This America: The Case for the Nation by Jill Lepore

I don't know if American historian Jill Lepore had her book in mind as a perfect read to help us celebrate Independence Day (aka The 4th). I consider the 4th  a lovely (or more likely, hot and muggy) day to sit and read a thoughtful reflection about our nation, an appropriate way to celebrate the holiday--at least until later in the day, when it's time for some barbeque and fireworks.

This short work allowed me to finish my American history reading project early. At 138 pages of text, it's a brief read. But don't let its brevity fool you: it packs an essential and well-considered argument into a small space. In fact, as I write this on July 4th, I realize that it provides a perfect reflection and celebration and accounting of America's virtues and vices. I'll quote liberally from her text because it provides a pithy consideration of our nation's history. (And quite a significant word this is--nation.) 

Lepore defines her undertaking as “ three outsize tasks, things I haven't done much lately, things that seemed to me in need of doing. It explains the origins of nations. It offers a brief history of American nationalism. And it makes the case for the nation, and the enduring importance of the United States and of American civic ideals, but arguing against nationalism, and for liberalism." (Preface). We realize with her opening that Lepore isn't reluctant to jump into to the fray, especially given the willingness of some now in power to celebrate nationalism. She goes on to describe her project as "at once an argument and a plea, a reckoning with American history, the nation at its worst, and a call for a new Americanism, as tough-minded and openhearted as the nation at its best." [Preface].

Lepore opens her argument by considering the history of nationalism, which doesn't come into use at all until the late 18th-century and that doesn't really come into common use until well into the 19th-century, and then mostly in Europe. This is the era in which the nation-state--the idea of a political entity defined by a particular people--came into fruition. Before this, religions and dynastic families established larger political entities (i.e., holdings of great families like Hapsburgs, Romanovs, and (until the French Revolution), the Bourbons, for instance). Lapore is quick to note that this enthusiasm for the nation-state and its attendant nationalism became entangled with the idea of patriotism. But Lapore acts quickly to separate these two. She writes: 

[S]ometimes people confuse nationalism with patriotism. There is nothing wrong and all kinds of things right with loving the place where you live and the people you live with and wanting that place and those people to thrive so it's easy to confuse nationalism and patriotism, especially because they once meant more or less the same thing. But in the early decades of the 20th century, with the rise of fascism in Europe, nationalism has come to mean something different from patriotism something fierce something violent: less a love of your own country than a hatred of other countries and their people and hatred of people within your own country who don't belong to an ethnic, racial, or religious majority. 22- 23. 

This assessment is if anything too weak. I prefer the more focused contrast drawn by John Lukacs: 

Patriotism is defensive; nationalism is aggressive. Patriotism is the love of a particular land, with its particular traditions; nationalism is the love of something less tangible, of the myth of a “people”, justifying many things, a political and ideological substitute for religion. Patriotism is old-fashioned (and, at time and in some places, aristocratic); nationalism is modern and populist. In one sense patriotic and national consciousness may be similar; but in anther sense, more and more apparent after 1870, national consciousness began to affect more and more people who, generally, had been immune to that before—as, for example, many people within the multinational empire of Austria-Hungary. It went deeper than class consciousness. Here and there it superseded religious affiliations, too. John Lukacs, Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred, 36. 

 But however carefully one parses the distinction between nationalism and patriotism, there's no doubt that nationalism became the dominant trend. Lepore describes the creation of the nation-state as the attempt to create a common people (by ties of language and history) and to graft a state upon such a people. The problem, however, is that there are no "pure" peoples. Languages, cultures, religions, and were diverse throughout Europe and in the Americas as well (and everywhere else as the idea of the nation-state spread throughout the world). As Lepore aptly describes the process, "Histories of nation-states are stories that hide the seems that stitched the nation to the state." 26-27.

The history of the United States of America provides an exemplary case in point. As Lepore notes, 

"The American Revolution was an extraordinary turning point in the history of the world, a new beginning. But had but it had little to do with the idea of an American nation. . . . 'We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; That among these are life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness .' for all its soaring, hallowed pros, the Declaration of Independence never described the United States as a nation and it invoked not national but universal ideas.” 29.

Much of early American history, up through the time of the Civil War, can be seen as the effort (of some) to transform These United States of America into The United States of America. The struggles were political and cultural--the cultural side was undertaken by historians, lexicographers (Webster), writers, and artists. The effort was to create a consciousness among the people that they were a part of a single nation. Lepore, however, also notes that some were not eager to join the national bandwagon, including some provincials (here and in Europe), and many of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, some of whom, such as the Iroquois, had their own sense of nationhood. 

Lepore shifts her focus to introduce "liberalism" into the equation. Such a fraught word demands an definition and justification, and she provides both: 

Liberalism is the belief that people are good and should be free, and the people erect governments in order to guarantee that freedom. Nineteenth-century nationalism and modern liberalism were formed out of the same clay. Nations are collectives and liberalism concerns individuals; liberal nations are collections of individuals whose rights as citizens are guaranteed by the nation. Liberal governments require a popular mandate to rule: Liberal nations are self-governed. Their rise marked the end of monarchical rule. 40 

But if formed out of the same client, nationalism and liberalism were molded into different shapes. Liberalism embraced a set of aspirations about liberty and democracy believed to be universal. . .  But nationalism promotes attachment to a particular place, by insisting on national distinctions. How can a set of ideas believed to be universal undergird a national identity? Only if the people who subscribe to that setup ideas believe that, sooner or later, they will be everywhere adopted. 41 

Thus, with the introduction of the inherent tension between liberalism and nationalism, between the universal and the particular, we have the conflict that will drive much of the narrative of American history and Lepore's work here. High ideals and realities of human finitude do not readily mix, and the nation has both. Idealists and strivers ready to exploit the vast resources that the land provides--later translated into immense technical achievements--mark one side of the American story, sometimes with nefarious ends. Lepore sums the problem up neatly: 

A nation founded on the idea that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights and offering asylum to anyone suffering from persecution is a beacon to the world. This is America at its best: a nation that welcomes dissent, protects free speech, nurtures invention, and makes possible an almost unbelievable growth and prosperity. But a nation founded on ideals, universal truths, also opens itself to charges of hypocrisy at every turn . These charges did not lie outside the plot of the story of America, or underneath it. They are its plot, the history on which any twenty-first-century case for the American nation has to rest, a history of struggle and agony and courage and promise. 45-46.

This conflict between universal ideas and realities of particular groups and places found its bloodiest and most dramatic clash in the Civil War. Lepore has a somewhat different take on the secession by the Southern states, often described as "sectionalism." Lepore describes the situation as "The outbreak of the civil war led to charges of sectionalism against the rebellious South, but Lepore has a different take: "Southerners were nationalist, too. It's just that their nationalism, at the time, was what would now be termed illiberal, or ethnic, as against another liberal, or civic, nationalism. ” 57. And as Lepore goes on to document, this illiberal strain continues with Jim Crow laws and other forms of racism, the eugenics movement, and anti-immigration laws and movements. 

Lepore briefly considers the historians of the early Cold War period (roughly from 1945 to about 1970),  where men [sic] such as Arthur Schlesinger, Lionel Trilling (literary critic)  Louis Hartz, and Richard Hofstadter set much of the tone of national debate. Lepore quotes from the Hofstadter review of Hartz’s The Liberal Tradition in America, “It has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be one.” 102.  But as Lepore notes, these leading figures--all liberal in the sense that she defines--became overly optimistic about the decline of nationalism and illiberalism and the end of ideology (Daniel Bell) that they foresaw. Some today argue that liberalism and nationalism can thrive together. Israeli political philosopher and former cabinet member Yael Tamir, writing in his book, Liberal Nationalism, that “the liberal tradition, with its respect for personal autonomy, reflection, and choice, and the national tradition, with its emphasis  on belonging, loyalty, and solidarity, although generally seen as mutually exclusive, can indeed accommodate one another.” 130. But the likes of Judith Shklar, Martha Nussbaum, and Tony Judt hold positions to the contrary. Lepore notes Judt’s conclusion that liberal nationalism is “nothing more than a thought experiment,” but still, she argues, the nation-state (or state-nation in the case of the U.S.), isn’t likely to disappear. The two ideals may find an uneasy truce. Lepore argues the in American history, “liberals have failed., time and again, to defeat illiberalism accept by making appeals to national aims and ends.” [131] In short, Lepore seems to accept that this troubles marriage must continue. 

I'll end my review with an extended quote of Lepore from her peroration in the section she entitles "The New Americanism." Once you read it, consider its value and implications. 

The United States is a nation founded on a revolutionary, generous, and deeply moral commitment to human equality and dignity. In the very struggles that constitute this nation’s history, in the very struggles that lie ahead, the United States holds to these truths: all of us are equal, we are equal as citizens, and we’re equal under the law.  For all the agony of the nation’s past, these truths remain.  Anyone who affirms these truths and believes that we should govern our common life together belongs in this country.  This is America’s best idea. 135.

Frederick Douglass once offered his understanding of this nation: “A Government founded on justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming no higher authority for its existence, or sanction for its laws, than nature, reason, and the regularly  ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in service of any religious creed or family, is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some narrow and biggoted people among themselves.” [136]

In a world made up of nations, there is no more powerful way to fight the forces of prejudice, intolerance, and injustice then by a dedication to equality, citizenship, and equal rights, as guaranteed by a nation of laws.  A new Americanism would mean a devotion to equality and liberty, tolerance and inquiry, justice and fairness, along with a commitment to national prosperity inseparable from an unwavering dedication to a sustainable environment the world over.  It would require a clear line reckoning with American history, it’s sorrows no less than its glories.  A lie stands on one foot as Ben Franklin like to say, but truth stands upon two.  A new Americanism would rest on a history that tells the truth, as best it can, about what W. E. B.  DuBois called the hideous mistakes, the frightful wrongs, and the great and beautiful things that nations do.  It would foster a spirit of citizenship and environmental stewardship and a set of civic ideals, and a love for one another, marked by benevalence and hope and a dedication to community and honesty.  Working both backward and forward, it would know that right wrongs no man. [137] 

Can you think of a better manifesto with which to mark Independence Day this July 4, 2019? I can't. Professor Lepore has provided us with a powerful beacon, and I hope we follow it.  

190626: Mueller Report Performed

190625 Rural & Small-Town Development

190623: Two Lessons About Using History

First, as the Trump Administration tries to figure out how to go to war with Iran--or not, Bret Stephens suggests an easy answer. And he uses an historical precedent to justify his recommendation. But as Andrew Bacevich, a former American military officer, writes in The American Conservative, Stephens leaves out key details that undermine--if not contradict--his historical analogy. History is complicated. "Bret Stephens: Warmonger."

Second, Masha Gessen writing in the New Yorker fathoms the statement by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about "concentration camps." Again, we see history as messy and our focus and perceptions as widely varying from reality. "The Unimaginable Reality of American Concentration Camps"

Reality makes us uneasy, as well it should, and our nation's history is not a tale of sweetness and light. 

100623 Recent Reading--Supreme Court Decisions

Law, Legal Affairs, the Constitution, & the Supreme Court

1. Opinion | A Blow Against Racism in Jury Selection: NYT Editorial Board. "A Blow Against Racism in Jury Selection The Supreme Court took a Mississippi prosecutor to task for repeatedly excluding black jurors from a murder trial." This editorial reminds us of how the U.S. Supreme Court addresses matters of life and death, in this case, within the reality of pervasive racism. Note that the majority opinion was written by Justice Kavanaugh and that Thomas (Clarance) and Gorsuch dissent (more about that in the next article). 

2. "Clarence Thomas’s Astonishing Opinion on a Racist Mississippi Prosecutor" by Jeffrey Toobin in the New Yorker. Wow! An example of how unexpected votes on the Court can sometimes occur. Thomas has always been an enigma, but he's now out from the shadow of Scalia and seems to be gaining Gorsuch as a sidekick. But why challenge such a blatantly racist conviction? Identity isn't defining, nor should it be, but then one would think identity (in this case racial) should prove influential. It turns out that personal quirks and ideologies can trump [sic] identities. I haven't read the dissent, but having read both of the two articles above, I don't know that I can do so with any good faith objectivity. Am I wrong? 

3. Opinion | ‘Most of Government Is Unconstitutional’ by Professor Nicholas Bagley (Law, University of Michigan). By the narrowest and most harrowing of margins, the Supreme Court in Gundy v. U.S. didn't turn back the clock to 1935 and strike down congressional delegations to administrative agencies. But Justice Alito, upholding this instance of delegation, signaled his willingness to take a different course, one that conservatives, grousing about the "administrative state" have long wanted to take. Yes, another case of judicial activism in the making. This could turn into a BFD. 

4. Christians Win Again in the Supreme Court by Leslie Griffin writing in "Verdict," a law site. This is a case under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and it shows to Court dividing in unexpected ways. Only Ginsberg and Sotomayor dissent from a holding that a near century-old WWI memorial here in Maryland can remain although it is a cross; i.e., a Christian symbol. But the majority (including Breyer and Kagan), find that because of its age and the "secular" connotations of a cross, the cross can remain on public grounds. Again, hard cases can create strange bedfellows. 

This article from the Washington Post provides another perspective and highlights to many ways that Court had (and continues) to address the Establishment Clause. 

Uninhabitable Earth; Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells--Creating Hell on Earth (or not)

Usually, I write a book review to share a sense of joy or insights or pleasure that I've gained from reading a book. Not so with this book. I'm writing this book review in an attempt to purge the angst that I suffered from reading it, to turn the sense of dread and potential for despair I often felt while reading it into something more positive, into courageous action. Can I succeed? I hope so, for my sake and for the sake of any reader. 

Wallace-Wells undertakes two tasks in this book. First, he brings us up to date with the latest climate science and the most reliable prognostications about the effects of climate change. The works of thousands of scientists converge around a variety of hellscapes that would make Dante swoon. As Wallace-Wells points out, we've been conditioned to think that climate change is just rising sea levels or some warmer temperatures here and there. It's not nearly so simple. It's not "I don't live near the coast, so what's my worry," because the problem is manifold and ubiquitous. No one can escape. Yes, sea levels will rise. Temperatures will rise so that some areas to become nearly unhabitable, especially around the Middle East and India (and having lived in northern India, I have a sense of what extreme temperatures feel like). Droughts and floods will increase in frequency and severity. Wildfires, as Americans have seen within the past year in California and the Pacific Northwest, will increase in severity and frequency. Severe weather events, such as hurricanes and tornados, will proliferate and become stronger. Get ready for the designation of a Category 6 hurricane. Established diseases will spread (malaria, dengue fever, and zika will move north), and new pathological organisms will evolve in our hothouse atmosphere. Crops will fail and yields decline. Nature will survive, of course, but species and whole ecosystems will disappear. We'll see Nature altered in ways that we don't recognize and won't enjoy. Human beings will be forced to migrate to survive. And conflicts will proliferate and intensify, from domestic quarrels (and undoubtedly physical abuse) to wars and civil unrest. We seem intent on creating a perfectly Hobbesian world of the war of all against all. 

Is Wallace-Wells just another alarmist? Is this just a book with cheap thrills like a 50's horror flick? I wish. Wallace-Wells went into this research and writing project as someone who was cognizant of climate change, but who didn't hold it front and center of his concerns until, as a journalist, he saw an increasing flood of scientific papers that revealed a much more frightening future than most of the media was reporting. What Wallace-Wells discovered disturbed him and frightened him. But he hasn't given up hope, and neither should we. 

In fact, the second portion of the book, after establishing the likelihood of various varieties of hell that we humans are creating for ourselves--and we are creating it, and we are choosing it--Wallace-Wells turns to our responses and how individuals, societies, and nations may respond to the increasing pressures that we face. 

We humans, like most of our fellow creatures here on Earth, have three instinctive responses to threats: fight, flight, or freeze (even faint). I couldn't help but think along these lines as I read about reactions (or the lack of response) to our increasingly certain knowledge. As a whole, we've chosen to faint, to swoon at the thought of what we've wrought and then distract ourselves from our plight. We play mind games with ourselves to distract ourselves from the challenge at hand, and 21st-century consumer capitalism is most willing to enable us to do this. The Republican Party in Congress tries to pretend that the science is wrong and the problem unreal, 'another liberal plot" they say.  Some say its just "God's will" and take a fatalistic approach justified on some bit of Bible misreading. Others seek to flee through technological panaceas, some of which may prove useful, but none of which promise reliable remedy and none of which can be attempted without immense costs and tremendous uncertainty about unintended consequences. The super-rich investigate how to govern the bunkers they're building to try to escape the wrath of the masses who will seek both vengeance and access to the resources that the super-rich have squirreled away. (But the super-rich remain worried about how to keep their guardians from turning on them.) 

The last option is to fight (climate change, not my fellow humans), and that's the option I'll take. We'll suffer significant--if not devastating--dislocations. We'll continue to see all sorts of changes, natural, social, economic, political, and cultural. But as Wallace-Wells makes clear, we have options and the potential to dramatically reduce the suffering that the future holds for all humans if we don't take sufficient steps to alleviate our plight. And I believe--or at least I possess a ray of hope--that we humans can respond in time (and time is of the essence). Thomas Friedman recently quoted an elementary but valuable insight from economic thinker Eric Beinhoffer: "there are only two ways to cure political tribalism: 'A common threat or a common project.'” Friedman uses this point to recommend that we need to undertake a common project to repair the foundations of the middle class. I suggest that repairing the foundations of the middle class must be subsumed under the project of dealing with climate change, which is a common threat and can become a common project. Indeed, starting now, we must re-imagine our political structures, our political economy, our entire culture. We have the potential to use the impending catastrophes to attempt to build a more just society. We either seek a just and sustainable world, or we can expect increasing international strife and civil anarchy. The range of possibilities for political, economic, and cultural change is vast, from outcomes that will prove (reasonably) attractive to appalling possibilities for anarchy or totalitarianism (and every nightmare in between). 

In listening to a couple of interviews of author David Wallace-Wells (The Ezra Klein Show & The Joe Rogen Experience), I was relieved to learn that he has an infant daughter, born while he was researching this topic. This fact reinforces his fundamental commitment to strive for the best possible outcome of our climate challenge, and it lets readers know that his hopeful words (there are some) don't represent publisher mandated pablum for readers. Wallace-Wells has to believe that we can take effective action to reduce our suffering and that of those who will come after us. 

One final comment: Again, from interviews, suggestions have been made that millennials will face this problem and must live with the consequences. Of course, this is true. But we baby-boomers have overseen an almost obscene increase in carbon in the atmosphere in the period since Al Gore released "An Inconvenient Truth" (2006). We bear the burden of responsibility for addressing our planetary illness. Alleviating the devastation of climate change must be a cross-generational project. We must begin the think in Burkean terms: society is a contract among generations past, present, and future. (If only there were more true conservatives!) 

Please, read this book and ponder your response. What shall we choose?  

Hannah Arendt on comprehension, resistance, beginnings, and political freedom

Comprehension does not mean denying the outrageous, deducing the unprecedented from precedents, or explaining phenomena by such analogies and generalizations that the impact of reality and the shock of experience are no longer felt. It means, rather, examining and bearing consciously the burden our century has placed on us--neither denying its existence nor submitting meekly to its weight. Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and reisisting of reality--whatever it may be.  

Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951/1976), viii, quoted in Bernstein, Why Read Hannah Arendt Now (2018), 120 

Beginning, before it becomes a historical event, is the supreme capacity of man; politically it is identical with man's freedom.  

Id. 479, quoted in Bernstein, id., 121. 

Impeachment: A Handbook by Charles L. Black, Jr.

I read the 1998 re-publication, but this new, updated edition is coming out in September

Charles L. Black, Jr. (1915-2001) was one the preeminent constitutional law scholars of the second
half of the 20th century. In 1974, as the possibility of impeachment was becoming more and more likely, Black penned this short book. (Black's preface is dated 21 May 1974; Nixon resigned in the face of an impending impeachment in August of that year.) Black mentions Nixon early in the book, pointing out that he'd never been a fan of Nixon, but Black also noted that he didn't think that Nixon was legally obligated to produce the tapes. (The Supreme Court differed.) This brief mention at the beginning of the book is about all that's topical; thus, the remainder of the book focuses on the law and issues surrounding a presidential impeachment. And this is one reason why this book remains so valuable today.

I'll quote liberally from Black because his writing is so pithy and graceful, not to mention authoritative.  Black makes this important point near the beginning of his work:

No matter, then, can be of higher political importance than our considering whether in any given instance, this act of choice [presidential election]  is to be undone and the chosen president dismissed from office in disgrace. Everyone must shrink at this most drastic measure.

Impeachment: A Handbook (1974; 1998 with forward by Akil Reed Amar), 1

Thus, Black makes clear his assessment of the profundity of the issues at hand. But while the issues are profound, they can be considered by careful analysis. In his Forward, Akil Reed Amar (another Yale constitutional scholar) describes Black's framework and process: "The right question to ask, says Black, is not 'what finite set of offenses James Madison had in his head when he agreed to the phrase 'high crimes and misdemeanors'? but rather 'what misdeeds do we today--here and now--deem so gross and malignant as to warrant undoing a national election?'" (Id. X) Thus does Black dispatch the naive "originalism"  propounded by some in the arena of constitutional law today. On the topic of interpreting the Constitution, Black states:

An understanding of the questions is more important than a fixed conviction concerning the answers." Id. 3. 

Black builds on this insight by stating:

"[I]t is the cardinal principle at least of American constitutional interpretation that the Constitution is to be interpreted so as to be workable and reasonable. This principle does not collide with respect for the "intention of the Framers" because their transcendent intent was to build just such a Constitution." Id. 4. 

With these principles in mind, Black turns more directly to the issues and procedures of impeachment. For instance, while the courts have no direct role in impeachment (there is no judicial review of the decisions of the House and Senate), the matter is one that calls for the practice of sound legal procedures and analysis. Black argues that members of the House, who impeach the president (the equivalent of the criminal indictment), should act as if they were grand jurors in reviewing the issues and evidence. By implication, members of the Senate should act as trial jurors. But there are limits to the analogy of a legal proceeding. For instance, no standards of proof or rules of evidence apply. These issues remain within the sound discretion of the members of Congress (heaven help us!). In voting on each Article (element) of the House charges, each senator must

ask two questions together: "Did the president do what in this Article he is charged with having done?" "If he did, did that action constitute an impeachable offense within the meaning of the constitutional phrase?" Id. 13. 

But the real key to understanding the impeachment provision surrounds the phrase "Treason, Bribery, and other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." The first two elements are (relatively) clear, but that last is a bit of a challenge. Black, before wading deep into the issues of understanding the third element, emphasizes that "maladministration" is not an element and that the phrase "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" "out to be conceived as offenses having about them some flavor of criminality." Id. 29. Note--not that an element must constitute some kind of crime, only that it has "the flavor" of "criminality." Black goes on to argue that there are some acts that while not crimes per se, they do nevertheless constitute grounds for impeachment. And some acts that are clearly crimes do not provide sufficient grounds. For instance, religious tests for office or blanket pardons while not crimes per se, would, in Black's opinion, constitute grounds. (My, how his examples ring topical!) And sexual improprieties or other minor crimes or crimes unrelated to the exercise of the office, would not be grounds. (Again, how prescient!). Black discusses scenarios that elucidate his principles and provide easily appreciate examples. He has his perspective, but true to his principles of constitutional interpretation, he does not lay down dogmatic conclusions but well-constructed arguments. The book is worth the time just to review his consideration of the various scenarios, which display a subtle and learned mind at work.

I can't think of a better primer about the issue of impeachment, and certainly not one so worthwhile and so short. Two books published this year, one by Cass Sunstein (I've read) and one by Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz ( I'm reading) are excellent and point to Black as a valued predecessor, but neither is as short or pithy nor as removed from current events (distance themselves as they try). So, this is the place to start and even where to end if you're short of time.

N.B. As I noted in the caption to the cover image, a new edition, updated by constitutional scholar Phillip Bobbit, is due out on 18 September, and will certainly become the preferred edition, since it can incorporate the effects of the Clinton impeachment.

Garry Wills on History and Liberalism

Upon re-reading this classic work about American politics and political thought, I came across these quotes about history and liberalism. Do not, in this context, confuse "liberalism" with "progressive" thought or the Left; in fact, Wills argues in his work that liberalism in its many guises is the guiding ideology of  American politics and culture. To what extent this is still true is an interesting point to ponder, but the main point I find in these quotes addresses our relationship to our history as a nation. Ponder this in light of today's events. What Wills wrote in the early 1970s in the context of Nixon and the turbulence of that era certainly applies today; we must find not only a way to rid ourselves of the plague of demagoguery and potential for tyranny, but we must find a way forward.  

History has made us, we cannot remake ourselves. To say this is to say that we are not the heirs, merely, but prisoners of our past thoughts, that we cannot break through them and be free, even when we recognize their delusive aspects. If this is so, then we must perish, feeding on recognized falsehood, our fate the fate of our exposed, exploded theories. But it is not so. Even in the past a great deal of our national life was left out of the accepted theories, and this becomes increasingly true as liberalism fails to enlist the energy and hopes of the young. At any rate, history never rests, never leaves alone the thing it makes; and there are signs that history, having made ours a great nation, may now be in the process of unmaking us—unless we can tap some energies for our own renewal. 

The historical achievement of liberalism is a great one, and even its severest critics would not systematically raze all its monuments. That these great deeds were accomplished by men acting, often, out of self-delusion means only that we are looking at the history of men—the same could be said of any school of thought that led to large actions in the world. One cannot even indulge in “hypothetical history” by saying a different course would have been a better one. 

This is our history, its good and bad intermixed; we cannot choose another. But one thing we can do—we can make history by refusing to rest in liberalism’s self-deceptions, once exposed. 

Wills, Garry. Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (Kindle Locations 9261-9266). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition. 

What Wills writes about liberalism in the context of his book can be said of many things: once we've found the rot, we continue to use any tool or thought at our continuing peril. We have to recognize the rot and repair and even improve the tool. 

Compare these thoughts about history offered by Wills with the perspective of R.G. Collingwood. 

Robert D. Ray: Some Memories & Observations

The late Governor Ray closer the time I first met him. 

I first remember meeting Robert D. (Bob) Ray when I was 11 years-old. I rode in a car with him and my parents into the city of San Francisco from the airport. The occasion was the Republican National Convention in 1964. Ray was then the chairman of the Iowa Republican Party and leader of the Iowa delegation, and my dad was working for the moderate Republican candidate, Gov. William Scranton of Pennsylvania. My mom came along because, well, it was San Francisco and she'd lived and worked there during the Second World War. I got to tag along because I was the oldest--or perhaps merely because no one would want to look after four kids back home. In any event, it was the first of many occasions when I had the chance to be around Bob Ray and observe him behind the scenes. Of course, the convention nominated Barry Goldwater for president, and he was soundly trounced by Lyndon Johnson. But the Iowa delegation, to its credit, supported Scranton 14-10 over Goldwater in the crucial vote to the credit of my dad and Bob Ray (a Scranton supporter).

Both Ray and my parents remained loyal to the party and supported Goldwater in the election (although I never believed my dad all that enthusiastic about the task).  Ray, along with other moderate Republicans, worked hard after the '64 Democrat landslide and significantly revived the party in the following election. In 1968, Ray ran for the Republican nomination for governor against a couple of other contenders and won the nomination and went on the win the general election that year. From that point, he never looked back.

Because my dad's firm, Central Surveys, conducted political opinion research in those days, he helped with some polling for Ray and the Republicans. On one occasion, sometime after I'd started college at the University of Iowa, located in the People's Republic of Johnson County (and my faith was quietly beginning to waiver), my dad invited me to join him in traveling to Des Moines. The purpose of the trip was to attend a meeting at the Governor's mansion to discuss planning a survey for the upcoming gubernatorial race. We met with Governor Ray and several of his aids and party officials. What I observed was pretty much what I'd seen (but would have been able to articulate) ten years before: with Ray, I found someone who hadn't changed really at all despite having reached a place of some power and prominence. He displayed a dry and understated sense of humor, especially toward some who were critical of him. (Was Roger Jepsen already getting ready to try to unseat him from within the party? Perhaps.) In any event, while mild-mannered and not the least bombastic, neither was he a Pollyanna nor did he suffer fools gladly. These were refreshing traits in any politician.

These are memories of a long by-gone era. The Republican Party in Iowa then was neatly divided between the moderates and the conservatives. As I observed it, the contest was between the pragmatic wing composed of those who looked favorably on progress in areas like civil rights and opportunities for women, and who thought of government as a means--- limited but still substantial--with which to take action for the public good. Thus, Ray supported government programs and initiatives, yet when the government wasn't responsive to the citizenry, he grounded Air National Guard planes until the Guard paid damages that they'd caused to a couple of Iowa families. He also refused to approve of double-bottom trucks on Iowa interstates, much to the chagrin of the trucking industry. He supported and signed into law a bottle deposit requirement over the howling objections of the grocery industry. The attitude of he and his supporters contrasted with the conservatives, who were against most change and who were hell-bent on repealing the New Deal. And they always seemed angry (and still do).

I should add that my perceptions of Ray and his sense of balance, humor, and sound judgment were reinforced by hours of stories that I heard from Bob Tyson, our close family friend and one of Ray's right-hand men. Tyson served as the Executive Secretary of the Iowa Republican Party during Ray's time as chairman and then served in Ray's administration as Director of something-or-other. But I think Tyson's primary task was to know about everyone, Republican or Democrat. And in all of those stories that Tyson told us--and he was a natural raconteur--he never had anything derogatory to report about Ray or even to incidentally impugn him (other than he tended to fall asleep when driving). What I saw and experienced on discrete occasions was apparently what Tyson perceived on a daily basis.

It's easy after someone dies to inflate memories and sweep faults under the rug, but I don't have to do that. As I drifted away from the Republican fold, I did so without any rancor and not without some remorse. There were Republicans then that I would be happy enough to have run the government. My parents and the likes of Bob Ray are foremost in my mind as I think this. But as I floated left, the Republicans took a hard right and haven't stopped. What would that generation think about our current president? I don't know, and I wouldn't presume to channel the dead, but these early lessons about politics from my parents, Bob Tyson, and Bob Ray have helped shape the abhorrence that I feel toward the current pretender. I have seen better, so much better, that I can't but the all the more to resist its negation. 

180614 Readings & Comments

1. I suspect that the number of mocking parodies of the Trump movie trailer tailor-made for Kim Jun Un. But if you haven't watched it, do. Here's a considered take on it.

2. Dave Brooks captures the essence of what Trump & other authoritarians (listed) are up to and their effect. Take away quote (and I like wolves on the whole more than those humans who channel their ferocious instincts): 

Those who lost faith in this order began to elect wolves in order to destroy it. The wolves — whether Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, Rodrigo Duterte, Recep Tayyip Erdogan or any of the others — don’t so much have shared ideology as a shared mentality.

It begins with 1, some monumental sense of historic betrayal. This leads to 2, a general outlook that says the world is a nasty place, and 3, a scarcity mind-set that says politics is a zero-sum game in which groups must viciously scramble to survive. This causes 4, a pervasive sense of distrust and suspicion, and 5, the rupture of any relationship built on friendship or affection, and finally 6, the loss of any sense that there is such a thing as the common good.

Wolves perceive the world as a war of all against all and seek to create the world in which wolves thrive, which is a world without agreed-upon rules, without restraining institutions, norms and etiquette.

. . . . 

[T]he core divide in our politics is no longer the conventional left-right divide. The core issue in our politics is over how we establish relationship. You can either organize relationship at a high level — based on friendship, shared values, loyalty and affection — or you can organize relationship at a low level, based on mutual selfish interest and a brutal, ends-justify-the-means mentality.

3. Sound advice from Frank Bruni: don't vent your anger or try to get even. Get ahead. Take only constructive steps. Don't make your opponent's MO yours. Rise above, don't fall down to that level. Bring together, don't further the divide. 

180612 Readings, Viewings, and Comments

Stephen Greenleaf

The distinction between the two types of politics is one that I haven't heard made before, but this dichotomy has great value. In the end, politics is always about change and choice. Politics can't ever really be about "eternity " (timelessness) or inevitability--that 'economic laws or "History" will determine our future and resolve our problems. But my, such beliefs are popular.

YOUTUBE.COM

Timothy Snyder Speaks, ep. 14: Politics of Eternity, Politics of Inevitability

History is not just what happens in time, it is how we think about time. The present moment seems…

Stephen Greenleaf

12 mins · 

My last two posts about Romania meld in this article and the accompanying video. About 20K Romanians gathered here in Bucharest to honor Halep.

However, the mayor of Bucharest showed up, and as you can hear, roundly booed. (I think this embarrassed Halep, but fans do have concerns beyond sports.) Afterward, the mayor "blamed 'Soros’s propaganda machine' for compromising the event by infiltrating teams of 'venomous citizens', well organized and strategically placed among decent people." This statement reinforces my sense that the ruling Social Democrat Party is beginning to track the line of other authoritarian movements in Eastern Europe. In fact, the reference to Soros is right out of the playbook of Hungarian prime minister Victor Orban. Soros is a wealthy Hungarian financier and philanthropist and a strong proponent of democracy and classical liberalism (think Karl Popper). And, oh yes, it just happens that he's Jewish. Hmm, what a coincidence. #sarcasm.

Halep's victory was a great moment to share, but the victory of the rule of law, democracy, and constitutional government over corruption, authoritarianism, and anti-Semitism is an even greater contest and one that, if one & preserved, is a win for the entire nation. So, yes, hurray for Halep, and boo to anti-Semitism.

ROMANIA-INSIDER.COM

Some 20,000 Romanians come to cheer champion Simona Halep

Some 20,000 Romanians went to Bucharest’s National Arena on Monday evening to cheer tennis star Simona Halep, who won her first Roland Garros title on Saturday.

180611 Readings & Comments

George Orwell

When you have Masha Gessen quoting and discussing George Orwell and Hannah Arendt, you can be sure of receiving some keen and sobering insights. And so it is in this article in which Gessen examines Orwell's conjectures about literature in totalitarian regimes. In the U.S., we don't have a totalitarian regime, but the attack on facts, on truth, is increasing and it begins with the current occupant of the White House. Read this and be forewarned. 

Orwell was right. The totalitarian regime rests on lies because they are lies. The subject of the totalitarian regime must accept them not as truth—must not, in fact, believe them—but accept them both as lies and as the only available reality. She must believe nothing. Just as Orwell predicted, over time the totalitarian regime destroys the very concept, the very possibility of truth. Hannah Arendt identified this as one of the effects of totalitarian propaganda: it makes everything conceivable because “nothing is true.”

Paul Scofield as Thomas More

And here is an excellent complementary article by Michael Shermer writing in Quillette about free speech (which is not exactly the same as our rights under the First Amendment, but that's for another occasion).  The article is a defense of free speech. Note that free speech isn't "free" in the sense of without cost--not at all! Allowing free expression of beliefs and opinions and statements of supposed facts means that error--the un-truth--whether intentional or the result of mere fallibility, will abound. We pay the price for free speech, and the only justification is that the suppression of free speech costs more than its allowance. Shermer argues the point well. And to close, this quote that Shermer includes from Robert Bolt's play about (St.) Thomas More, "A Man for All Seasons." It's a piece that I first encountered as an undergraduate assignment. This particular quote struck me even before I became a lawyer. It's something every lawyer ought to have at hand when someone complains about someone getting off because of "legal technicalities," the Ropers of our current age. Shermer writes:

In the play, a dialogue unfolds over the changing of the law between More and his future son-in-law Roper, who urges him to arrest a man whose testimony could condemn More to death, even though no laws were broken. “And go he should, if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the law!” More entices.

Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that.
More: Oh? And when the law was down, and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast…and if you cut them down…do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

A great insight. 

180608 Readings and Comments

Some quotes for thought:

When Nietzsche's Zarathustra told the crowd about the last man, a clamor arose: "Give us this last man, O Zarathustra!" "turn us into these last men!" they shouted. The life of the last man is physical security and material plenty, precisely what Western politicians are fond of promising their electorates. Is this really what the human story has been "all about' these past few millennia? Should we fear that we will be both happy and satisfied with our situation, no longer human beings but animals of the genus homo sapiens? Or is the danger that we will be happy on one level, but still dis-satisfied with ourselves on another, and hence ready to drag the world back into history with all its wars, injustices, and revolution? 

. . . . 

[W]e can readily accept many of Nietzsche's acute psychological observations, even as we reject his morality. The way in which the desire for justice and punishment is all-too frequently anchored in the resentment of the weak against the strong, the potentially debilitating spiritual effects of compassion and equality, the fact that certain individuals deliberately do not seek comfort and security and are not satisfied with happiness as understood by the Anglo-Saxon utilitarian tradition, the way in which struggles and risk are constituent parts of the human soul, the relationship between the desire to be greater than others and the possibility of personal excellence and self-overcoming--all of these insights may be considered accurate reflections of the human condition, which we can accept without our having to break with the Christian-liberal traditions in which we live.

. . . .

But supposing that the world has become "filled up," so to speak, with liberal democracies, such that there exists no tyranny and oppression worthy of the name against which to struggle? Experience suggests that if men cannot struggles on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom: they cannot imagine living in a world without struggles. And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterized by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, then they will struggle against that peace and properity, and against democracy.  

All of the above was published over a quarter of a century ago. Is it still pertinent? Does it shed any insight on our current world? 

From a different work, another quote to ponder:

Secrecy is the original sin. Fig leaf in the Garden of Eden. The basic crime against love . . . The purpose of life is to receive, synthesize and transmit energy. Communication fusion is the goal of life. Any star can tell you that. Communication is love. Secrecy, withholding the signal, hoarding, hiding, covering up the light is motivated by shame and fear. As so often happens, the right wing is half right for the wrong reasons. They say primly: if you have done nothing wrong, you have no fear of being bugged. Exactly. But the logic goes both ways. Then FBI files, CIA dossiers, White House conversations should be open to all. Let everything hang open. Let government be totally visible. The last, the very last people to hide their actions should be the police and the government.

Good idea or bad? Feasible or no?

BTW, in a couple of days or so I'll provide attributions for the quotes. I sometimes think that we tend to judge a quote by the attribution (I know I do). Let's think first, attribute later, although if anyone thinks they recognize a source, please do so. You'll earn bonus points (towards what, I don't know).

180606 Readings & Comments

Just a couple of items today:

The most disturbing resemblance between Fascism 1.0 and Fascism 2.0 is authentic popularity. Some Americans want to punish Russia. Others want to punish Silicon Valley. Both impulses are reasonable. But both dodge the fundamental issue. @washingtonpost https://t.co/MZwkWIy9j0

— Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) June 5, 2018

1. "Fascism is Back. Blame the Internet" by Timothy Snyder, WaPo 180521. Snyder is a go-to guy about the threat of authoritarianism. As a historian of 20th century Eastern Europe, you get plenty of opportunities to explore the subject of authoritarianism and tyranny on both the right and the left. Snyder adroitly applies his insights to contemporary America. I should note that the internet might be our downfall or our savior, but more on that some other time (in fact, it may be a race).



2. "On Sovereignty" by Jordan Greenhall. Medium 180219. This isn't about Hobbes or the International Criminal Court or the nation-state, it's about you and me. Greenhall is a fascinating young thinker, and he's building a case for changing (nay, saving) the world along with some other folks that are worth knowing about. This is one building-block in this project. Spoiler alert: it starts with addressing our own shortcomings first.

180605 Readings & Comments

Today I'm initiating an experiment. I'm going to share some readings (shorter) that I find worth commenting upon. Somewhat like Tyler Cowen does at Marginal Revolution, and a bit like Robert Wright's Mindful Resistance Newsletter and WTFJustHappenedToday, only with more comment. (And not in the least to presume that I'll replace or even compete with any of those sites.) I'll mostly cover current legal and political news (plenty of that even today) and foreign affairs, but also anything else that catches my fancy that I read or listen to (lots of podcasts are excellent sources of information). You know, basketball, meditation, sex (Hah! Just trolling!).  Anyway, here goes.

1. "Intellectuals, Politics and Bad Faith" by Paul Krugman, NYT 180604. I usually agree with Krugman, but I'm not convinced of his argument here. Nor do I buy Niall Ferguson's assertion that "the campus left the “biggest threat to free speech in Donald Trump’s America." Sorry, Professor Ferguson, you can't take that away from #45--he's by far the greatest threat. But that being said, the campus left, so-called "social justice warriors," are a matter of concern. Authoritarianism on the left and on the right poses a threat. I used to pooh-pooh claims of alarm about leftists on campus, but a bit of investigation has led me to worry more, especially in these polarized times. Few people make a distinction between "free speech" and First Amendment rights (which limit only government regulation of "expression) and social coercion. And given the fact that we have a right to avoid and even boycott those with whom we vehemently disagree and to suggest that others join us in doing so, I don't support any claim of right that someone else can censor my right to any information I want to receive by preventing a speaker from speaking (and implicitly my ability to hear and experience this person). Ferguson's alarm and then Krugman's counter-alarm were set off by actions against Charles Murray, a social scientist and author of--as Krugman describes it--a "much-debunked book" about race and IQ. That book is quite old, I believe, and Murray, I think, has published much else since then. In short, if Murray needs further "de-bunking," that should occur by debate and evidence, not student protests. I have no opinion on the validity of Murray's works or arguments. I have only a passing acquaintance.  But if I should disagree with him--even strongly so--that doesn't give me the right to gag him. 

2. Trump and His Lawyers Embrace a Vision of VastExecutive Power  by Charlie Savage, NYT, 180604. Is anyone else alarmed that a president claims that he could pardon himself? I can't cite any chapter and verse off the top of my head, but isn't it fundamental that one can't be a judge of one's own case--assuming you're making a pretext of following the rule of law. This is an essential, deep-seated, beyond-question conflict-of-interest. Yes, kings and tyrants do it, but American presidents? The Founders must be rolling over in their graves--or they're screaming, "We told you so!"  And I must say that #45 makes Nixon seem like a royal piker for arguing so modestly for regal prerogatives. 

3. The Flaw in Trump's Obstruction-of-Justice Defense by Benjamin Wittes, The Atlantic, 180604. Wittes is a fellow lawyer and go-to guy on issues of #45's legal antics and arguments (and he writes for the Lawfare blog). Anyway, he cools the jets on obstruction of justice issues. He doesn't address a royal pardon of the royal person. 

4. On the topic of tyrants and scoundrels, but not our current batch necessarily, Peter Turchin, an evolutionary biologist and originator of Cliodynamics, the study of historical trends, offers this piece in his blog. Entitled "The New Machiavelli," Turchin critiques rational choice theory (from its heyday) as promoted by Bruce Bueno de Mosquita and Alastair Smith in a recent book that applies the theory tout court to national political rulers. In brief, Turchin rejects outright a theory of power based only on self-regarding behavior. Turchin, the biologist and historian, notes the reality of altruistic leadership as well. These traits lie on a spectrum, not on an either/or switch. In fact, I would add the Machiavelli realized this. I believe its a mistake to consider Machiavelli only from the viewpoint of "The Prince." To understand Machiavelli and his values, one must also explore his republican side. And much of what is attributed to The Prince is a caricature of Machiavelli's beliefs and values.