The mainstream Dims and Trump-or-none’s just left the building, but maybe the middle will watch and discuss.
This guys mis-perceives some things, but overall is probably not a threat to democracy.
He still leans toward “I’m right - you’re wrong and all fixes should lean my way.” But he at least he has dropped the “you are evil” from the debate.
Law Professor Kermit Roosevelt explained how modern America traces its political sentiments to Lincoln and the Reconstruction era, rather than the Founding Fathers and the Revolution. The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco hosted this event.
www.c-span.org
There is so much to say about this, I don’t know where to begin. Full disclosure, I didn’t listen to the whole thing. I’d much rather be able to read it so I can skip the noise.
First, I absolutely agree that the 14th Amendment changed the constitution in a fundamental way. That isn’t to say the 14th made the 1787 Constitution irrelevant, or the people who crafted it irrelevant in any way. Without the 1787 constitution, there is no 14th amendment, there probably is no United States as we know it.
I also wholeheartedly agree a “national story” is important for a country for the reasons Roosevelt discussed. The civil war, the Reconstruction Amendments, and the Reconstruction era receive short shrift in our national story. For me the most important point of reconstruction was the amnesty and pardons issued to the members of the confederacy. That was a clear signal to all of us that the war was over, slavery was over, and it was time to move forward together. We didn’t do a good job of that, but it’s undeniable that we steadily improved over more than 100 years. Now we are devolving, dismantling and disintegrating that progress. This seems to to be deliberate for petty reasons of power, influence, control and even money. Our national story is disintegrating not because it’s a bad story, it’s disintegrating because some people find purpose in perpetual divisions which a single national story is inapposite.
Today is Lincoln’s birthday. During the Douglas debates Lincoln pointed out that that equality principles of the Declaration of Independence indeed include the negro race. For him, who set in motion the post civil war course for the United States, the DoI was as highly relevant. Lincoln also pointed out that part of equality is equal treatment, not special leniency. Lincoln was concerned about the soft bigotry of low expectations 150 years before Bush coined the phrase. So much of todays politics enshrines an assumed inequality of races.
Lincoln:
“That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge [Douglas] is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent, and I hold if that course of argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this, should be granted, it does not stop with the negro. I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out! Who is so bold as to do it! [Voices—“me” “no one,” &c.] If it is not true let us tear it out! [cries of “no, no,”] let us stick to it then [cheers], let us stand firmly by it then. [Applause.]”
