Tag Archives: democracy

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Monday Musings: Forlorn On The Fourth Of July

We have a fun July 4th celebration in our little town. It’s a university town, and a somewhat affluent one at that, especially when compared with the surrounding communities. And so we attract a lot of visitors. There are games for kids, a fun, somewhat tongue-in-cheek dog show, a parade, lots of food stands, a crafts fair, and, in the evening, a surprisingly good fireworks display over one of the local lakes.

Erin face paintAlex face paintOur girls LOVED Sewanee Fourth of July when they were young. We would give them a bit of cash, help them meet up with friends, and then pretty much say goodbye to them for the day. It’s a small, safe, friendly town, and we never worried about them. They always found us eventually, sunburned and sweaty, their faces covered in face-paint, their pockets stuffed with candy that was thrown to kids by the parade participants. We’d go home, have a nap and some dinner, not that any of us was very hungry, and then, after covering ourselves with bug spray, would make our way to the fireworks venue.

Fond memories.

Nancy and I have been doing July 4th on our own for many years now, since we became empty-nesters. It’s easier in a way, though a bit less fun. The magic of the day has dissipated with the years. We still enjoy seeing people, and we can usually find something good to eat. These days, we tend to stop by a couple of the parties that take place along the parade route, and, once the parade is done, we head home. Some years we go to see the fireworks, some years we don’t.

I will admit that this year my heart isn’t in it. Not the way it used to be. Part of that is personal — those fond memories have thorns these days.

But more than that, I feel less inclined to celebrate America than I used to. I have long found the equating of conservatism with patriotism offensive. I was brought up by liberals, and I raised my kids as a committed progressive. The terminology changed, but the love of country has never wavered. I have a Ph.D. in U.S. history, and while it is impossible to dive into the depths of our nation’s past without seeing its many flaws, it is also impossible to do so without gaining a healthy appreciation for qualities in our national story that are worthy of admiration. Resolve and resilience, boundless ambition and a commitment to human dignity that is often myopic and even hypocritical but also naïvely sincere. Ours is an imperfect but charmingly idealistic vision of government, an experiment in democratic republicanism that has yet to fulfill the dreams of its Founders, but which continues to strive for realization.

All of which makes our current state of political affairs so terrifying. The aforementioned experiment is at risk. If the Presidential election were held today, we would likely elect a man who has shown no compunction at all about placing his personal hunger for power above the national good, a man who has shown utter disregard for the centuries-old norms of our governing system, a man who has been convicted of 34 felonies and accused of dozens more, a man who literally lies about everything, who has made grievance and greed and graft synonymous with his personal brand, and who has declared without shame that he intends to begin his next term in the White House — a sequel to his disastrous, chaotic, hate-filled first term — with a one-day dictatorship. As if this paragon of gluttony will be able to stop after a single day.

Is our incumbent old? Yes. Do his communications skills leave much to be desired? Absolutely. This is why your Democratic friends and neighbors haven’t slept or eaten in days and have the look of caffeine addicts whose coffee machine is on the fritz. But Joseph Biden has been a remarkably effective President when it comes to passing bipartisan legislation. He has overseen an economic recovery that includes the creation of fifteen million new jobs. To be sure, inflation went up on his watch, spurred by supply-chain disruptions that began during the Covid recession of 2020 and worldwide economic dislocations caused by the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. But it has come down steadily since its 2022 peak and is now below 3% annually.

Most of all, though, the President is a decent, honest man, who honors and upholds our nation’s political ideals. He poses no threat to our republic. On the contrary, he is committed to saving our heating planet, improving the lives of those who face discrimination and economic injustice, and restoring a national right to women’s health care access. He has spent his life fighting for social equality. Is he a step slower now? A bit more muddled in his speech? A bit more frail and forgetful? Yes, yes, and yes. But on his worst day, he is better than the lying felon running against him.

I hope desperately that the American people will realize this before it’s too late. I fear they won’t.

I hope your July Fourth is fun and fulfilling.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: Contemplating Our Republic As July 4th Approaches

This is a holiday week and Nancy’s first week as FORMER acting-president of the university. And so I am feeling lazy and rather unmotivated. I can think of lots of stuff to write about, but those thoughts have been slow to coalesce into a coherent post.

I find myself drawn to the idea of commenting on the July 4th holiday. Our nation is two hundred and forty-seven years old and while I’m sure the founders would be heartened, and probably somewhat amazed, that their experiment in representative government has lasted so long, I am also certain they would be troubled by the strength and prevalence of anti-democratic forces in today’s society. Rarely in our history has our republic appeared so frail.

I could go on for pages and pages about the damage the Supreme Court has done to racial progress in this country with its rulings in the Harvard and UNC cases. Affirmative Action, though demonized on the right for decades, was the single most valuable tool institutions of higher education had at their disposal to rectify racial underrepresentation at elite schools caused by historical and systemic socio-economic inequality. Without it, lingering inequities in our society will only get worse. In the name of “leveling the playing field” the conservative majority on the Court has actually allowed existing structural inequalities — better funded schools in White communities; standardized tests that have been shown again and again to favor White students of means; access to tutors, college admission consultants, and other resources that only the wealthy can afford — to be determinative factors in college enrollment.

But I could also go on and on about the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Moore v. Harper case, in which it rejected a fringe conservative interpretation — the so called “independent state legislature” theory — of the Constitution’s mandates regarding the administration of federal elections. Basically, the decision rejects the notion that state legislatures can do anything they wish, without being subject to state judicial overview, with regard to the creation of Congressional maps and the implementation of election lawse. This decision was a victory for democracy and it offered some hope that this Supreme Court conservative majority, while willing to ignore precedent in cases addressing abortion, Affirmative Action, and other long-established principles, is not simply a jurisprudential arm of the Republican National Committee.

I could lament the fact that for four years we allowed our nation to be hijacked by a venal, narcissistic, kleptocratic, authoritarian thug, who very nearly destroyed our system of government.

But he didn’t destroy it. Instead, he was defeated, soundly and legitimately, and his defeat was affirmed by Congress and the courts. Moreover, we can take satisfaction in seeing his legal chickens come home to roost, and I am hopeful that he will spend the bulk of his remaining years fighting off one well-deserved indictment after another.

And so it goes; so it has always been in this country. Dreams of progress are tempered by signs of retrenchment. Frightening assaults on the norms of a democratic society are countered by reassertions of our shared values. Our imperfect union stumbles forward and teeters back, lurching toward an uncertain future. There is an elegant simplicity to the system set up in our Constitution, one for which I gained enormous appreciation as a student of U.S. history. That simplicity, however, masks an unfortunate truth: ours is an inherently conservative system. I don’t mean this in a “progressive-versus-conservative” context, though often the mechanisms of our government do seem to favor political conservatism.

Rather, I mean that our Revolution was essentially a rebellion of the upper middle class. Learned elites threw off a monarchical system that had outgrown its usefulness and replaced it with a system designed to preserve the social order as it was understood and valued at the time, and to slow-walk any possible radical change that might be contemplated in the future. In essence, the founders sought to alter completely America’s governing realities with as little disruption as possible.

And so, in a sense, the system they created is intended to be frustrating to those of us who wish for systemic reform. That stasis, the founders believed, was a reasonable price to pay for stability. One could argue that a more flexible, change-friendly system might NOT have survived the last Administration. On the other hand, such a system might have allowed us to address decades ago problems of racial and economic inequality that have proved historically intractable.

What’s my point?

I’m flattered that you think I have one.

I suppose I am reminded of the Winston Churchill quote: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” It is easy on this Fourth of July to lament all that is wrong with our country. And no doubt there is a lot to lament. But it’s not all terrible, and the alternatives — some of which we glimpsed as possibilities just a few years ago, much to our horror — range from “not ideal either” to utterly unthinkable. All of which leaves me thankful for the republic we have, even as I chafe at the stubborn pace of progress that it allows.

I hope you have a great week. Enjoy your holiday.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Monday Musings: Elections, John Adams, and the Future of Our Republic

Back in September 2020, as we lurched toward the Presidential election, I wrote a piece for this blog on the peaceful transfer of power. In it, I warned of the dangerous path followed by the former inhabitant of the White House, who was already sowing doubts about the integrity of the vote and laying the groundwork for his unsuccessful coup attempt in January 2021.

My warnings were well-founded, of course, but I fear I was terribly naïve about how to combat the threat our former president posed. When I wrote the piece, I believed that once he was defeated and removed from office, his pernicious influence on American politics would fade. I was wrong.

Tomorrow is Election Day, and as of this date, a staggering number of Republican candidates at all levels of government have, like the former guy in 2020 (and 2016), refused to promise that they will honor the voting results in their races. To draw upon a turn of phrase used by President Biden in a speech last week, they have decided that they only love this country and its founding principles when they win.

If you will allow me to slip on my historian’s cap for a moment . . . . The most important date in the history of our republic is not July 4, 1776 or October 19, 1781 (the effective end of the War for Independence) or March 9, 1779 (the date on which our new nation started operating under the authority of the Constitution). To my mind, the most important date in our history is March 4, 1801. That was the day on which President John Adams relinquished power to his political rival, Thomas Jefferson, who had defeated him in the election of 1800.

Here is what I wrote in 2020 about that moment in our history:

This acquiescence to the people’s will, this statement of belief in the greater good, turned the ideal of a democratic republic into reality.

Over the past 220 years, our nation has repeated this ritual literally dozens of times. Democratic-Republicans have given way to Whigs, who have given way to Democrats, who have given way to Republicans, who, in turn, have given way once more to Democrats. And so on. The peaceful transfer of power lies at the very heart of our system of government. Declaring and winning independence was important. Creating a foundational document, flawed though it was, that spelled out how our government would work was crucial.

None of it would have meant a thing, however, if in actual practice America’s election losers refused to accept defeat, to acknowledge the legitimate claim to power of America’s election winners.

It was bad enough that a defeated President, driven by ego and pique and an insatiable appetite for affirmation and power, should imperil this foundational imperative of our system of government. But it is truly chilling to see one of our two major parties mimicking his behavior, adopting his model of petulance and self-interest as an across-the-board election strategy. Make no mistake: The future of our nation is under threat.

Our republic has endured for as long as it has because, with very few exceptions (Rutherford B. Hayes, Richard Nixon, and now Donald Trump), our leaders on both sides of the aisle have chosen to abide by the rules as laid out in the Constitution. Yes, politicians cheat. They wage dirty campaigns. They look for every advantage. This has been true for as long as our nation has existed. In the end, though, they have accepted voters as the final arbiters of their electoral fates. As soon as candidates refuse to do this, they expose the fragility and brittleness of our system. If enough politicians on either end of the political spectrum decide the only legitimate outcome of a race is their own victory, the entire system will collapse. Outcomes matter, of course. But the integrity of the process itself is what preserves democratic institutions. Take away that integrity, leave election outcomes to be determined by who can scream “fraud” loudest and longest, and we are doomed.

This is the future today’s GOP is embracing. They have chosen to place themselves and their party over the will of the people, and if they are rewarded for doing so, the American Experiment is over.

Let me be clear: When elections are close, there are going to be recounts. That is part of the process as well. No one disputes that. (It is worth remembering that in 2020 the Trump Campaign demanded and was granted multiple recounts in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. And while a handful of votes shifted one way or another, not one of these recounts altered the final result.) One can demand a recount and then honor the decision of voters once the process is complete

What we are seeing this year is not the expression of legitimate concerns about close election results. The elections haven’t been held yet. Rather, this is a systematic attempt to sow doubts about the elections ahead of time and thus justify whatever shenanigans they intend to try next. It’s disgusting. It’s immoral and corrupt and corrosive.

There are other issues on voters’ minds this year, obviously. I would argue that the preservation of our republic outweighs all of them. Vote like democracy itself is at stake. Because it is.

Have a good week.