Saturday, September 26, 2020

Musings on a Constitutional Crisis. It's not about a vacancy on the Supreme Court

  By Rudy Barnes, Jr.


The current partisan uproar over filling a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court is overblown, but it’s evidence of a very real constitutional crisis.  It’s caused by polarized partisan politics that have paralized Congress and given President Trump an opportunity to exploit those  partisan divisions to circumvent the Constitution and promote his own power.


The checks and balances in American democracy depend on the separation of powers in the Constitution.  Article I gives Congress the power to make laws, and Article II gives the president power to execute those laws.  Article III gives federal courts jurisdiction over disputes involving federal law, and gives the Supreme Court the final word on constitutional issues.


A breakdown in the functions of the three branches of government would create a constitutional crisis.  It could be caused by a Congress too polarized by partisan politics to function, a president determined to expand his power, and a Supreme Court compliant with an unconstitutional expansion of the president’s power.


Only voters can prevent such a constitutional crisis.  They must elect members of Congress and a President who are committed to preserve and protect the Constitution.  Those who put divisive partisan objectives ahead of promoting a politics of reconciliation and providing for the common good are undermining America’s constitutional democracy.


Not much can be done between now and November 3.  If Biden wins and there is a peaceful transition of power, and if Congress can overcome its partisan paralysis, America can preserve its constitutional democracy.  If Trump wins, all bets are off.  A compliant Supreme Court could legitimize an imperial presidency with few constitutional checks and balances.


Perhaps the greatest threat to America’s constitutional democracy is Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power if he loses the election, and his threat to contest any loss in courts where he has appointed a record number of judges.  Those are direct threats to constitutional democracy, but Trump’s 40%+ base of supporters continue to support him.


Even if Biden wins and can assume the presidency, Congress must overcome its partisan paralysis to provide constitutional checks and balances.  It may take a third party to break up the deadlock in Congress; but preserving a constitutional democracy will also take a Congress willing to subordinate divisive partisan issues to providing for the common good.


America’s polarized partisan politics will lead to a constitutional crisis unless the three branches of government can function and provide the checks and balances in the Constitution. Otherwise America’s divisive and seemingly intractable partisan politics will lead to a disastrous constitutional crisis, much like the one in 1860.  If so, we only have ourselves to blame.



Notes:


The Editorial Board of the Washington Post has observed that under a lawless Trump our system of checks and balances is being destroyed.  “President Trump promised in 2016 that he would protect the Constitution’s “Article I, Article II, Article XII.” (There is no Article XII.) Instead, he has shown how fragile the constitutional order can be when a president does not respect the rule of law. He has not grown into the office; instead, he has learned how to more effectively abuse its powers. The damage of a second term might be irreparable. See  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/18/trump-law-checks-balances/?arc404=true&itid=lk_inline_manual_30.


Frank Bruni has described Trump’s insistence on filling the vacant seat on the Supreme Court left by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg less than a month before the elections as “perverse” and a “special hell”.   “It was almost inevitable that President Trump would get one Supreme Court appointment during this four-year term. ...But three? Seldom has a president’s impact been so inversely proportional to his warrant. Trump, with his nonexistent mandate, reaches extra far and wreaks extra damage. That’s what makes his reign so perverse. That’s the special hell of it.  ...Some people — and some presidents — just get lucky. But no one gets luckier than Trump, and no one deserves it less. And this particular bit of luck, like his presidency, illuminates a serious and possibly unsustainable flaw in the American political system. We’re increasingly a country where the minority is not merely protected from the tyranny of the majority, as the nation’s founders intended. We’re a country where the minority rules, and under Trump, it rules tyrannically. ...On this front as on all others, Trump is propelled not by a genuinely felt vision for the country but by a genuinely insatiable ego. He’s a bully who likes to dominate — in any way available, to the fullest extent possible — and he’s running rampant, just for the adrenaline rush of it.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/22/opinion/trump-supreme-court-appointment.html.

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Erwin Chemerinsky has advocated that “one way for Democrats to make clear they will not tolerate Republicans trying to fill this seat in advance of the election would be for them to pledge that, if they take the White House and Senate in November, they will increase the size of the Supreme Court to 13 justices.  The number of justices on the court is set by federal law, not the Constitution. Since its beginnings, it has ranged from having between five and 10 members. Since the 1860s, it has remained at nine.  When President Franklin Roosevelt suggested expanding the Supreme Court in the 1930s to overcome court hostility to the New Deal, he was repudiated for trying to pack the court.”  See https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-18/op-ed-democrats-have-a-secret-weapon-to-thwart-a-rapid-ginsburg-replacement-they-should-use-it.


The Guardian has noted the constitutional crisis in America surrounding filling Justice GInsburg’s vacant seat on the Supreme Court:  “Democrats are not admitting defeat. But they are looking beyond election day, to the possibility of blocking the appointment – if Mr Biden wins and they take the Senate – or, for progressives in particular, to the nuclear option: enlarging or restructuring the supreme court (and, potentially, adding Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as states, rebalancing the Senate). This would, surely, further exacerbate divisions in a desperately fractured nation. But for Republicans, it would be the sound of chickens coming home to roost. Though Mr McConnell and his cronies are not swayed by the kind of moral suasion Justice Ginsburg embraced, they should remember that what they do now will be neither forgiven nor forgotten.” See  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/22/the-guardian-view-on-the-us-supreme-court-rbg-persuasion-and-raw-power.


Megan McArdle has noted the escalating partisan charges and countercharges on filling the Supreme Court vacancy, the lack of any efforts for partisan reconciliation, and predicted that the tit-for-tat Supreme Court game is about to reach a catastrophic conclusion. “We now approach what is likely to be the bitterest election fight in living memory, and quite possibly the point where things get so bad they cannot get worse — where the game finally reaches its catastrophic conclusion with no winner, only losers. That’s the only way things can go unless someone decides to end this stupid game rather than initiating the next round. Unfortunately, everyone has convinced themselves it’s only the other side that is playing games, while their own, nobler partisans keep trying to bring a civics textbook to a gunfight. If you believe this, then it follows that your only hope of victory is to take off the gloves and (temporarily) abase yourself to the level of your opponent.  ...As a nation, we have forgotten how to ask: “And then what?”

...Collectively, we’ll turn our highest court into an explicitly political super legislature that will lack the democratic legitimacy to so much as stay an execution, eviscerating the court’s power and function rather than ceding it to enemy hands. And when this packed, stacked and now thoroughly shellacked court starts issuing rulings that simply cannot be abided by the other party — well then, pray tell, what then?” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-tit-for-tat-supreme-court-game-is-about-to-reach-a-catastrophic-conclusion/2020/09/22/77453cda-fd0b-11ea-b555-4d71a9254f4b_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_todays_headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_headlines.


Trump has asserted a rationale for him to deny the legitimacy of an election if he loses: "(G)et rid of the ballots and you'll have a very ... there won't be a transfer, frankly. There'll be a continuation," he added, saying "the ballots are out of control."

“Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican who has stood at odds with the President in the past, slammed Trump's comments later Wednesday.  ‘Fundamental to democracy is the peaceful transition of power; without that, there is Belarus,’ Romney tweeted. ‘Any suggestion that a president might not respect this Constitutional guarantee is both unthinkable and unacceptable.’  Trump has previously said his rival Joe Biden would only prevail in November if the election is ‘rigged,’ and suggested earlier in the day it was likely the results of the election would be contested all the way to the Supreme Court.”  See

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/23/politics/trump-election-day-peaceful-transition/index.html.


“President Trump has refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power if he loses the election, asserting that if he doesn’t win, it will be because of fraudulent mail-in voting and not because more Americans voted against him.  His latest comments came after he has spent months making unsubstantiated claims that voting by mail is corrupt and will lead to a “rigged” election.

‘Well, we’re going to have to see what happens. You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster —’ Trump began when asked during a White House press briefing if he would ensure a peaceful transition. ...‘I understand that, but people are rioting; do you commit to making sure that there’s a peaceful transferral of power?” the reporter pressed, appearing to refer to incidents of violence that have broken out during some protests. ‘Get rid of the ballots, and you’ll have a very — we’ll have a very peaceful, there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation,” Trump said. ‘The ballots are out of control. You know it. And you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else.’ ...I think this will end up in the Supreme Court. And I think it’s very important that we have nine justices,’ Trump said. ‘It’s better if you go before the election, because I think this, this scam that the Democrats are pulling — it’s a scam — the scam will be before the United States Supreme Court. And I think having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation.’” See https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-transfer-of-power/2020/09/23/be6954d0-fdf0-11ea-b555-4d71a9254f4b_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_todays_headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_headlines.  On similar comments made by Trump during the 2016 campaign, see

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/23/parsing-trumps-there-wont-be-transfer-power-comments/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most; also https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/24/trump-is-worst-threat-our-democracy-since-1930s/?utm_campaign=wp_opinions_pm&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_popns.


 

Saturday, September 19, 2020

Musings on Law and Order, Reconciliation and Racial Justice

    By Rudy Barnes, Jr.

The fabric of American democracy is coming apart at its seams.  Racism is a major factor in our social malaise, making racial justice a moral priority; and it requires more than law and order to prevent racial violence and the enforcement of civil rights laws that prohibit racial discrimination.  Lasting peace and justice requires reconciliation to improve race relations.


Law provides enforceable standards to maintain order and prevent racial discrimination, while reconciliation depends on shared moral values.  Christianity once provided the moral values needed for reconciliation, but in 2016 the church lost its moral compass when most white Christians elected Trump, whose egregious morality is the antithesis of that taught by Jesus.     


The altruistic moral teachings of Jesus are summarized in the greatest commandment to love God and to love our neighbors, including those of other races and religions, as we love ourselves.  In America’s polarized partisan politics the spirit of altruism is needed to balance individual and partisan interests with providing for the common good.


Black Lives Matter illustrates the issue.  BLM had widespread public support when its focus was on eliminating police brutality, but that changed when it began advocating no peace without racial justice and defund the police.  That was an invitation for Trump and his supporters to stoke racial discord at BLM protests, making them magnets for racial violence.

  

Justice must be blind to race, religion and sexual preferences to provide equal protection under the law; but racial issues in BLM protests have pitted the freedom of expression of BLM supporters against the freedom of their opponents to openly bear arms in public protests.  In such volatile situations, police are essential to provide law and order and prevent violence.


Justice depends on police enforcing the law, and law enforcement without justice is a recipe for political oppression.  Both law enforcement and racial justice are essential in a healthy democracy, and political reconciliation requires compromise not only in Congress but also in local communities, where tempers have flared over efforts to remove Civil War monuments.  


Trump’s divisive politics are poisoning race relations, and overcoming racism is essential to racial justice.  Jim Clyburn (D, S.C.) understands the importance of race relations and has advocated non-racial standards for economic relief to avoid racial preferences, while Charles Blow has asserted that better race relations are irrelevant to racial justice.


Law and order are prerequisites for all forms of justice; but racial justice requires that law and order are combined with civil rights remedies against discrimination and with reconciliation to improve race relations.  That’s a daunting moral challenge for America’s racially polarized democracy, but it’s essential to achieve racial justice with ballots--not bullets.



Notes:


On the differing viewpoints of Congressman Jim Clyburn and New York Times columnist Charles Blow on the relevance of race relations to racial justice and systemic racism, see Barnes, Musings on Racism, Reparations, Racial Disparities and the Federal Reserve and Notes (August 15, 2020) posted at  http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2020/08/musings-on-racism-reparations-racial.html.


Dana Milbank has described Trump as cornered and trying to foment a race war.  See  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/31/cornered-trump-tries-foment-race-war/?utm_campaign=wp_todays_headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_headlines.


The Editors of America Magazine consider Donald Trump a unique threat to the Constitution.  “The principal concern here is not with Mr. Trump’s positions on various public policies, some of which are right and some of which are wrong, but with the president’s disregard for the system of laws and customs that establish the necessary conditions for debate, decision-making and public accountability in this republic.  ...No doubt many of the men who have occupied the White House have at times skirted or shortchanged constitutional principles. But there is a difference between those presidents of both parties who at times tested or bent the boundaries of constitutional action in pursuit of their self-interest, and Mr. Trump, who time after time has demonstrated that his framework for decisions is merely transactional and that he has little regard for constitutional norms or the common good.  

...As President Gerald R. Ford said upon assuming office during a moment of constitutional peril, “Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men.” That means that the rule of law, the work of a vital free press, constitutional use of the military and a basic, operative respect for the separation of powers are not optional. For without those safeguards, this country will devolve into prolonged factional conflict—the outcome our founders feared most—which would mark the beginning of the end of a republican form of government.”  See https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/09/15/president-donald-trump-threat-constitution-election-2020?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5488&pnespid=mbhurfJCGQqN82UdT3PY9PJe08MnOx8DxyYhyb7P.


Rachel Kleinfeld has asserted that the U.S. shows all the signs of a country spiraling toward political 

violence and listed myriad factors that make America vulnerability to dissolution.  She notes: “In the past 16 weeks, more than 50 drivers have plowed into peaceful protesters all around the country. Armed militants shut down Michigan’s legislature. Unidentified law enforcement officers heaved demonstrators into unmarked vans. Security forces in Washington used low-flying helicopters to harass citizens decrying police brutality. Protesters and police alike have brutalized journalists. Ideologues from left and right have been accused of killing political opponents. Should Americans be worried about widespread violence?  Yes. The United States is now walking the last steps on that path. Partisans who would never commit violence themselves are transforming from bystanders to apologists, making excuses for the “excesses” of their side while pointing fingers across the aisle. Particularly striking have been the inflammatory statements of Republican politicians, given the influence leaders’ words carry. Of course, they are simply mimicking President Trump, who is most responsible for setting the kindling aflame.

...Political violence tends to strike in countries where it has happened before. It feeds on discrimination, social segregation and inequality — which provide reasons for grievance while making it hard for divided populations to understand each other. Polarization exacerbates these conditions while blocking societies from solving their problems.

...All the ingredients are here: America’s political violence traces back to our Civil War, the causes of which were never really resolved. The Union won the war, but the Confederates prevailed in the peace. The wound of racism deepens America’s deep inequality and our political polarization. See   https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/america-political-violence-risk/2020/09/11/be924628-f388-11ea-999c-67ff7bf6a9d2_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_todays_headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_headlines


 On the dangers of racial and ethnic diversity to America, Robin Wright has asked: Is America a Myth?  “‘The idea that America has a shared past going back into the colonial period is a myth, said Colin Woodard, the author of Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood. ‘We are very different Americas, each with different origin stories and value sets, many of which are incompatible. They led to a Civil War in the past and are a potentially incendiary force in the future.’  The crisis today reflects the nation’s history. Not much, it turns out, has changed. The cultural divide and cleavages are still deep. Three hundred and thirty million people may identify as Americans, but they define what that means—and what rights and responsibilities are involved—in vastly different ways. The American promise has not delivered for many Blacks, Jews, Latinos, Asian-Americans, myriad immigrant groups, and even some whites as well. Hate crimes—acts of violence against people or property based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or gender identity—are a growing problem. A bipartisan group in the House warned in August that, “as uncertainty rises, we have seen hatred unleashed.’  In Washington, D.C., last week, a group commissioned by the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, recommended, in a report, that her office ask the federal government to “remove, relocate, or contextualize” the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, and statues to Benjamin Franklin and Christopher Columbus, among others. The committee compiled a list of people who should not have public works named after them, including Presidents James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and Woodrow Wilson, the inventor Alexander Graham Bell, and Francis Scott Key, who wrote the national anthem. After a deluge of criticism, Bowser said on Friday that the report was being misinterpreted and that the city would not do anything about the monuments and memorials. But a question remains, not just because we live in the era of Black Lives Matter: What is America about today? And is it any different from its deeply flawed past? 

...In some ways, the election, now only eight weeks away, will be a temporary relief, at least in ending the current agonizing uncertainty. But it will play only one part in deciding what ultimately will happen to our nation.   ...‘Are we a myth? Well, yes, in the deep sense. Always have been,’ The Yale historian David Blight said. To survive, America must move beyond the myth.” See https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/is-america-a-myth.


According to Larry Bartels ethnic antagonism, or racism, is the strongest motivating factor in Republican partisan politics, and it has produced anti-democratic tendencies.  “In a January 2020 survey most Republicans agreed that ‘the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.’ More than 40% agreed that “a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.” (In both cases, most of the rest said they were unsure; only one in four or five disagreed.)  ...The strongest predictor by far, for the Republican rank-and-file ...is ethnic antagonism, especially concerns about the political power and claims on government resources of immigrants, African-Americans, and Latinos. The corrosive impact of ethnic antagonism [racism] on Republicans’ commitment to democracy underlines the significance of ethnic conflict in contemporary US politics.” Larry M. Bartels, Ethnic Antagonism erodes Republicans’ Commitment to Democracy, at https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/08/26/2007747117.


Both the Wright and Bartels articles (above) were cited in recent commentary on Musings on the

Demise of American Democracy: Is It Deja Vu All Over Again? (September 12, 2020) posted at  http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2020/09/musings-on-demise-of-american-democracy.html.

At Black Lives Matter protests, clashes between armed groups and leftist protesters have turned deadly, and police face complaints of tolerating vigilantes.  Raol Torex, a district attorney in New Mexico, said, “I don’t think a lot of Americans understand how fragile democracy is. “One of the early signs of a troubled democracy is when people decide that they’re no longer going to address their political differences at the ballot box — or in elected legislatures or in Congress — but they’re going to do it on the street, and they’re going to do it with guns. Police officers, district attorneys, leaders in law enforcement here and across the country have to make it unambiguously clear to anyone that it is not their job — it is the role of law enforcement — to” defend property, Torrez said. Militia groups are “not hearing that message from enough leadership in law enforcement. And this takes us down a very, very dangerous path.” "While racial justice protests typically condemn police behavior and include calls for defunding police departments, militia-style groups are predominantly pro-police and often rally behind slogans such as ‘Blue Lives Matter’ and ‘Back the Badge.’”  See  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-clashes-between-armed-groups-and-leftist-protesters-turn-deadly-police-face-complaints-of-tolerating-vigilantes/2020/08/30/d2c36c20-e952-11ea-a414-8422fa3e4116_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most.


Friday, September 11, 2020

Musings on the Demise of American Democracy: Is It Deja Vu All Over Again?

    By Rudy Barnes, Jr.

Last week I wrote that America was born a slave-holding nation of self-proclaimed Christians, and I received a response that took exception to that ugly reality: “Are you kidding me???  Attempting to demean the entire history of America with these garbage allegations is ripping us apart.”  We are a divided nation, but is a recognition of our history ripping us apart?


No.  It’s just the opposite.  George Santayana observed, “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.”  Slavery was a terrible thing that ripped America apart, but many of our Founding Fathers, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, were from the antebellum South and deserve the monuments that some are now trying to remove.


Thomas Jefferson was a deist and a slaveholder with a slave mistress.  As an advocate for freedom, he was a hypocrite; but his Declaration of Independence set the tone for America’s libertarian democracy, and his belief that the teachings of Jesus were “the most sublime moral code ever designed by man” made Jefferson more “Christian” than most Americans today.


Accepting the ugly realities of slavery in America doesn’t mean that “America is solely about slavery and racism” and that accepting those ugly realities of our history “demands dumping the Constitution we swore to defend.”  The opposite is true.  We are a divided nation and we need to accept the ugly realities of our history to avoid repeating them.


In antebellum South Carolina poor white farmers outnumbered the wealthy and powerful aristocrats who oppressed them and were ready to revolt; but the aristocratic slave holders used fear to convince poor whites that if they didn't support secession and take up arms to preserve slavery, a new majority of freed slaves would deny them their white political supremacy. 


Trump and his Republicans are using a variation of the fire-eaters racist strategy to promote their partisan politics today.  Ironically, the party of Lincoln is using fear and racist hatred to promote divisive partisan politics at the expense of the common good.  It can only lead to a new threat to our Union based on increasing political division and hostility.   


Slavery is no longer a real issue, but the expansion of Black Lives Matter protests from opposing police brutality to emphasizing racial justice and slavery as the cause of systemic racism is a dog whistle for racial conflict.  Violence at Black Lives Matter protests between the radical right and left have escalated racial tensions to a boiling point just before the elections.


Racism is not the only issue dividing Americans.  Economic issues caused by the pandemic and Increasing disparities in wealth fostered by Fed policies that have subsidized megacorporations on Wall Street at the expense of small businesses on Main Street also divide Americans.  Like racism, greed and disparities in wealth exacerbate polarized partisan politics that threaten the demise of American democracy.  It’s deja vu, all over again.



Notes:


Thomas Jefferson admired the moral teachings of Jesus but expressed contempt for the distortions and misuse of those teachings by Christian religious leaders. Jefferson wrote Henry Fry on June 17, 1804: "I consider the doctrines of Jesus as delivered by himself to contain the outlines of the sublimest morality that has ever been taught; but I hold in the utmost profound detestation and execration the corruptions of it which have been invested by priestcraft and kingcraft, constituting a conspiracy of church and state against the civil and religious liberties of man." Thomas Jefferson, The Jefferson Bible, edited by O. I. A. Roche, Clarkson H. Potter, Inc., New York, 1964, at p 378; see also Jefferson’s letter to John Adams dated October 13, 1813, at pp 825, 826; Jefferson's commentaries are at pp 325-379.  While many Christians considered Jefferson a heretic, Jefferson wrote of himself: “I am a Christian in the only sense in which he [Jesus] wished anyone to be; sincerely attached to his doctrine in preference to all others and ascribing to him every human excellence, believing he never claimed any other.” (p 334)  The Jefferson Bible illustrates the moral dimension of religion and its role in shaping legitimacy in US culture. Jon Meacham affirmed Jefferson’s role in shaping American values that are at the heart of legitimacy in American Gospel, Random House, New York, 2006 (see pp 56-58, 72-77, 80-86, 104, 105, 247-250, 263, 264; reference to Jefferson’s Bible at p 389); see also Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, Random House, New York, 2012, pp 471-473. The scholars of the Jesus Seminar have affirmed Thomas Jefferson as “‘a son of the Enlightenment’ who scrutinized the gospels with a similar intent (of the scholar of the Jesus Seminar) to separate the real teachings of Jesus, the figure of history, from the encrustations of Christrian doctrine. He gathered his findings to The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, Extracted Textually from the Gospels in Greek. Latin, French and English, a little volume that was first published in 1904 and is still in print.  See The Five Gospels, The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus, Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1993, pp 2-3.


The critic of my commentary last week acknowledged that Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence was “light years beyond anything in the world at the time for freedom and protection of basic human rights.”  He was right about that, but wrong about denying the evils of slavery and the hypocrisy of Christians that led to the Civil War.     


Robin Wright has asked, Is America a Myth?  “‘The idea that America has a shared past going back into the colonial period is a myth, said Colin Woodard, the author of Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood. ‘We are very different Americas, each with different origin stories and value sets, many of which are incompatible. They led to a Civil War in the past and are a potentially incendiary force in the future.’  The crisis today reflects the nation’s history. Not much, it turns out, has changed. The cultural divide and cleavages are still deep. Three hundred and thirty million people may identify as Americans, but they define what that means—and what rights and responsibilities are involved—in vastly different ways. The American promise has not delivered for many Blacks, Jews, Latinos, Asian-Americans, myriad immigrant groups, and even some whites as well. Hate crimes—acts of violence against people or property based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or gender identity—are a growing problem. A bipartisan group in the House warned in August that, “as uncertainty rises, we have seen hatred unleashed.’

Wright noted the rise of separatist movements across the U.S. that resemble the secessionist movement in the antebellum South, and cited Richard Kreitner in Break It Up: Secession, Division and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union : ”At different times in America’s history, the Union’s survival was produced as much by “chance and contingency” as by flag-waving and political will. “At nearly every step it required morally indefensible compromises that only pushed problems further into the future. The attempt to reckon with our unjust past has produced more questions—and new divisions—about our future. In Washington, D.C., last week, a group commissioned by the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, recommended, in a report, that her office ask the federal government to “remove, relocate, or contextualize” the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, and statues to Benjamin Franklin and Christopher Columbus, among others. The committee compiled a list of people who should not have public works named after them, including Presidents James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and Woodrow Wilson, the inventor Alexander Graham Bell, and Francis Scott Key, who wrote the national anthem. After a deluge of criticism, Bowser said on Friday that the report was being misinterpreted and that the city would not do anything about the monuments and memorials. But a question remains, not just because we live in the era of Black Lives Matter: What is America about today? And is it any different from its deeply flawed past? 

Kreitner argues that, with its politics irrevocably broken, America is running out of time. The potential for physical and political separation is now real, even though the polarization of America does not have neat geographic borders. No red state is entirely red; no blue state is entirely blue. “The twenty-first century has seen an unmistakable resurgence of the idea of leaving or breaking up the United States—a kaleidoscopic array of separatist movements shaped by the conflicts and divisions of the past but manifested in new and potentially destabilizing ways,” he writes. Unlike in the past, the current separatist impulses have emerged in multiple places at the same time. “Often dismissed as unserious or quixotic, a throwback to the Confederacy, the new secessionism reveals divisions in American life possibly no less intractable than the ones that led to the first Civil War,” Kreitner warns.

In the years to come, the appeal of pulling the plug on the American experiment is likely to grow, even among faithful adherents to the idea of federal power. And, if the Union dissolves again, Kreitner writes, it will not be along a clean line but “everywhere and all at once.” In some ways, the election, now only eight weeks away, will be a temporary relief, at least in ending the current agonizing uncertainty. But it will play only one part in deciding what ultimately will happen to our nation.

 ‘Are we a myth? Well, yes, in the deep sense. Always have been,’ The Yale historian David Blight said. To survive, America must move beyond the myth.” See https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/is-america-a-myth.


Ethnic antagonism, or racism, is the strongest motivating factor in Republican partisan politics, and according to Larry Bartels it has produced anti-democratic tendencies.  “In a January 2020 survey most Republicans agreed that ‘the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.’ More than 40% agreed that “a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.” (In both cases, most of the rest said they were unsure; only one in four or five disagreed.)  ...The strongest predictor by far, for the Republican rank-and-file ...is ethnic antagonism, especially concerns about the political power and claims on government resources of immigrants, African-Americans, and Latinos. The corrosive impact of ethnic antagonism [racism] on Republicans’ commitment to democracy underlines the significance of ethnic conflict in contemporary US politics.” Larry M. Bartels, Ethnic Antagonism erodes Republicans’ Commitment to Democracy, at https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/08/26/2007747117.



Saturday, September 5, 2020

Musings on the Greatest Threat to American Democracy: It's Us

   By Rudy Barnes, Jr.

When I graduated from The Citadel and was commissioned an Army officer I took an oath “to support and defend the Constitution of the U.S. against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”  Democracy made us masters of our own destiny, and we have made a mess of it.  Pogo got it right when he said, We have met the enemy, and it’s us.    


Long before Pogo, Plato and Edmund Burke made the same damning observation about democracy, and George Will recently did the same.  As the world’s most affluent nation, America has burdened its economy with massive deficits, created vast disparities of wealth and corrupted its culture with racism and polarized politics--and we have only ourselves to blame.


America was born as a slave-holding nation of self-proclaimed Christians.  Our Founding Fathers left us a Constitution that provided a libertarian structure for a democratic republic that emphasized freedom and justice; but in the face of slavery a divided church lost its moral compass and left a moral political vacuum in America.  It set the stage for a terrible Civil War.


That war ended slavery, but not racism.  In the 1960s civil rights laws prohibited racial discrimination, and real progress was being made against racism; but the Republican Party exploited racism and elected Donald Trump president in 2016.  With Trump’s emphasis on white supremacy to make America great again, race relations regressed back to the 1950s.


Along the way, a distorted form of Christianity known as the prosperity gospel displaced the altruistic teachings of Jesus in many white churches with the self-centered objectivism of Ayn Rand.  It has since become the religion of an unholy coalition of America’s super-rich on Wall Street and white evangelicals who have supported Trump with a religious zeal.


For Americans to save their democracy from the dustbin of history they need to learn to live by the greatest commandment to love God and their neighbors, including those of other races and religions, as they love themselves.  It’s a moral imperative of faith taken from the Hebrew Bible, taught by Jesus and accepted by Muslim scholars as a common word of faith.


The greatest threat to American democracy is not an external enemy, but us.  To prevent the fabric of democracy from unraveling again, Americans must conform their self-centered, materialistic and racist partisan identity politics to the altruistic moral standards taught by Jesus; and that requires balancing our individual wants and rights with providing for the common good.  


In November, Americans will go to the polls in person or by mail to elect our next president.  We will determine whether America continues to be a nation hopelessly divided by racist “us versus them” partisan politics, or whether we reaffirm America as “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”  The choice is ours--and ours alone.



Notes:


Plato (428-328 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher who gave birth to modern political theory.  Plato defined five political regimes: aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny.  His ideal was an aristocracy ruled by a benevolent “philosopher king,” and he was critical of a democracy since it evolved from an oligarchy “where freedom is the supreme good but freedom is also slavery. In democracy, the lower class grows bigger and bigger. The poor become the winners. People are free to do what they want and live how they want. People can even break the law if they so choose. This appears to be very similar to anarchy.”  In a democracy people are consumed with unnecessary desires that “we can teach ourselves to resist such as the desire for riches. The democratic man takes great interest in all the things he can buy with his money, and is more concerned with his money over how he can help the people. He does whatever he wants whenever he wants to do it. His life has no order or priority.”  In summary, Plato opposed democracy since he believed the majority of people didn’t know what was best for them.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_five_regimes.  Generally, see Wiliam Ebenstein, Great Political Thinkers, Plato to the Present, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, NewYork (1962), pp 1-64. That was a primary text in my political science courses at The Citadel.


Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was a British statesman who reflected on the French Revolution when he cautioned American colonists on the dangers of democracy: “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites…in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is wihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_(comic_strip)thin, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” See  https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/154445-reflections-on-the-revolution-in-france.  See also Wiliam Ebenstein, Great Political Thinkers, Plato to the Present (1962), cited above, at page 472.

Burke “was a leading sceptic with respect to democracy. While admitting that theoretically in some cases it might be desirable, he insisted a democratic government in Britain in his day would not only be inept, but also oppressive. He opposed democracy for three basic reasons. First, government required a degree of intelligence and breadth of knowledge of the sort that occurred rarely among the common people. Second, he thought that if they had the vote, common people had dangerous and angry passions that could be aroused easily by demagogues, fearing that the authoritarian impulses that could be empowered by these passions would undermine cherished traditions and established religion, leading to violence and confiscation of property. Third, Burke warned that democracy would create a tyranny over unpopular minorities, who needed the protection of the upper classes.” See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke#:~:text=Burke%20was%20a%20leading%20sceptic,democracy%20for%20three%20basic%20reasons.


Walt Kelly’s Pogo (1948-1975) confirmed the political philosophy of both Plato and Edmund Burke on democracy, and many of my generation were influenced by Pogo’s astute observations on politics from the prow of his pram in the Okefenokee swamp.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_(comic_strip).


George Will recently opined that America’s democracy is plagued by irresponsible populism and “floundering elites.”  After 245 years, the U.S. “as the world’s oldest constitutional democracy now has many old European anxieties, including elites as inevitable; therefore, so are populist resentments.”  Will  confirmed the shortcomings of democracy by citing Robert Michels (1876-1936), who postulated the “iron law of oligarchy” using “oligarchy” and “aristocracy” interchangeably,  Will then cited Ghia Nodia for the premise that “democracy presupposes an impossibility: ‘the people’ being in charge ...with the masses naturally passive and predisposed to accept decisions made by the few people with the interests and skills to participate directly in politics and governance.  And the principle of representation — the people do not decide issues, they decide who will decide — inevitably opens what Nodia calls a ‘mental and cultural gap between the rulers and the ruled.’ Hence a ‘democratic deficit’ is inherent in democracy.  MIchels  joined Benito Mussolini’s fascist party, for populist reasons he never renounced: A charismatic autocrat can provide “direct” democracy, bypassing the chimera of representation by embodying the will of the people. When Mussolini criticized democracy, he meant the parliamentary sort, not the glorious ‘democratic’ fusing of the leader (Duce, Fuhrer, Mr. “I alone can fix it”) and the led.”

Will then cited Stanford’s Francis Fukuyama, who said that “after the upheavals of 1989-1991, the former ‘captive nations’ embraced the democratic part of liberal democracy, but not necessarily the liberal part. . . . The result was the emergence of illiberal democracy in places such as Hungary and Poland.’ Illiberal democracy is a species of dictatorship. In the United States, illiberal democracy, seeping from campuses, is abetted by a technological disappointment — the failure of the Internet and social media to be instruments of enlightenment.”

Will also cited Martin Gurri who has asserted ‘the information sphere today contains an immense universe of voices interested in talking about ever-fewer subjects.” ...Social media addicts, left and right, ‘stand ferociously against the present as ‘a nightmare of injustice,’ the right glorifying the past’s utterly vanished greatness, the left rejecting the past as a pollutant of the present, and everyone adopting ‘the web’s rhetoric of the rant.’ Today’s arsonists and looters are acting out the protesters’ principles that the nation is founded on genocide and slavery, and is dominated by white supremacists. If so, why not burn it down?  In the current disorders, Gurri says, mayors and governors have succumbed to ‘infantile panic’ ...“Those in charge continue to bleed out authority, and the democratic institutions they represent have begun to totter. Since we, the voters, elevated them to office, the supreme lesson of this troubled moment should probably be how to replace them with competent grown-ups.’  ...Elections produced today’s floundering elites; fresh elections promise an infusion of more of the same.” See  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-is-facing-many-old-european-anxieties/2020/09/01/bf06722a-ec74-11ea-ab4e-581edb849379_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_opinions_pm&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_popns


On October 19, 2016 during my third-party campaign for Congress I described how the election of Donald Trump could (and did) illustrate how people in a democracy can “forge their own shackles.”  The article is as relevant today as it was 4 years ago. Let’s hope this November will not be deja vu all over again.  See    https://www.carolinagatewayonline.com/content/barnes-column-partisan-politics-will-go-back-future-after-election.