Bloomsburg writer Mihir Sharma says that Americans shouldn’t get so uptight about apparent threats to their democracy.
Maybe sometimes we need an international voice to help us keep things in perspective. Here is a taste of Sharma’s piece, “World shouldn’t laugh at U.S. too soon“:
Remember: Donald Trump was impeached once and might be again. He has been repudiated by several influential leaders of his own party. He has lost re-election and all his attempts to overturn the result have failed. His party has been rewarded for its embrace of populism with the loss of not just the White House but also of both chambers of the legislature. And Trump himself has been cornered into conceding defeat. That is what you might objectively call a drubbing.
Such a drubbing is not, I hasten to assure you, the usual result of electing a populist. Generally, such leaders ensconce themselves comfortably in power and their victory margins seem mysteriously to grow with each election. There are far too many places where voting is always free but rarely fair, and where democratic despots seem never to be deposed. I wonder how we can even drum up the enthusiasm to mock America, which is emphatically and demonstrably not one of those countries.
I don’t want to minimize the damage that Trump could and did do to America. And it is an open question whether another four years in power would have left the U.S. completely incapable of resisting his corrupting influence. Yet, in comparison to other nations — from Russia to Turkey, Hungary to India — American institutions have demonstrated their value and resilience. Liberal democracies are only as robust as their institutions are independent and their officers are honest. And, because institutions and officials in the U.S. preserved their integrity, Trump was forced to fight a free and fair election — and will have to leave after he convincingly lost it.
In America, judges — even those appointed by Trump — threw out dozens of frivolous court cases. That’s what an independent judiciary does and it is also why populists in places such as Poland and India are reducing judges’ freedom to maneuver.
In America, even Republican officials such as Georgia’s governor and secretary of state stood up to their party’s leader, bluntly refusing to follow his bidding. I’m struggling to imagine an equivalent phone call between, say, Vladimir Putin and a provincial leader from United Russia.
And in America, an adversarial media actually reported on Trump’s corruption in power, as well as his attempts to retain it illegally. We were told in great detail about the colossal ineptitude of his legal team and the poverty of their arguments. In India, the media — even those so adept with puns — would never present the case for ruling-party venality and ineptitude as clearly.
Face it, the death of American exceptionalism has been greatly exaggerated.
Future American historians will wonder why at precisely the time the country needed citizens who understood citizenship, the meaning of democracy, ethics, science, historical thinking, and how to build an argument based on truth, facts, and evidence, we decided to slowly abandon the liberal arts.
At its core, liberal education consists of two contradictory yet complementary streams: the pursuit of truth and the creation of virtuous citizens in the community. Bruce A. Kimball makes this crystal clear in his magisterial 1986 book, Orators and Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education.
The search for truth is right now the only antidote to the poison of disinformation in America. The creation of virtuous citizens is central to building a new, more inclusive democracy.
However it happened, in other words, liberal education now sits squarely in the middle of what so ails our nation and what is required to fix it. Truthfulness and citizenship are needed now more than ever. Opportunity knocks.
Opportunity knocks because developments in the public square ensure that these issues will be salient for years to come. Take truthfulness. We can be sure that our foreign adversaries will continue peddling disinformation to diminish America’s stature in the world. Mass manipulators will continue spreading wacky conspiracy theories to line their pockets, amplified by those who follow. Members of Congress from both political parties are for different reasons weighing regulation of the tech companies over disinformation issues.
These will spill over into recurrent issues of free speech, free expression, campaign expenditures, voter information and even the terms of service for social media users. All are likely to wind their way through legislatures and courts at the national and state levels for years to come.
We’ve grown accustomed (or maybe numb) to the search for truth in our political discourse, but this issue is so much larger than just politics. It spills out across our daily lives. We no longer even trust faces in a photograph. Truth or falsehood, fact or faction, is a defining issue of our time and will remain a significant challenge for our descendants.
Here’s the point: the search for truth lies at the very heart of liberal education, of what we do. We just have to effectively convey that to the public.
Ok, @JohnFea1 where do you counter these claims, and explain what they are doing. I went thru and watched the videos, Metaxas etc. So, this needs to be explained somewhere. I'm getting push back right now, conservative friends, 'this is all true!'
Sorry “Long Distance Swimmer Cornett,” I can’t prove there wasn’t any voter fraud. But as a citizen I have a choice to make. I can either side with Trump and his team with their endless array of lies and half-truths or I can side with those men and women in the states responsible for counting the votes and the judges, some of them appointed by Trump, who have thrown out these voter fraud cases, often with prejudice.
I choose to decide with the election officials of both political parties in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, and Wisconsin. All of these states have certified this election.
I will choose to side with the Electoral College on December 14, 2020.
All of these institutions: state governments, the Department of Justice, the federal judiciary, the government’s cybersecurity team, and the Electoral College, are essential to a functioning democracy. They hold this crazy president in check. Trump, sadly, has disparaged and undermined all of these institutions. This is part of his master plan. He holds power by spitting in the face of democratic institutions and appealing directly to the members of his cult of personality. He is not a democrat, he is a populist warlord. This is why the Senate is afraid of him. The cult is powerful and if the warlord speaks he can ruin a political career. It reminds me of that Twilight Zone episode where the little boy sends people to the cornfield whenever they look at him the wrong way.
And there is the issue. Some believe in these democratic institutions and some do not. Some believe that these institutions are run by men and women committed to democracy, while others believe that these institutions are run by crooks, frauds, cheaters, or agents of Satan.
So there you go Mr. “Long Distance Swimmer Cornett.” This is the United States in 2020.
Not all the votes have been counted, but Joe Biden has already received more votes for president than any other candidate in American history. Here is Jeva Lange at Yahoo News:
Former Vice President Joe Biden has now received more votes for president than any other candidate in U.S. election history, officially surpassing former President Barack Obama’s 2008 popular vote numbers on Wednesday afternoon. Biden had 69,949,918 votes as of 2:30 p.m. ET with several states still tallying results, while Obama notched 69,498,516 total.
I join all of those anti-Trumpers who are bothered that the president won so many votes in this election. As Reed Hundt argued today in an interview with Joshua Cohen at Boston Review, democracy was on the ballot in this election. One candidate believes in democracy, the other wants to undermine it.
But once all the votes are tallied, we will have evidence to show that the American people sent a message to Donald Trump in this election. How high will Biden’s popular vote go? Five million? More?
Between November 4 and January 20 he will use these rallies to complain about the election, probably telling his followers that the election was rigged. This could end up becoming one of the greatest threats to democracy in American history.
After inauguration day, I have no doubt Trump will continue the rallies. I imagine he will charge his followers admission to come to an arena and hear him attack the Biden administration. If Fox News or conservative radio hosts publicize or legitimize these rallies, the country will not heal.
Jill Colvin of the Associated Press is also thinking about this. Here is a taste of her recent piece:
“There’s a kind of a populist feel,” added Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “It’s about being part of a spectacle, which is different from a campaign rally, which is typically a little bit more intellectual in presentation.”
The phenomenon, he said, is not unique in American history.
He pointed to the 1840 election when William Henry Harrison gave out free alcohol at events nicknamed “booze rallies” during a “last-minute crazy physical push like you see Trump resorting to.”
Brinkley tied the events to a long religious tradition tracing from the second great awakening Protestant revival of the early 1800s, when ministers traveled from city to city, to evangelist Billy Graham’s crusades.
“A religious fervor gets developed, and it becomes sort of like a cult-based atmosphere,” he said.
I believe the center is there. It is a very large center, incorporating both Left and Right. It is a center where we have real debates informed by reason, facts, science, and truth. It is a center that celebrates nuance and complexity. It is a center that rejects the kind of cross-canceling we see from the fringes of the political spectrum–the Trump right and the academic left are the primary guilty parties here. In intellectual life it is embodied by a letter published earlier this year in Harper’s.
This space needs to be reclaimed and strengthened.
Joe Biden was in Gettysburg on Monday and he gave a pretty good speech. Watch:
Let’s remember again that Lincoln’s call for unity and healing and the binding of wounds came after the Confederacy was all but defeated.
Biden is calling for a robust center and the marginalization of the extremes. The center must push leftward and rightward until the extremists fall off the grid on both ends. If this does not happen, American democracy does not survive.
Here is The New York Times coverage of the speech.
Here is Jonathan White of Christopher Newport University:
With President Trump’s illness disrupting his campaigning and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic afflicting Americans across the country, some commentators have wondered whether the 2020 election should be postponed. But the election of 1864 and President Abraham Lincoln’s insistence that it be held, even amid civil war, provides a resounding answer: No. Indeed, Lincoln believed that holding a fair election under even the most challenging circumstances was needed if self-government was to survive.
From the very beginning of the Civil War, Lincoln insisted that he was willing to fight to ensure the survival of republican government. “Our popular Government has often been called an experiment,” he told Congress in a special message on July 4, 1861. It was now for the American people “to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets.” Once ballots had “fairly and constitutionally decided” a contest, resorting to anything “except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections” could not stand. This, Lincoln wrote, “will be a great lesson of peace, teaching men that what they can not take by an election neither can they take it by a war.”
There are so many lessons we can learn from the presidential election of 1800. For example, when we claim that we are living through “the most divisive campaign” in history, 1800 offers perspective:
The election of 1800 also figured prominently in the Broadway play Hamilton, although much of its treatment of the election is historically inaccurate.
In Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald TrumpI focused on the religious aspects of the election. Many northeastern evangelicals believed that if Jefferson was elected he would come for their Bibles and close their churches. (Sound familiar?)
And as Sara Georgini of the Papers of John Adams reminds us in a recent piece at Perspectives on History Daily, the election of 1800 also offers some lessons on the peaceful transition of power. Here is a taste of her piece:
John Adams chased the dawn right out of Washington, DC, departing the half-built city shortly after four o’clock in the morning on March 4, 1801. He knew it was time to go. In a battering election that pitted Adams against his friend-turned-rival Thomas Jefferson, the New England Federalist suffered a humiliating and life-changing defeat. His popular predecessor, George Washington, swung into a second term easily. But the rules of the game had changed: Adams faced violent factionalism from within his administration, a seething press, rampant electioneering, and the eruption of party politics.
To many, Adams’s track record in office was controversial at best, thanks to the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts and an unpopular foreign policy with France. While the second president summered at his farm in Quincy, Massachusetts, Alexander Hamilton and a newly minted corps of campaigners trawled for votes. Fanning out across cities and towns, they set political fires in the local press that blazed across the very states Adams needed to win, and wouldn’t. He watched from afar, loathing the campaign tactics taking root. “If my administration cannot be defended by the intrinsic merit of my measures & by my own authority, may it be damned,” he wrote to his son Thomas Boylston Adams in late August. The elder Adams held strong opinions on elections, informed by his close study of classical republics and Renaissance state formation. He hoped to be known as the 18th-century ideal of a disinterested public servant, so a hard loss at the polls meant one thing: Transfer power peacefully to a new president, thereby safeguarding the office and the nation it served.
The election of 1800 did not invent this idea, but it did engrave America into history as a democracy. Both men vying for the presidency would have known Plato’s caution. Democracies thrived on the verge of oligarchy, and executive power—embodied by either president or king—risked turning into tyranny the longer its tenure. When did John Adams know his presidency was over, and what did he do about it? In the most technical sense, he lived (awkwardly) with the impending loss of power from December 1800, when key electoral votes failed to tip his way. He was not eager to stick around and watch the next inauguration.
For reasons that are unclear to me, James Robison felt moved to tweet the First Amendment during the debate:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble & to petition government for a redress of grievances. 1st Amendment
James Dobson on his Facebook page: “Consider this as you watch tonight’s debate.” The “this” is this.
Jack Graham spoke at an event sponsored by Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition. Does this mean that last night Trump was fighting a battle for the Lord?
"God raised up this man to fight some battles for us: The Supreme Court, the sanctity of life, and our religious freedom. @realDonaldTrump has done this, and there's more to come." – @jackngraham, Pastor of @Prestonwood at #RTM2020
"I leave here today with renewed confidence that if we work like it depends all on us and pray like it depends all on God, we're going to make America more prosperous than ever before. With God's grace, we're going to make America great again. Again!" –@VP@Mike_Pence#RTM2020pic.twitter.com/x26ODP50aJ
Actually, I think you can work for criminal justice reform and still be a racist. Last night is a perfect example.
"President Trump is not a racist. He has been branded as a racist, but what he’s done is criminal justice reform. He has created opportunity zones bringing jobs back to the hood. I know he’s not a racist, because racists don’t do that." –@BishopHarry at #RTM2020pic.twitter.com/V5uSP1dX44
Yes Jentezen, it just may be the most important election of our lifetime:
"I’ve come today to beg the body of Christ that this election is the most important of our lifetime. I’m begging on behalf of this nation and our children’s children, to vote." – Pastor of Free Chapel @Jentezen at #RTM2020pic.twitter.com/XB8AxG80vi
We must unite to preserve our form of government and our way of life. We must understand exactly what is at stake when we step into a voting booth. We will only have as much freedom as we are willing to fight for. We must unite and we must fight, because our future depends on it.
I’m not at all surprised that the president was a little “hot” last night. I suspect that any of us would be eager to defend ourselves and set the record straight if we had been subjected to similar treatment. We would also be furious over what had been done to us.
My friends, don’t forget what President Trump has had to endure the last four years.
Many leftists refused to accept the results of the 2016 election.
The “resistance” rioted during his inauguration.
The Deep State spied on his campaign and undermined his presidency.
His friends and supporters have suffered all kinds of harassment, investigations and prosecutions.
Democrats impeached him over a phone call, and they are threatening to impeach him again.
The left has viciously smeared him time and again. (More on that below.)
Anyone so upset about the president’s style that they are thinking about not voting or voting third party needs to seriously think about whether their frustration with Trump outweighs their love for our country and our values.
Joe Biden is no moderate. And you don’t have to take my word for it. He is running on a platform written by Bernie Sanders and well to the left of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Quick response:
Whatever Trump has had to “endure” was of his own making.
Bauer seems to be supporting Trump’s claim that he will not accept the election results if he loses.
The Deep State is a useful conspiracy theory for people like Bauer.
Trump did nothing wrong with his “perfect call” to the Ukraine
Joe Biden is not a socialist or a man of the left and he made that clear multiple times last night in the debate.
This is a perfect example of how the Christian Right uses Twitter to spread misleading information without any larger context. This is why contextual thinking is absolutely essential if we want to restore democracy. Social media is destroying us and Charlie Kirk is contributing to this.
Facts:
Chris Wallace interrupted Donald Trump 76 times last night.
He only interrupted Joe Biden 15 times.
Trump shouldn’t have to debate two opponents at once, but he did—and he STILL won.
Unlike other conservatives, Jenna just can’t admit Trump blew it. Nope, this evangelical Christian and fellow at the Liberty University Falkirk Center is defending Trump:
People are missing that when Wallace asked if Trump would condemn white supremacists HE SPECIFICALLY ASKED Trump to tell them to “stand down.”
Trump said “sure” 3x and then used Wallace’s OWN WORDS to tell Proud Boys to “stand down.”
Trump is telling everyone that the Democrats are trying to steal the election. Rather than trying to make it easier for Americans to vote, he is trying to prevent people from voting because he thinks mail-in-ballots will not be properly counted.
Our founding fathers did not let all Americans vote. Over the years, the suffrage (democracy) was extended to African-Americans and women. These were hard- fought battles. So why wouldn’t Trump be working with all his power to make sure everyone gets a chance to vote in this pandemic? This is what democratic presidents do. But Trump knows that if more people vote in this election he will lose.
Trump has now said multiple times, including at last night’s debate, that he would contest the vote count if he loses.
Again, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that mail-in ballots lead to widespread voter fraud. But some evangelical leaders are allowing Trump’s narrative to shape how they conduct their ministries. Here is court evangelical Robert Jeffress:
Pray that justice and honesty prevail in all circumstances. Pray that our country’s elections remain fair and honest. Ask for the fear of the Lord to be placed into the hearts of election officials.
Future historians will note not only how evangelicals are rallying behind Trump, but how Trump is influencing the way evangelicals practice their faith.
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.
