle between Wilson’s son-in-law and Al Smith—a New York Catholic of Irish, German, and Italian extraction who opposed Prohibition and denounced lynching—for the presidential nomination. The convention deadlocked for more than 100 ballots, ultimately settling on an obscure nominee. But in the next nominating fight, four years after that, Smith prevailed, shouldering aside the nativist forces within the party. He brought together newly enfranchised women and the ethnic voters of growing industrial cities. The Democrats lost the presidential race in 1928—but won the next five, in one of the most dominant runs in American political history. The most effective way to protect the things they cherished, Democratic politicians belatedly discovered, wasn’t by locking immigrants out of the party, but by inviting them in.
Whether the American political system today can endure without fracturing further, Daniel Ziblatt’s research suggests, may depend on the choices the center-right now makes. If the center-right decides to accept some electoral defeats and then seeks to gain adherents via argumentation and attraction—and, crucially, eschews making racial heritage its organizing principle—then the GOP can remain vibrant. Its fissures will heal and its prospects will improve, as did those of the Democratic Party in the 1920s, after Wilson. Democracy will be maintained. But if the center-right, surveying demographic upheaval and finding the prospect of electoral losses intolerable, casts its lot with Trumpism and a far right rooted in ethno-nationalism, then it is doomed to an ever smaller proportion of voters, and risks revisiting the ugliest chapters of our history.
This weekend (Sunday and Monday) I made my first visit to Wichita, Kansas. The Kansas Council of History Education (KCHE) invited me to deliver the keynote address at their annual meeting. It was held this year on the campus of Newman University.
My address was titled “History for a Democracy.” I began the talk with three introductory premises:
The current state of American democracy has once again proven that the nation’s founding fathers were right when they connected the strength of the American Republic with an education citizenry
All K-12 teachers are public historians
Our democracy needs public historians
I then spent some time discussing the debate over whether history educators should be teaching “knowledge” or “skills.” This is a debate that culture warriors, radio talk show hosts, politicians, and elected officials lose sleep over, but teachers know that the pundits and bureaucrats often understand very little about what happens in their history classrooms. Good history teachers integrate facts and skills seamlessly in the history classroom through what we call “historical thinking.”
I concluded the talk with Flannery Burke and Thomas Andrew’s famous 5 “Cs” of historical thinking: change over time, context, causation, contingency, complexity. I explored the ways these “Cs” are present, and not present, in our public discourse. We talked about:
A CNN discussion between Jeffrey Lord and Van Jones on the history of race and Democratic Party.
The way the SAT examines reading comprehension
Providential history
Whether there is really a right and wrong “side” of history
The story of the “Umbrella Man” as a way to think about causation
The 1619 Project
Thanks to Emily Williams and Nate McAlister of the KCHE for the invitation. It was also good to see Dave McIntire and Diana Moss, alums of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History “Princeton Seminar” on colonial America. And thanks to George Washington’s Mount Vernon for sponsoring the lecture.
Here are some pics:
It was great to see Nathan McAlister, 2010 National History Teacher of the Year
Great to catch-up with Diana Moss, a Princeton seminar alum who teaches history in Galena, Kansas
Emily Williams (KCHE President) and Don Gifford of the Kansas State Department of Education
Jamestown, Virginia will commemorate the 400th anniversary of the first representative government in British America. Donald Trump will be there. Virginia’s black lawmakers will not.
Here is a taste of Gregory Schneider’s piece at The Washington Post:
Virginia’s black state lawmakers will boycott Tuesday’s commemoration of 400 years of representative democracy, saying the Jamestown event “will be tarnished unduly” by the participation of President Trump.
“It is impossible to ignore the emblem of hate and disdain that the President represents,” the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus said in a statement Monday. The group said Trump “continues to make degrading comments toward minority leaders, promulgate policies that harm marginalized communities, and use racist and xenophobic rhetoric.”
And in a direct challenge to Gov. Ralph Northam (D), Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D), the rest of the Democratic Party as well as Republicans, the caucus said: “Those who have chosen to attend and remain silent are complicit in the atrocities that he incites.”
Northam is slated to begin day-long festivities at a 7:30 a.m. ceremony on the site of the original English colony at Jamestown Island, but his office said he never intended to be present for the 11 a.m. session featuring Trump. Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) will also be present with Northam for that event.
I imagine that Trump will have a lot to say about the Virginia General Assembly (which would eventually become the House of Burgesses) as a forerunner of American democratic government. While this is true to an extent, the General Assembly was run by the wealthy tobacco planters of colonial Virginia. In other words, it was far from a “democratic” government. The member of the Assembly were chosen because they had elite family connections and land.
Moreover, I am guessing that Trump will not be in Virginia next month to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the first slaves to arrive on British-American shores.
How many times have you heard someone say this? As Ed Burmilia, a political science professor a Bradley University writes at The Baffler, it is a loaded political phrase. Here is a taste of his piece:
It is a cheap rhetorical sleight-of-hand, then, to justify outcomes or processes on the basis that America is “not a democracy,” not that such a statement is ever made as a legitimate argument in good faith. In practice, its use is to one of three ends.
First, as a non-sequitur defense of institutions that distribute political power unequally like the Electoral College or the Senate. The country is not a pure democracy with them and would not be a pure democracy were both abolished tomorrow and replaced. The “logic” here is that the existence of undemocratic or simply unfair institutions is justified by the fact that the country is not . . . an entirely different and unrelated kind of democracy. If that sounds stupid, it is.
Second, it is an argument against any vaguely majoritarian institution or idea. This is done with the utmost selectivity, as I am old enough to remember when “The majority of people oppose it” was considered a mic-drop argument against same-sex marriage. Invoke the will of the people one minute; the next—say, when large majorities want basic gun control legislation—smugly chuckle and say, “Sorry, buddy, read the Constitution: this here’s not a democracy.” Appeals to the will of the masses are often a last-ditch argument of convenience.
Third, and most troubling, is resorting to this phrase in defense of discretionary actions taken by political actors—like the president or Supreme Court. Every time the current president declares some breathtakingly dumb decision he makes after his six neurons fire simultaneously during Fox & Friends, defenders are quick to trot out the phrase as if anyone honestly thinks that presidential decision-making might be subject to a national plebiscite. In this usage, the argument is little more than a red herring, using the absence of mob-rule democracy as a justification of whatever lamentable actions are taken by the people elected or appointed to act on our behalf in accordance with Madison’s republicanism. Whether elected directly by voters or appointed through other processes, people in power make bad decisions—to which the nature of our system of government is not relevant.
Fukuyama’s take on the “end of history,” to be fair, has been questioned for decades. And for a number of reasons: from its Eurocentrism to its unshakeable faith in the world-historical stability of a neoliberal apparatus securing and enforcing the global marriage of “free trade” and Western liberal democracy. The past decade alone would seem to pose as great a challenge as we have seen to the Fukuyaman conceit. From the 2008 global financial crash to the rise of authoritarian-minded, far- right, Trump-style “populism,” the neoliberal order has shown quite a lack of, well, stability.
The very same empire that is supposed to lord over this end of history, forever and ever amen, can no longer seem to keep its story straight. Even as Donald Trump lauds himself as the very best president ever—an end-of-history sentiment if ever there was one—his presidency is nonetheless anchored to the message that the United States must be made great again. Something has slipped; the end of history has gone too far, and we must try to go back, it seems—to Reaganism, to the cradle of the Greatest Generation, to the Confederacy, to Jacksonianism, and on and on.
It is no coincidence that, in response to the historical recidivism of the Trump-led right, all that the amassed forces of the Resistance™ have been able to muster is a Fukuyaman defense that, in many ways, mirrors that of their opponents. From Hillary Clinton’s proclamation that “America never stopped being great” to the milquetoast Democratic obsession with being on the “right side of history,” the essence of the great political slap-fight of our day seems to amount to a debate between Democrats and Republicans over when, exactly—not if—history ended, which parts of our society are still stuck “in history,” and what they need to do to catch up. Either way, the presumption is that, regardless of what happens over the next two to six years, the great historical edifice of neoliberal rule will hold.
This is why the Democratic and Never-Trump Republican resistance has been largely incapable of challenging Trump’s wrecking-ball presidency on any grounds that would directly implicate the neoliberal apparatus of which they, too, are a part. Instead, the horror and hysteria unleashed by the ascendancy of Trump has been couched in pearl-clutching fear over what “norms” and “traditions” the MAGA movement has destroyed and expunged from our social world. If the neoliberal world order remains the embodied truth of the “end of history,” then, for all its concerned showmanship, the neoliberal establishment has yet to demonstrate any widespread belief that history, as such, is at stake.
The number of white evangelicals who have a favorable view of Donald Trump was higher in 2018 than it was in 2016. (It is, however, slightly down from 2017).
White evangelicals “remain the only major religious group in which a majority holds a favorable view of the president.” For more on why I think this is the case, see my argument in Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump.
White Americans with a college degree (78%) are “substantially likelier than whites without a college degree (56%) to say they interact with someone who does not share their race or ethnicity at least once a week.”
“Fully half (50%) of religiously unaffiliated Americans say they interact with people who do not share their religious affiliation within their family, compared to 32% of white mainline Protestants, 30% of Catholics, 26% of nonwhite Protestants, and 25% of white evangelical Protestants.” If I am reading this correctly, it appears that Protestants of all varieties (mainline, nonwhite and white evangelical) do not spend much time with family members who do not share their faith. Religious faith trumps blood?
Americans are “most likely to view their interactions with people who do not share their political affiliation in a negative light.” There are “no significant differences between partisans on this question.” This, of course, reveals the incivility of our political discourse in the United States.
Republicans are three times more likely as independents and Democrats “to say they would be unhappy if their child married someone of a different religious background.” White evangelicals stand out among religious groups on this question by a significant margin over nonwhite Protestants, Catholics, and mainline white Protestants.
“When faced with the prospect of their child marrying someone who identifies with the opposite political party, Democrats are likelier than Republicans to say they would be unhappy.” Interesting.
Nearly 30% of white evangelicals would “be unhappy if their son or daughter married a Democrat.”
66% of white evangelicals would “be at least somewhat unhappy if their son or daughter married someone of the same gender.” Frankly, I thought this number would be higher.
60% of white evangelicals prefer “a nation primarily made up of people who follow Christian faith.” Only 8% of white evangelicals prefer a “nation made up of people belonging to a wide variety of religions.”
Intellectuals are not entitled to special privileges, and “intellectualism” should not be seen as a superior way of life. But the intellectual project, involving the search for truth and understanding with some independence from the pressures of both the state and the market, must be defended. And it is a project that citizens who do not have any formal status in the academy or think tanks can join.
Intellectuals are integral to the battle against falsehood, but they need to work as part of a broad democratic enterprise involving citizens of every background who are concerned about what Trump and his cronies’ systematic denigration of facts means for the vitality of our democracy. There is no magical political strategy for building this coalition, and in the range of priorities for progressives, this would not rank as a central cause.
