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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
“WHAT CAN THE PRESIDENCY BE AT ITS BEST?”
Introduction:Author offers an interpretation of American history, “What follows is the story of how we have endured moments of madness and injustice giving a chance… of better angels to prevail.”
“To hope rather than to fear”
“We are not enemies but friends… better angels of our nature…” Lincoln 1st Inaugural Address
Author argues that “Extremism, racism, nativism and isolationism driven by fear of the unknown tend to spike in periods of economic and social stress…” Fear creates extremism, change brings fear. “Now in the second decade of the new century, in the presidency of Donald Trump, the alienated are being mobilized…” 5
The author argues this era is not new and it is survivable. “… in the battle between the impulses of good and evil in the American Soul, (good) have prevailed just often enough to keep the national enterprise alive.” Moral leadership prevails but just barely. 6
Best of America is The American Creed according to Myrdal, 1944, “devotion to principles of liberty, self-government, equal opportunity, regardless of race, gender, religion, or origin.”
Schlesinger said, “the genius of America lies in its capacity to forge a single nation from people of diverse racial, religious, ethnic origins… a nation composed of individuals… binds us all.” 6
Theme of Hope vs Fear: The author argues that the “better angels” in our core values we decided to be hopeful or fearful.
He argues that the soul is more than the hopes and fears or our values/creed.
WE can be hopeful like MLK judging the content of our characters vs fear of the KKK, fear of the other.
The SoulAuthor argues the “Soul is the vital center, the core, the heart, the essence of life… Socrates believed the soul was nothing less than animating force of reality.”
Jesus life = the soul
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
“The soul = central and self-evident truth, it makes us, us. “Reasonable beings bound together by a common agreement.”
What do Americans love?
What is the American Soul?”
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
Elements of the American SoulEquality of opportunity, freedom to pursue happiness, fair play, generosity of spirit, rewards that come from hard work, faith in the future, America stands for opportunity, “a just and generous, prosperous system, which opens the way for all.”
Two views of opportunity, 1. Dependent on domination over others or 2. Better to accept than reject…
Light over DarkLight is progress which grows America strong…
Endicott Peabody, FDR’s school master at Groton. “Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising to the heights then, all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization is forever up.” 10
Author argues we have evolved through ignorance, superstition, racism, and sexism, selfishness, greed, We can do it again.” It requires a president with a temperamental disposition to speak to the country’s hopes rather than its fears.”
Our Greatest Leaders/PresidentsHave always pointed to the future, not to a scapegoat or enemy of the people.Truman quote 1948 election“You can’t divide the country up into sections and have one rule for on section and one rule for another, and you can’t encourage people’s prejudices. You have to appeal to people best instincts, not their worst ones. You may win an election or so by doing the other, but it does a lot of harm to the country.” 12Truman to the NAACP, 1947, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, “It is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in the long history our country’s efforts to guarantee freedom and equality of all our citizens…. It is more important today than ever before to insure that all Americans enjoy these rights. When I say all, I mean ALL Americans.”
FDR“The Presidency is not merely an administrative office. That’s the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership. All our great presidents were leaders of thought at time when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified.”
Author argues: Truman, FDR, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, TR, Wilson, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, RR all understood the Presidency was about moral and cultural power.
JFK, “For only the President represents the national interest and upon him alone converge all the needs and aspirations of all parts of the country…” 13
Author argues, “We are more likely to choose the right path when we are encouraged to do so from the very top.” 13
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
Woodrow Wilson, the President is at “the front of our government where our own thoughts and the attention of men everywhere is centered upon him.”
“The country has come to look to the White House for a steadying hand in word and in deed in uneasy times.”
John Adams said, the people daily think about the Presidency, his character, his actions, his moral support… “The people ought to consider the President’s office as the indispensable guardian of their rights. The people cannot be too careful in the choice of their President.” 13
Eleanor Roosevelt, “We make our own history.” “it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.” 14
MLK, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
Characteristics of HOPEOpposite of fear is hopeDefinition of hope: “The expectation of good fortune not only for ourselves but for the group to which we belong.” 16Optimism, feelings of wellbeing, growth, looking forward
Fear or hope is not dependent on religion, religion can be interpreted in either fashion.Founders anticipated problems and created a system that could be changed and modified.
Chapter 1 “Confidence of the Whole People”Author reviews early history of the New World. Setting a contextGod and GoldJohn WinthropSlaveryIndians/Trail of TearsGeographyWhite male opportunities in the New NationLincoln as postmaster of Salem, IL“I am living witness that anyone of your children may look to come here as my father’s child has.” 24Life and politics = presidency and people = power and freedom
Question: WHAT CAN THE PRESIDENCY BE AT ITS BEST?
How should the people understand their own role?
Review of the Constitutional ConventionWashington the articles of Confederation, “The country very fast is verging on anarchy and confusion!” 25 (Shays Rebellion)
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
Author discussing the attributes of Presidency.Presidency brings stabilityThomas Paine in Common Sense said, “The Law aught to be king and no other.”
Problem of Central authority will be a significant issue, again the Americans were wary of too much power by the executive.Question: What is the nature of the new Executive? (constitution) 25
Term President was suggested by Paine.Discussion of Presidency at conventionHamilton said pres for life.Others called for the Presidency to be like a parliamentary system.Presidency was open to interpretation in the final documentThere were no guaranteesThe presidency was about experimentation
Author argues, President has immense power and influence on attitudes of the people.“He can force upon its attention questions which congress maybe neglecting.” 27
Author, “In a twenty-first century hour when the presidency has more in common with reality television or professional wrestling. It’s useful to recall how the most consequential of our past presidents have unified and inspired with conscious dignity and conscientious efficiency.”
Harry Truman, “Every hope and every fear of his fellow citizens, almost every aspect of their wealth and activity, falls within the scope of his concern- indeed, within the scope of his duty. Only a man who has held the office can really appreciate that.”
LBJ recalled, “I knew that, as President and as a man, I would use every ounce of strength I possessed to gain justice for the black American. My strength as President was then tenuous I had no strong mandate from the people, I had not been elected to that office. But I recognized that the moral force of the Presidency is often stronger than the political force. I knew the President can appeal to the best in our people or the worst, he can call for action or live with inaction.”
Author says, “To hear such voices is to be reminded of what we have lost, but also what can one day be recaptured.” 27
Topics:Federalists Papers and the Presidency need for check and balance on president Jefferson Quotation writing in 1810: “In a government like ours it is the duty of the Chief-magistrate, in order to enable himself to do all the good which his station requires, to endeavor, by all honorable means, to unite in himself the confidence of the whole people.” 28
28-30 Jackson and Nullification CrisisAuthor argues even though Jackson was tremendously flawed, slaver, white supremacist, he endeavored to preserve the union, with the highest morality.
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
Author, “Jackson spoke passionately of the needs of “the humble members of society- the farmers, mechanics, and laborers” and made the case for popular politics and more democratic understanding of power. He did so in part because he had begun life as one of the “humble” class. A self-made man who had risen to the highest levels of slave-holding society, he wanted to open the doors of opportunity for men like him. Today we find many of his views morally shortsighted, but in his time he was a figure of democratic aspiration.” 29
Jackson Proclamation:Jackson “… with the feelings of a father” when he argued that nullification was incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.”
Jackson in a letter “The President is the direct representative of the American people.”About Nullification:Jackson said, “If I can judge from the signs of the times, nullificationa dn seccession, or, in the language of truth, disunion, is gaining strength… We must be prepared to act with promptness and crush the monster in its cradle before it matures to manhood.”
Calhoun about Jackson, “Infatuated man!.. Blinded by ambition- intoxicated by flattery and vanity! Who, that is the least acquainted with the human heart; who, that is conversant with the page of history, does not see, under all this, the workings of a dark, lawless, and insatiable ambition.” 30 Calhoun said on the floor of the Senate
“Contemplate the condition of that country of which you still form an important part; consider its government uniting in one bond of common interest and general protection so many different States-giving to all their inhabitants the proud title of AMERICAN CITIZEN-protecting their commerce-securing their literature and arts-facilitating their intercommunication--defending their frontiers-and making their name respected in the remotest parts of the earth! Consider the extent of its territory its increasing and happy population, its advance in arts, which render life agreeable, and the sciences which elevate the mind! See education spreading the lights of religion, morality, and general information into every cottage in this wide extent of our Territories and States! Behold it as the asylum where the wretched and the oppressed find a refuge and support! Look on this picture of happiness and honor, and say, WE TOO, ARE CITIZENS OF AMERICA-“ Jackson in Proclamation to the People of South Carolina
Author: “Jackson had spoken in the vernacular of hope and of unity to combat fear and disunion. To him it was a father’s role and a president’s.” 31
Discussion of Lincoln and the Civil WarGettysburg Address, focused meaning of the war to preserving the nation, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal… that that nation shall have a new birth of freedom…”Second Inaugural, Author argues “calling on our better angels.” He said:“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Fredrick Douglas in commemorating a memorial to Lincoln recorded his view that Lincoln was a white supremacist but also tried to unite the Americans. “In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man.” 33
Douglas argued that Lincoln was imperfect, but he had values that lead the country for the good of the whole: “His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin, and second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery…. The trust that Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was surprising and grand, but it was also enlightened and well founded.” 35
Then on to TR 35The “Bully Pulpit”TR was a Progressive and believed in the power of the Presidency in leading the country. “TR had just finished a paragraph of a distinctly ethical character when he suddenly stopped and swung in in his swivel chair and said, “I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit!” 35
TR liked to think of his typical American:“He worked hard, he had been a good husband and father, He brought up his boys and girls to work. He did not wish to do injustice to anyone else, but he wanted justice done to himself and to others like him and I was bound to secure justice for him if it lay in my power to do so.” 36Author argues, TR believed in active/leading President. “My belief was that it was only his right but his duty to do anything that the needs of the nation demanded unless such action was forbidden by the constitution or by the laws.” 36
Woodrow Wilson, commented on the nature of the constitution, “The government of the United States has had a vital and normal organic growth and has proved itself eminently adapted to express the changing temper and purposes of the American people from age to age.Wilson discussed the ideal role of the Presidency, “He is the representative of the whole people. When he speaks in his true character he speaks for no special interest.”
Temperament discussion:The author argues, “character of the President is critical and character manifests in temperament… It’s about intuition and impression.”Definition on of Temperament, Latin, “Due Mixture”
FDR quote about him by SCJOTUS Oliver Wendell Holms, “a second class intellect, but a first class temperament!”FDR had a great Ego, Truman said, “perhaps his only flaw.”“FDR had gifts of self-knowledge and compassion for the plight of others… he also believed in careful cultivation of public opinion… but also understood less was sometimes more.” Meaning too much of the president would drown out the message, people would get used to it and tired of it.” “I know… that the public psychology and … individual psychology cannot… be attuned for long periods of time to constant repetition of the highest notes in the scale.” He figured out the public gets exhausted and habituated to the message.
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
“People tire of seeing the same name day after day in the important headlines fo the papers, and the same voice night after night…”Author said, “A leader’s balancing act, then, was the education and the shaping of public opinion without becoming overly familiar or exhausting.”38
Agincourt reference
Eisenhower, said, “I happen to know a little bit about leadership… and I tell you this: you do not lead by hitting people over the head… leadership is persuasion- and conciliation- and education and patience. It’s long, slow, tough work. That’s the only kind of leadership I know or believe…” 39
TR letter about his first year, Author see that TR struggled with, “Embrace compromise, seek balance, and strive to serve the national interest…”
The central question for voters, then is discerning the nature of the man or woman who will be standing alone at what Kennedy described as the “vital center of action.”For as the Greeks knew, character is destiny.”40
The character of a country… Philosophical Elements of Happiness, Aristotle said, Eudaimonia, “The good of the whole”Adams “Happiness of society is the end of government.” Then to the Greeks, Hesiod, “The gods did not reveal to men all things in the beginning…” Xenophanes, “But men through their own search find in the course of time that which is better.” Really meaning that in due time things change for the better- evolve in progress
Saint Augustine, life is a pilgrimage from darkness to light. Enlightenment Thinkers “Hope that progress would be possible through inquiry, argument, agitation and finally reform.” 42
Turgot (enlightenment thinker) doctrine of progress, “The whole human race, through alternate periods of rest and unrest of weal and woe goes on advancing although at a slow pace towards greater perfection. Like the ebb an flow of the tide, power passes from one nation to another, and, within the same nation, from the princes to the multitude and from the multitude to the princes. As the balance shifts, everything gradually gets nearer and nearer to an equilibrium, and in the course of time takes on a more settled and peaceful aspect… America is the hope of the human race…” 42
America was the home of individual conscience and equality.” This is human progress.
Adam Smith, said, “Everyman, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man… by pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. ” 43Implication we all do better when we all do better.
Author argues “Progress in America does not usually begin at the top and among the few, but from the bottom and among the many.”
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
Progress is best when…”voices carry the farthest when they call for fairness, not favors; for simple justice, not undue advantage.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1854 “We ask for all that you have asked for yourselves in the progress of your development, since the Mayflower cast anchor beside Plymouth Rock; and simply on the ground that the rights of every human being are the same and identical.”
Fredrick Douglas, “If black men have no rights in the eyes of white men, of course the whites can have none in the eyes of the blacks. The result is a war of races, and the annihilation of all proper human relations.”
Author argues, “The work of reformers – long, hard, almost unimaginably difficult work- can lead to progress and a broader understanding of who is included in the phrase, “We the people”…
LBJ references fairness, at centennial of Gettysburg, 1963, speech, “One hundred years ago, the slave was freed… One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin. The Negro today asks justice. We do not answer him- we do not answer those who lie beneath this soil- when we reply to the Negro by asking patience. Unless we are willing to yield up our destiny pf greatness among civilizations of history, Americans – white and Negro together must be about the business of resolving the challenge that confronts us now. Our nation found its soul of honor on these fields of Gettysburg one hundred years ago. We must not lose that soul in dishonor now that on the fields of hate.”
Chapter 2 “The Long Shadow of Appomattox: the Lost Cause, the Ku Klux Klan, and Reconstruction” April 9, 1865, . Lee surrendered to Grant. Lee “Impeccable gray dress uniform, red sash;Grant in a private’s blouse muddied trousers.Lee said, “But it is our duty to live, What will become of the women and children of the South if we are not here to protect them?”Lee, “I suppose General Grant that the object of our present meeting is fully understood. I asked to see you to ascertain upon what terms you should receive the surrender of my army.” 52
Author says the Civil War was only a chapter in the perennial contest between right and wrong in the nation’s soul.” Meaning Slavery was a part of a larger set of values?Author is arguing, “The new birth of freedom was delayed by decisions made after Lincoln’s death.Southern whites believed their cause was righteous. States rights not slavery led to war.Post bellum struggle was for( meant) white supremacy.Why were whites so discontent?The Lost cause Seward called it the “irrepressible conflict.”Civil War was about slavery.
“Southerners Sought to diminish the role of slavery in bringing about the clash of arms.”
Jefferson Davis in memoir, “War was about the inalienable right of a people to change their government… to withdraw form a union tino which they had, as sovereign communities voluntarily entered… African servitude was in wise the cause…”
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
(not accurate)Author argues, REALLY it was slavery and economic/Social aspects
Alexander Stephan’s, “Cornerstone Speech” 1861, before Sumpter, Savannah GA,The Confederacy’s, foundations are laid, its cornerstone rest upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man;that slavery – subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first in history of the world, based upon this great physical philosophical and moral truth.” 54
South Carolina, “Too Small for a republic, but too large for an insane asylum.”
Meanwhile, Abe Lincoln brought a moral dimension.Restrict the expansion of slavery. “If slavery is not wrong nothing is wrong nothing is wrong…” “Slavery is a monstrous injustice”
Peoria: 1854“Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence… harmonize with it… If we drop this we shall not only have saved the union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and keep it forever worthy of the saving.” 55
See Quote about Lincoln views on slavery- race issueEquality is so complicatedLots of variables during war time56 Summary of Emancipation Proclamation process + Lincoln thinking.1st Sept 22, 1862 After Antietam Went into effect, January 1, 1863
Lincoln didn’t’ want expansion at all costsVery calculating during war strategicPracticalEmancipation
1. Morally wrong2. Militarily wise3. Political gain for northern GOP abolitionist strength
Problem with racism, Lincoln Quote about preserving union and maybe leaving slavery in place. “if I could free no slaves… some slaves, all slaves to preserve the union I would.”“I intent no modifications of my oft expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.” 56Then surrender, What now?Lincoln found Reconstruction would be difficult and controversy.
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
Battle Hymn of the Republic“As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on.”
The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates by Edward Alfred PollardCSA Journo writing 1866Lost Cause post war Explained the meaning of the war.See p59 Pollard’s The Lost Cause, was a defiant Southern radical viewAuthor argues, “It was a bold call to fight on in face of loss. The war Pollarded wrote, “… did not decide negro equality, it did not decide negro suffrage… these things which the war did not decide, the Southern people will cling to, still claim, and still assert them in their rights and views.”
The Lost Cause Regained 1868Pollard’s second bookMessage: The true cause of war was not lost. The cause can be regained.
Author says, “the question was no longer slavery, but white supremacy which Pollard described as the “True cause of the war…” and true hope for the South.”Really about a cultural underpinning and support for white supremacy, refined and reinforced by religion.Pollard wrote, the South, “Mus wear a crown of thorns before she can assume that of victory.”States and Southern way of life will rise again.
Author argues, CSA General Jubal Early influenced post war memory. 60President of the Southern Historical SocietyHelped propel Lee to an extreme place of honor and virtue, “by casting Lee as a model of virtue who only reluctantly took up arms to defend his beloved Virginia and who sought reconciliation after the war. Early… gave the Lost Cause narrative the greatest of heroes.” 60
Frederick Douglas commented at death of Lee, “It would seem from this that the soldier who kills the most men in battle, even in a bad cause, is the greatest Christian, and entitled to the highest place in heaven.” 60
Author, argues that the narrative of the Lost Cause, was used to rationalize the defeat of the South. “It gave Southerners a way both to think about the past and to act in the present. They had resisted Northern force in battle; now they would defy Northern authority in peace, fighting Pollard’s “war of Ideas.” 61 discussion of origins of the KKK and Nathan Bedford Forrest’s admission to the title of “Grand Wizard of the Invisible Empire”Southern culture would hold the explanation that their cause was noble and that blacks were inferior. Pollard would fight the war for the hearts and mind of the South. Pollard said, “we have taken up new hopes, new arms, new methods.”Vigilante violence, terror attacks against African Americans, Ku Klux Klan created. 1866Goals to undermine “the Scalawag-Carpetbagger regime” and terrorize Freedmen”
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
Andrew Johnson, (DEM) VP for Lincoln then his successor as PresidentResisted Republican Reconstruction efforts to reform the South and protect African American rights.Johnson, supported the white supremacist South, “White men alone must manage the South… No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands, on the contrary, whenever they have been left to their own devices they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism.” 63Johnson resisted Radical ReconstructionVetoed 1866 Civil Rights Bill “The distinction of race and color is by the bill made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race.” 63 (Johnson Veto Message) Vetoed Freedman’s Bureau Bill
64 Author is suggesting that Andrew Johnson acted in irrational and self-pitying ways similar to D.TRUMPAccording to author, Johnson, “Resentful and impassioned, Johnson (made claims) … that his opponents were considering having him assassinated. Rather than offering reassurance to an anxious public, then, Johnson chose to foment chaos and promulgate fears of conspiracy. “If my blood is to be shed because I vindicate the Union and the preservation of this government in its original purity and character, let it be shed; let an altar to the Union be erected, and then, if it is necessary, to take me and lay me upon it, and the blood that now warms and animates my existence shall be poured out as a fit libation to the Union of these states.”
GrantNortherners were racist too. Southerners were bitter and would not reconcile attitudes about the war.The 15th Amendment- ratified WED, March 30, 1870#1 thing granted helped achieve, he estimated “A measure of grander importance than any other act of the kind…” “Constitutes the most important event that has occurred since the nation came life.”Meanwhile the KKK was terrorizing blacks in the South, so the Congress followed up with the Enforcement ActsEnforcement Act, 1 of 3 Federal laws that crack down on the KKK.
Senator Sherman, wanted to crush the KKK.Grant supported:Suspension of Habeus CorpusDeployed the MilitaryAnti-Terrorist Was successful in limiting the “Klan”
Grant’s Attorney General: “I feel greatly saddened by this business. It has revealed a perversion of moral sentiment amount the Southern Whites which bodes ill to that part of the country for this generation.” 66
Compromise of 1877Election of 1866, brought Reconstruction to and end
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
Hayes worried about a Democrat presidential victory, “ I don’t care for myself and the party, yes and the country too can stand it, but I do care for the poor colored men of the South… The result of a Democratic presidency will be that the Southern people will practically treat the constitutional amendments as nullities and then the colored man’s fate will be worse than when he was in slavery.” 67 EMPTY WORDS, that’s exactly what happened with a GOP victory.Hayes ended up making the devil’s bargain… power in exchange for political peace… The South was now “let alone policy” which resulted in White Supremacy.Post 1877African American said, “The whole South, every state in the South had got into the hands of the very mend who held us as slaves.”Violence against blacks became routine. 68Negroe murder was common place used for terror purposes.White Supremacist in South Carolina, “The purpose of our visit… was to strike terror, and the next morning when the Negroes who had fled to the swamp returned to the town, the ghastly sight of seven dead Negroes lying stark and stiff certainly had its effect.” 68
Jim Crow LawsIn the South “Black voters were systematically disenfranchised. The North, meanwhile had its own pattern of dejure and defacto segregation.”
Plessy v. Ferguson 1896“Separate but equal”Dissenting opinion “The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country and so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and in power… But in view of constitution, in the eye of the law there is in this country no superior dominant, ruling class of citizens, there is not castes here.” 68 (This is total fantasy.)Author, “Whites reigned supreme. Within about 3 decades… angry and alienated Southern whites… successfully used terror and political control to create a post bellum world of American Apartheid.”
“Many white Americans had feared a post slavery society in which emancipation might lead to equality and they had successfully ensured that no such thing should come to pass. North or South, lynching, church burnings, and the denial of access to equal education and to the ballot box were the order of the decades…” 69
In the United States, Blacks held an inferior status Political, Economic, Social, cultural until when?
Chapter 3 “With Soul of Flame and Temper of Steel: “The Melting Pot, TR, His “Bully Pulpit” and the Progressive Promise”Jane Addams quote, “A great party has pledges itself to the protection of children, to the care of the aged, to the relief of overworked girls, to the safeguarding of burdened men.” (1912 Speech seconding of nomination of TR to Progressive Party)
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
The “Melting Pot”Comes from a play by Zangwill, TR saw the play and was very impressed.Story of a Jewish immigrant coming to NYC“America, God’s crucible, the great melting pot, where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming.”
Zangwill believed, “That in the crucible of love the most violent antithesis of the past may be fused into a higher unity.”
TR’s early life page 75-77Author argues, “Born to great privilege he adopted the Progressive passion for reform that grew out of revulsion at the capitalistic excesses of an industrializing America.” 78
TR said, Malefactors of great wealth… Argued that the Jeffersonian rights in the Declaration of Independence included, “the rights of the worker to a living wage, to reasonable hours of labor, to decent working and living conditions, and to freedom of thought and speech and industrial representation- in short… in return for his arduous toil, to a worthy and decent life according to American standards… progress results not from the crowding out of the lower classes by the upper, but on the contrary from the steady rise of the lower classes to the level of the upper.” 78
1886, TR fourth of July address in the Dakotas:Argues that prosperity should not be gained by expending morality.“Like all Americans I like big wheat fields, railroads, herds of cattle, too, big factories, steamboats… But we must keep steadily in mind that no people were ever yet benefitted by riches if their prosperity corrupted their virtue.” 79
TR had a strong conviction to help the poor and persecuted.Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives TR was profoundly moved by RiisTR, said it “was an enlightenment and an inspiration.”
Riis wrote, “in the Hebrew quarter… the whir of a thousand sewing machines, worked at high pressure from earliest dawn till mind and muscle give out together. Every member of the family, from the youngest to the oldest, bears a hand, shut in the qualmy rooms, where the meals are cooked and clothing washed and dried besides, the live-long day. It is not unusual to find a dozen persons- men, women, and children- at work in a single small room.” 80
TR as he is working in the Police Commission, wrote to Riis, “I have read your book and have come to help.”Author argues TR crusaded for reform: “TR would fight against corrupt political machines politics, against great business monopolies, and against abysmal working conditions. He would crusade… for conservation of natural resources, for government regulation of railroads, for food safety, for women’s suffrage, and for political reform.” 80
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
TR believed the righteous government leaders should have the plight of the common man in mind.TR said, “The nation and Government within the range of fair play and a just administration of the law, must inevitably sympathize with the men who have nothing who have nothing but their wages, with the men who are struggling for a decent life as opposed to men, however honorable, who are merely fighting for larger profits and autocratic control of big business.”
Nativism:George Washington said, “The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions.” 82
Immigration hostility is very common in American history… Alien Sedition Acts“No Irish Need Apply”Chinese Exclusion Act
TR was more liberal in his attitudes, however he believed immigrants need to become American, and he supported the White Man’s Burden concept.
Kipling’s, White Man’s Burden, was written in response to the American control of the Philippines.
TR said, “Americanism… We freely extend the hand of welcome and good fellowship to every man no matter his creed or birthplace, who comes here honestly intent on becoming a good United States citizen like the rest of us.” “Americanism is a question of spirit, conviction, and purpose not of creed or birthplace. The politician who bids for Irish or Germans, is despicable, for all citizens of this commonwealth should vote solely as Americans; but he is not a whit less despicable than the voter who votes against a good American, merely because that American happens to have been born in Ireland or Germany…. A Scandinavian, a German, or to stand on exactly the same footing as any native-born citizen in the land, and is just as much entitled to the friendship and support, social and political, of his neighbors.”Booker T. Washington, Former slave, founder of the Tuskegee Institute, really the spokesman for African Americans at the turn of the century. Was invited to the White House for dinner, October 16, 1901, and caused a uproar in the South.Southern Newspapers reacted, “Memphis Commercial… “President Roosevelt has committed a blunder that is worse than a crime, and no attornment or future or future act of his can remove the self-imprinted stigma.”“Alabama’s Geneva Reaper… Poor Roosevelt! He might now just as well sleep with Booker Washington, for the scent of that coon will follow him to the grave as far as the South is concerned.” 87
TR responded by thinking about the plight of Blacks in America. “I have not been able to think out any solution to the terrible problem offered by the presence of the Negroe on this continent, but one thing I am sure… the only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man, giving him no more and no less than he shows himself worthy to have.” 88
TR supported federal jobs for blacks.
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“We of to-day, in dealing with all our fellow-citizens, white or colored, North or South, should strive to show just the qualities that Lincoln showed- his steadfastness in striving after the right, and his infinite patience and forbearance with those who saw the right less clearly than he did;
TR on the Civil War, “Federal and Confederate troops fought with equal bravery and with equal sincerity of conviction, each striving for the light as it was given to see the light; though it is now clear to all that the triumph of the cause of freedom and of the Union was essential to the welfare of mankind. Our effort should be to secure to each man, whatever his color, equality of opportunity, equality of treatment before the law… every generous impulse in us revolts at the thought of thrusting down instead of helping up such a man. To deny any man the fair treatment granted to others no better than he is to commit a wrong upon him- a wrong sure to react in the long run upon those guilty of such denial. The only safe principle upon which Americans can act is that of “all men up,” not that of some men down.” 90
TR believed in the progress of American development. Race would improve over time….
Jane AddamsHull House fame, Social Worker/Settlement house workerReform advocate, women’s suffrage, civil rights, child labor,
TR shared her ideals, “Justice among the nations of mankind, and the uplifting of humanity, can be brought about only by those strong and daring men who with wisdom love peace, but who love righteousness more than peace. There must be the keenest sense of duty, and with it must go the joy of living, there must be shame at the thought of shirking the hard work of the world.” The Progressive Party Platform“The conscience of the people in a time of grave national problems, has called into being a new party, born of the nation’s sense of justice.”They fought for women’s rights.Jane Addams, “A great party has pledged itself to the protection of children, to the care of the aged, to the relief of overworked girls, to the safeguarding of burdened men… Committed to these humane undertakings, it si inevitable that such a party should appeal to women, should seek to draw upon the great reservoir of their moral energy, so long undesired and unutilized in practical politics… juster social conditions…” 93
TR said, “WE fight in honorable fashion for the good of mankind; fearless of the future; unheeding of our individual fates; with unflinching hearts and undimmed eyes, we stand at Armageddon and we battle for the lord!” 91
Chapter 4 “A New and Good Thing in the World: Triumph of women’s Suffrage, the Red Scare, and New Klan”
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Governor of Georgia, 1924 to “Second Imperial Klonvokation” Klan Meeting “I would build a wall of steel, a wall as high as Heaven, against the admission of a single one of those Southern Europeans who never thought the thoughts or spoke the language of a democracy in their lives.”
American Women’s Suffrage Movement:Woodrow WilsonNot an early support of women’s suffrage, but changes in 1918, to support it.“Democracy means that women play their part in affairs alongside men and upon an equal footing with them… Without their counselling’s we shall be only half wise.” 100
See page 100 description of suffrage parade/protest in Wash D.C. “The demonstration that day was enormous- and chaotic. Angry men taunted the marchers and tried to break their ranks. The suffragists, “practically fought their way foot by foot up Pennsylvania Avenue, through a surging throng that completely defied Washington police.”
Generations of struggle70 years after Seneca Falls Convention 1848Marches, rallies, vigils, hunger strikes, active protests, including face to face challenges to law makers
Abigail Adams1776, “I long to hear that you have declared an independency- and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors… Do not put such unlimited power in the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.” 101-02
Seneca Falls 1848Elizabeth Cady Stanton/Lucretia Mott/Susan B. AnthonyDeclaration of Sentiments “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.”
Susan B. Anthony “It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people-women as well as men.” 1021873, arguing for women’s equality in law.
Alice PaulBorn 1885, to New Jersey Quaker familyWas influenced by the British suffragist movement of Emmeline Pankhurst
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“the essence of the campaign of the suffragettes is opposition to the government.”Focused on passage of the 19th Amendment “Used passive resistance and civil disobedience in a direct confrontation with presidential authority”
Carrie Chapman CattSuffrage activist
19th Amendment Ratified, August 18, 1920Wilson said, “… to say to my fellow citizens that I deem it one of the greatest honors of my life that this great event, the ratifications of this amendment, should have occurred during the period of my administration. Nothing has given me more pleasure than the privilege that has been mine to do what I could to advance the cause of ratification and to hasten the day when the womanhood of America would be recognized by the nation on the equal footing of citizenship that it deserves.” 103
Author argues, the women’s suffrage movement is one of the examples of the battle between hope and fear, “The era of the suffrage triumph… was also the age of segregation, of the suppression of free speech in war time, of the Red Scare of 1919-1920, and of the birth of a new Klu Klux Klan. The story of America is one of slow, often unsteady steps forward.” 103He means politics is uneven in its progress.
NAACP 1909 establishedNational Association for the Advancement of Colored PeoplePrecursor was the Niagara Movement, “We refuse to allow the impression to remain that the Negro-American assents to inferiority, is submissive under oppression and apologetic before insults.” Blacks would arguing for dignity of treatment.
Methods of NAACPReports, letters, and mass meetings… NAACP presented the moral case and protests and focus of using the Courts to fight segregation and discrimination.Direct ActionNon-violent civil disobedience
Woodrow WilsonMeeting in White House NAACP representativesWEB DuBois and William Monroe TrotterSee page 104-106 for quotes and narrative.Summary, Trotter challenged WW on civil rights for blacks. Trotter was visibly angry and aggressive, WW kicked him out of the Oval Office and referred to him as “That unspeakable fellow”
Wilson’s View of RaceFrom the South, despising abolitionists and believed Reconstruction was unjust, supported Jim Crow segregation.Wilson had Neanderthal views of blacks form a 1901 Atlantic Monthly article
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“The freed slaves of the South, had been excited by a freedom they did not understand, exalted by false hopes; bewildered and without leaders, and yet insolent and aggressive; sick of work, covetous of pleasure- a host of dusky children untimely put out of school.” 106
New KKK 1915Thomas W. Dixon, was an author who wrote a series of novels popular and romantic view of KKK, around 1902 .The Leopard’s Spots: A Romance of the White Man’s Burden 1865-1900 (1902)The Klansman: An Historical Romance of the Klu Klux Klan (1905) Later made into Movie by DW Griffith, Birth of a Nation (1914) (known for it’s celebration of white supremacy) (was shown at the White House)The Traitor: A Story of the Fall of the Invisible Empire (1907)
Dixon became popular and toured lecturing in the North, “My object is to teach the north, the young north, what it has never known- the awful suffering of the white man during the dreadful reconstruction period… the white man must shall be supreme.” 107
Wilson quote early in his career, pro KKK, “The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self preservation… until at last there had sprung into existence a great Klu Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South to protect the Southern country.” 108
Wilson knew Dixon at John Hopkins…
Creation of the New Klan, was November 25, 1915, at Stone Mountain, GA, by a leader William J. Simmons, a preacher from Alabama. He claimed his father had been a Klan member in 1860s.
United Daughters of the Confederacy sponsored the sculpting of the Mount Rushmore for the Confederacy, Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson…
By 1924, Every state in the union had a Klan presence, Indiana, Oregon, Colorado, Kansas…Red Scare Fear of AnarchistsFear of immigrantsFear of communismNativismHatred of BlacksHatred of CatholicsHatred of Jewsall contributed to the growth of the New Klan.
Klansmen Held:11 Governorships16 Senators75 Congressmen in 1923 (111)
Limits of Freedom of Speech (111)
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1917 Wilson restricted freedom of expression through the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, which criminalized dissent in wartime”
Wilson targeted the IWW
Sedition Act“Illegal to utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language about the form of government or the US constitution… or military or naval forces…”
Postmaster General Burleson enforced by Censoring the Mail.
Eugene Debs 112Sunday June 16, 1918Anti-war speech, Debs argued the Great War was being fought to sustain capitalistic hegemony and imperialism. “And here let me emphasize the fact and it cannot be repeated too often that the working class who fought all the battles, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace,… It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace.” 112He was arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced to 10yrs in prison.Debs will later be pardoned by Warren G. Harding.
Red ScareWed, June 2, 1919 A bomb exploded at A. Mitchel Palmer (Attorney General for Wilson) home in Washington D.C.FDR was Assistant Secretary of Navy and Palmer’s neighbor
Attitude of Palmer“My information showed that communism in this country was an organization of thousands of aliens… direct allies of Trotsky, aliens of the same misshapen caste of mind and indecencies of character.” 113January 1920 began the Palmer Raids
The Culture of US was impacted by extreme nationalism and intolerance of communism.“100 percent Americanism… Patriotic societies discovered they could defeat whatever they wanted to defeat by tarring it conspicuously with the Bolshevist brush. Big navy men, believed in compulsory military service, drys, anti-cigarette campaigns, anti-evolution fundamentalists, defenders of the moral order, book censors, Jew haters, Negro haters, land lords, manufacturers, utility managers, upholders of every sort of cause, good, bad and indifferent, all wrapped themselves in old glory and the mantle of the founding fathers and allied their opponents with Lenin.” Journalist commentary 1920s
There was massive social pressure for conformity and Americanism
Palmer wanted to be president and the raids occurred after Wilson’s stroke October 1919, Palmer had a free hand.
Author argues the hysteria created by Bombing and Palmer, raids + public, fear of Bolshevism, eventually resulted in repression both politically and public policy.
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Palmer Raids arrested and deported thousands. Anti-immigrant feeling increasedLast straw NY state assembly banned 5 socialist party members duly elected, and were greatly criticized.
George Bernard Shaw“Americans are savages still; that the primitive opinion is a matter of course.”
Charles Evan Hughes“Is it not clear that the government cannot be saved at the cost of its own principles.” 116
Author argues that Americans figured out the exaggerated fear and hypocrisy of repression. “Citizens could now see their own exaggerated fears mirrored in those of the NY State Legislature and the reflection appeared ridiculous.” 116
Blaming the feared “other” communists, blacks, immigrants…WEB DuBoisSummed it up, “In 1918, in order to win the war, we had to make Germans into Huns, In order to win, the South had to make Negroes into thieves, monsters and idiots. Tomorrow, we must make Latins, South Eastern Europeans, Turks and other Asiatics into actual lesser breeds without law.” 117
“How is it that men who want certain things done by brute force can so often depend upon the Mob?” Watch out for leaders who push the mob to do things “that men are afraid or ashamed to do openly and by day, they accomplish secretly, masked, and at night.” 258
Wealthy whites found Ideas in author Lothrop Stoddard’s book, “The Threat Against White World Supremacy”1892 Anti-Immigrant Poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich“Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,And through them presses a wild motley throng-Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes,Featureless figures of the Hoang-hoMalayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt, and Slav,Flying the old World’s poverty and scorn;These bring with them unknown gods and rites,-Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws. In street and alley what strange tongues are loud,Accents of menace alien to our air, Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew!
Oh Liberty, white Goddess is it wellTo leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast…Stay those who to thy sacred portals come To waste the gifts of freedom. Have a care… 118
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1883 Emma Lazarus Poem, to raise funds for statue of liberty:Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,With conquering limbs astride from land to land;Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall standA mighty woman with a torch, whose flameIs the imprisoned lightning, and her nameMother of Exiles. From her beacon-handGlows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes commandThe air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries sheWith silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
P118 KLAN DiscussionThe Klan Appealed to old stock Americans.Hiram Hughes Klan imperial wizard, and dentist by profession, 1924 meeting“Millions of American are in arduous quest of leadership toward better government, adequate law-enforcement, the elevation of society and a more perfect national patriotism… The Klan, alone, supplies this leadership… blood which produces human leadership must be protected from inferior blood… you are of this superior blood. You are more – you are leaders in the only movement in the world, at present which exists solely to establish a civilization that will insure these things. Klansmen and Klanswomen are verily the salt of the earth, upon whom depends the future of civilization.”
“WE are a movement of the plain people, very week in the matter of culture, intellectual support and trained leadership… We demand a return of power into the hands of the everyday, not highly cultured, not overly intellectualized but entirely unspoiled and not de-Americanized average citizens of the old stock.”
“The Klan believes…on the supremacy of the white race, the genius of the Nordic and Anglo-Saxon peoples…” 119
Estimated 2 million Klan membersAuthor argues that many white Americans had economic and technological anxiety that leads to collective political action. 119 The Klan appealed to a social political program that spoke to fears of the moment/economic/social/political…
Klan Attitudes“I would build a wall of steel, a wall as high as heaven, against the admission of a single one of those Southern Europeans who never thought or spoke the language of democracy in their lives.” 120
1924 Election Lots of Klan men at the convention
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August 1925 Klan March in Washington D.C. 30K-50K Marched for 2 hours.
Scopes Trial (TN)Summer 1925, Religion vs. Science joins Race and Ethnicity in the culture of conflict.
HL Mencken, commenting on the ignorance of American Society“Such obscenities as the forthcoming trial of the Tennessee evolutionist… call attention dramatically to the fact that enlightenment, among mankind, is very narrowly dispersed… It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone- that even the dullest man, in the bright days, knows more than any man… but the great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history… They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge.”
“No arguments you may use, no facts you may present, no logic you may array will in the slightest affect these people. They have no capacity for receiving arguments, no minds for retaining or sifting facts and no mental processes that will hold logic. If they had any of these they would not be Kluxers.” 125 William Alan White
Author argues, Resistance to the Klan reduced its influence. Resistance through courts, press, and Presidents Harding and Coolidge worked to reduce the Klan power and influence. Checks and balances worked.
US Supreme Court limited the KlanKlan had to furnish lists of members to NY state“Activities to prejudice, intimidation of classes, religious prejudices, racial prejudices. Striving for political power… stoking local and national affairs… punishments/vigilantism.
Oregon- anti-Catholic law struck down.
Press responded as voices of reason. Editors of the NY World investigation 1921In the short run increased Klan popularity (Congress investigation also increased popularity at first.)
Author argues, “The case against the Klan… required a willingness to return again and again to the argument that decency and the Klan could not coexist.” 127
GA paper,“Wearing masks, practicing sacrilege in burning fiery crosses, appealing to race and religious hatreds is so thoroughly un-American and so contemptable that we are surprised that any intelligent person would engage in such perfidy (deceitfulness) …”
Presidential Criticism of KlanHarding and Coolidge spoke out against Klan attitudes.
“The suggestion of denying any measure of their full political rights to such a great group of our population as the colored people is one which, however it might be received in some other quarters,
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could not possibly be permitted by one who feels a responsibility for living up to the traditions and maintaining the principles of the Republican Party. Our Constitution guarantees equal rights to all our citizens, without oath to support that Constitution. It is the source of your rights and my rights. I propose to regard it, and administer it, as the source of the rights of all the people, whatever their belief or race.”
Dubois“The absolute equality of races- physical, political and social- is the founding stone of world peace and human advancement. No one denies great differences of gift, capacity and attainment among individuals of all races, but the voice of science, religion and practical politics is one in denying the God-appointed existence of superior races or of races naturally and inevitably and eternally inferior. To deny this fact is to throw open the door of the world to a future of hatred, war and murder such as never yet has staggered a bowed and crucified humanity.” 128
“No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all in the same boat.”
Author argues the National Origins Act 1924, reduced the tensions and defused the issue of the Klan.Reduced immigration, 805,228 arrived in 19211928 only 164,000 arrived.Economic growth helped also to reduce tensions.Other factors reduced Klan.Bad publicity, Klan leader convicted of kidnapping, rape, and murder.Author says, “The revelation of depravity and hypocrisy at the pinnacle of Klan popularity, undercut the organization’s self-righteous claims to be an irreproachable kinghood.”
More Coolidge on Race“If we are to have that harmony and tranquility, that union of spirit which is the foundation of real national genius and national progress, we must all realize that there are true Americans who did not happen to be born in our section of the country, who do not attend our place of religious worship, who are not of our racial stock, or who are not proficient in our language.If we are to create on this continent a free Republic and an enlightened civilization that will be capable of reflecting the true greatness and glory of mankind, it will be necessary to regard these differences as accidental and unessential. We shall have to look beyond the outward manifestations of race and creed. Divine Providence has not bestowed upon any race a monopoly of patriotism and character.” 133
Ch. 5 The Crisis of the Old Order: The Great Depression, Huey Long, the New Deal], and America FirstOval Office fire during Hoover admin, Christmas Eve 1929Metaphor for Great Depression and Hoover’s response
Great Depression created Public Anxiety and Erosion of Trust
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Arthur SchlesingerHistorian of New DealCalled the Depression a “Crisis of the old order.”At the time It seemed a turning point. People questioned Would it lead to revolution?
Stats:1 in 5 people jobless = 20% of work force
Historian David Kennedy“The country had never before known unemployment of this magnitude or of this duration. It had in place no mechanism with which to combat mass destitution on this scale.” 138
People were worried about extreme left or right powers.
FDR took over, taking “Emergency… extended wartime executive powers.”Assassination Attempt, President elect.
John Maynard KeynesEconomist, was asked, “Has history seen anything like the Great Depression before? Yes it was called the Dark Ages, and lasted for four hundred years.”
THEME: People Feared RevolutionFather Coughlin 138by 1933, “I think unless something is done, you will see a revolution in this country.”
Historian William Manchester“Although millions were trapped in a great tragedy for which there could plainly be no individual responsibility. Social Workers repeatedly observed that the jobless were suffering from feelings of guilt.”
1932 news article about evictions…“I haven’t had a steady job in more than 2 years. Sometimes I feel like a murderer. What’s wrong with me, that I can’t protect my children.”
Fascists on Wall Street ScandalSome wall street bankers, wealthy wanted a military dictatorship… Marine General Smedley Butler was the guy they wanted to lead, he reported the approach to the authorities. 140So, is Author implying we have similar circumstances with TRUMP?“This was a threat to our very way of government by a bunch of rich men who wanted Fascism.”
Author makes a point to reference to McCormack, a congressman from MA who was fearful.“The people were in a very confused state of mind, making the nation weak and ripe for some drastic kind of extremist reaction. Mass frustration could bring about anything.” 140
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Sinclair Lewis1933 novel It Can’t Happen HereAbout rise of an authoritarian state in America
Nathaniel WestBook A Cool MillionIs about a demagogue leader, holds a rally (141)Simple talk, to plain folk, to get jobs for everyone…:If America is ever to be great again…”Blamed Jewish bankersBlamed Bolshevik Unions“Purge the country of alien elements”“Started a National Revolution Party”
Huey Long AKA the “Kingfish”Author argues Huey Long was a big influence on the countryGovernor, LASenatorFlamboyant CharismaticWilyAmbitiousAbleConnected to the poorConnected to the marginalizedConnected to the middle classEffective campaigner
Supported FDR in the 1932 election and helped him get elected.Biographer said, “He delighted in starting a fight.”Political people were afraid of him.“Frankly, we are afraid of him. He is unscrupulous beyond belief. He might say anything about me, something entirely untrue, but it would ruin me in my state… It is safer for me and the rest of us to leave him alone.” 143 (similar to McCarthy and Trump)
Long said a lot“A mob is coming here in six months to hang the other 95 of you damned scoundrels and I’m undecided whether to stick here with you or go out and lead them.” To the Senate
FDR commented that Huey Long believed in redistribution of the wealth.
Long“Certainly we are facing communism in America… the country has been going toward communism ever since the wealth of this country began to get into the hands of a few people.”“The Doom of America’s Dream” Long speech to Senate, 1932Argued that both Dems and GOP had failed the country… power was concentrated in the hadns of self-serving financial and political elite… advocated radical change…
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“The great and grand dream of America that all men are created free and equal, endowed with the inalienable right of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness - this great dream of America, this great light, and this great hope - has almost gone out of sight in this day and time, and everybody knows it; and there is a mere candle flicker here and yonder to take the place of what the great dream of America was supposed to be.
Unless we provide for the redistribution of wealth in this country, the country is doomed; there is going to be no country left here very long. That may sound a little bit extravagant, but I tell you that we are not going to have this good little America here long if we do not take to redistribute the wealth of this country.”
Biographer said, “he delighted in starting a fight.”He used the MediaHe attacked the decline of the middle class
Political leaders were afraid of him. “He is unscrupulous beyond belief. He might say anything about me, something entirely untrue, but it would ruin me in my state… It is safer for me and the rest of us to leave him alone.” 143
Author argues, that the left cautioned, if reforms don’t work and people still are fearful, then a demagogue would have more influence.
“Share our Wealth”Author suggests the media, “techniques in propaganda make the US easiest country to indoctrinate ideas…”
A author of the era “Diversity, political, racial, religious, ethnic, equality for women, aided the fascists was the enemy… were used to unite and animate large numbers of people…exploiting forces of hatred and fear.” Clearly, the Author is making a reference to Trump and his popular support.
Father CoughlinAnti-CommunistAnti-Semite
Long and Coughlin, populist followers made fascism the alternative to chaos…The Author is arguing that they were increasing the popularity of potential Fascist government…
FDR was seen in a mixed lightFDR Career Privileged, wealthy background, Doting Mother, “all consuming, even suffocating love” Related to TR, NY Hudson River Valley, Prep School, Harvard, Columbia School of Law. Enters politics He was a Progressive, and believed Government can help remedy problems in American society Profoundly influenced by Wilson and his foreign policy DEM, worked in Wilson’s Navy department during WWI, was assistant secretary of the Navy. Vice Pres Candidate 1920 election, lost 1921. 39 years old gets polio, and is paralyzed/Paraplegic
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He suffered greatly and tried to recover by gong to Warm Springs, Georgia, mineral spring… Enters politics again 1928, Wins Governor of NY Great Depression hits and he created programs as Governor, where the state created works projects
and relief (welfare programs) Enters and Wins the Dem nomination for president 1932 Wins the presidency in landslide against GOP Herbert Hoover. Created the New Deal with academic, intellectual, and business leaders; it was a massive
government approach to reduce the effects of the economic decline and to prevent it from recurring. It fundamentally changed the role of the Federal Government.
President elected to 4 terms of office Lead the United States attempts to stay out of WWII until Pearl Harbor attack. Lead the United States through the difficulties of WWII. Dies in office 1945
FDR QualitiesHe was specialSense of HopeA spirit of optimismNever showed exhaustion, boredom or irritationA father figure that could be trustedCared about the plight of the suffering peopleExpressed confidenceCharming, cagey, courageousInsightfulHad excellent political judgementHad wisdom, he was patient, advised patience in politics.Master politicianPeople loved him.Churchill commented, “His impulse is one which makes toward the fuller life of the masses of the people…”148-149
Churchill comment on FDR qualities:“A man of courage, Churchill appreciated it when he detected courage in others, and he had seen it, intimately, in Franklin Roosevelt. “It was a marvel that he bore up against it through all the many years of tumult and storm… Not one man in ten millions, stricken and crippled as he was, would have attempted to plunge into a life of physical and mental exertion and of hard ceaseless political controversy. Not one in ten millions would have tried, not one in a generation would have succeeded, not only in entering this sphere, not only in acting vehemently in it, but in becoming indisputable master of the scene.” 148-49 NYT Editorial on Death of FDRMen will thank God on their knees, a hundred years form now, that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House, in a position to give leadership to the thought of the American people and direction to the
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activities of their government, in that dark hour when a powerful and ruthless barbarism threatened to overrun the civilization of the Western World.” 149
Walter Lippmann, Journo said about FDR“was no crusader… he is no tribune of the people. He is no enemy of entrenched privilege. He is a pleasant man who is without any important qualifications for office.”
Harry Hopkins about FDR, intimate advisor and confidant“… What so many people believed about him and what made them love him. The President never let them down… Oh we all know that he could be exasperating, and he could seem to be temporizing and delaying, and he’d get us all worked up when we thought he was making too many concessions to expediency. But all of that was in the little things unimportant things- and he know exactly how little and unimportant they really were. But in the big things- all of the things that were of real, permanent importance- he never let the people down.” 153
Gellhorn, journoCommented on the place FDR was held by the most humble Americans.FDR was, “At once god and their intimate friend; he knows their little town and mill. Their little lives and problems… he is there, and will not let them down.” 153
Sherwood Anderson, Author“More than any man who has been president within memory… he has made us feel close to him.”
FDR in acceptance of the Dem Nomination:He offered hope. A plan, not a reaction, not radicalism. “The greatest tribute I can pau to my countrymen is that in these days of crushing want there persists an orderly and hopeful spirit on the part of the millions of our people who have suffered so much. To fail to offer them a new chance is (to) betray their hopes…” 147
FDR offered a Plan“To meet by reaction that danger of radicalization is to invite disaster…. The only way to meet that danger is to offer a workable program of reconstruction…”
FDR prevented RadicalizationAuthor argues FDR with the plan for the New Deal, was thwarting radicalism by reforming the system on a limited basis and that the New Deal was a significant departure from traditional American capitalism. In essence, FDR was a conservative who prevented radicalization either right or left.New Deal was a moderate reform
“I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a New Deal for the American people.” DEM nomination acceptance speech, 1932
Inaugural Address:The Quote, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself…”Comes from Thoreau, “Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.”
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“The country needs, the country demands, bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something … We need enthusiasm, imagination and the ability to face facts, even unpleasant ones, bravely…”
FDR urged the Nation Forward“We shall strive for perfection. We shall not achieve it immediately but we still shall strive. We may make mistakes but they must never be mistakes whish result form faintness of hear or abandonment of moral principle…” 152
Author argues that the message of Hope from Groton and Peabody made an impact on him…
Letter to Mother:“Franklin, darling, why is everyone opposed to so much of your program? A number of people told me that they don’t think it will work…”FDR replied“Mummy, I think I know who you have been talking with, and if I’m right, they are people who don’t understand the first thing about government, never having served in it, nor have they the slightest conception of the great problems facing the nation… Their only worry is that they might find themselves having to get along with two automobiles instead of three, but they don’t give a hoot for the man who not lonely can’t afford a car but is unable to feed and clothe his family. These are the people I’m concerned about and if I succeed in raising their standard of living, I won’t lose any sleep over some of our friends who are opposed to my Administration.” 151
World War II 155
Pro AlliesRepealed arms embargo Destroyers for basesLend Lease 1941
January 1941Four Freedoms Speech “Every realist knows that the democratic life is at this moment directly assailed in every part of the world- assailed either by arms or by secret spreading of poisonous propaganda by those who seek to destroy unity and promote discord in nations still at peace. As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone. Those who man our defenses, and those behind them who build our defenses, must have stamina and the courage which come form unshakable belief in the manner of life which they are defending. The mighty action that we are calling for cannot be based on a disregard of all things worth fighting for.” “We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms… Speech, Worship, Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear…It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.”
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Anti-SemitismAmerica First Anti-Semitic SpeechHenry FordThe Bund/KKKFather CoughlinCharles LindbergNazis tried to influence the election
Elanor Roosevelt Tried to advocate for African-American RightsMarian Anderson and DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution)
Author, “The persistent fight against discrimination were Ms. Roosevelt’s that attached to Roosevelt also; he couldn’t hardly get away from it and he reaped the political benefits.”Eleanor did speak out.Anti-lynching BillFDR. “If I come out for the anti-lynching bill they will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America form collapsing. I just can’t take the risk…” 163Roy WilkinsonPhillip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car PortersWalter White, NAACP, called for march on WashingtonExecutive Order 8802FDR avoided protest with, “Banned discrimination in Military IndustriesCreated Fair Employment Practices Committee
Executive Order 9066 Japanese InternmentFDR’s Greatest Failure1942, 117,000 Japanese-Americans, Nisei, Isei, put in concentration campsWas about racial prejudice, fear, and anxiety.Unit 442 Japanese American Military regiment
Ronald Reagan 1940s commentary, “Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength in the world. That is the American way.”
Why didn’t FDR help the holocaust Jews?FDR was afraid to spend political capitol on increasing protection of Jews and Jewish immigration.Once on the War the consensus view was that winning the war would save the most lives, so all decisions were based on winning the war.
Holocaust response Joint Declaration of AlliesDecember 17, 1942
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“The German authorities, not content with denying to persons of Jewish race… the most elementary human rights, are now carrying into effect Hitler’s oft-reported intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe…From all the occupied countries Jews are being transported, in conditions of appalling horror and brutality, to Eastern Europe. In Poland, which has been made the principal Nazi slaughterhouse, the ghettoes established by the German invaders are being systematically emptied of all Jews except a few highly skilled workers required for war industries. None of those taken away are ever heard of again. The able-bodied are slowly worked to death in labour camps. The infirm are left to die of exposure and starvation or are deliberately massacred in mass executions. The number of victims of these bloody cruelties is reckoned in many hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent men, women and children.”
FDR D-Day PrayerTalks about why we fight and what our values are…
FDR Last Written SpeechIs about civilization:“We must cultivated the science of relationships. The ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together in the same world, at peace.” 172
Chapter 6 “Have you no sense of decency?” “Making everyone middle class, The GI Bill, McCarthyism and Modern Media.”Discussion of Post war booms.List of Democratic Reforms
Truman 1952 campaigning for Stevenson Making point that under Democratic leadership economics of poorest Americans improved. 179 All were post WWII Average weekly earnings doubled Saving $136 billion during war Per Capita income increase Larger birth rates Employment rates College Education Home ownership Life expectancy Middle Class expanded
The Middle Class mattered
Eisenhower Quote on MarxismSpeaking to AFL-CIO 1955“The Class Struggle Doctrine of Marx was the invention of a lonely refugee scribbling in a dark recess of the British Museum. He abhorred and detested the middle class. He did not foresee that, in America,
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labor, respected and prosperous, would constitute- with the farmer and businessman- his hated middle class.” 179
Scholar Sitaraman on what is the middle classIn the Economist Magazine“To be middle class means that you have enough spending money to provide yourself and your family without living hand to mouth, but not enough to guarantee their future.”
Public and Private SectorAuthor is arguing, nothing can be taken for granted there is always risk… you may fall due to time and chance. He also argues the public sector in America has always been involved in supporting the development of the American economy.“Many Americans have never liked to acknowledge that the public sector has always been integral to making the private sector successful. We often approve government’s role when we benefit from it and disapprove when others seem to be getting something we aren’t.” 180Examples:TariffRailroadHomestead ActMorrill ActProgressive Legislation
RegulationsPolitical reformsWomen’s SuffragePrimaries
Direct Election of SenatorsNew DealSocial Security
All expanded by the public sector and private sector
Author argues, after WWII the expectation was that government would play a larger role in individual lives.1940s
1. Immense government spending on military2. GI Bill, vets get college tuition, guaranteed home loans etc.3. Economic security created a climate of hope4. Economic security was a result of Public and Private sector
Eisenhower was a moderate“Should nay political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws, farm programs, you would not hear of that party again.” 181Conservatives wanted to dismantle the New Deal.Ike spent $$ on Defense, Interstate highway system
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Message of Fear being spread by conservatives: 183-184Robert Welch, Creator of the John Birch SocietyWealthy, conservative, candy maker, believed Eisenhower, Dulles, FDR were communist agents.He was a conspiracy theorist.
Joseph McCarthy, “Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity.” 1950He was not new.Fear of Subversion was around since the 1930sHUAC 1938 Congressman Martin Dies (D) TX1940 The Smith Act, illegal to willingly advocate overthrowing US. Government. 185
Author Argues, “A freelance performer who grasped what many Americans feared and who had direct access to the media… He exploited the privileges of power and prominence without regard to its responsibilities; to him politics was not about the substantive but the sensational. The country feared communism and McCarthy knew it and he fed those fears with years of headlines and hearings. A master of false charges, of conspiracy tinged rhetoric and of calculated disrespect for conventional figures (from Truman and Eisenhower to George Marshall) McCarthy could distract the public, play to the press, and change the subject all while keeping himself at center stage.”
Hysterical sentiments were the conservative view.“We cannot sit idle and wait for Armageddon and destruction. We must forestall such catastrophe and the only way is to strike a proposed aggressor before he is ready to strike.” 185
Contributed to popularity of McCarthy:Arrests of Claus FuchsJulius and Ethel RosenbergChina falling to CommunismKorean War Soviets getting the Atomic BombWhittaker Chambers and Alger HissNixon and HUAC
McCarthy and Commies in the State Department:Used hyperbole and imprecision, he was an opportunistWanted fame and influence“While I cannot take time to name all of the men in the State Department who have been named as active members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring, I have here in my hand a list of 205 that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the communist party who nevertheless, are still working and shaping the policy in the State Department.” 186
Roy CohnSaid McCarthy did not hold any real ideology, “Joe McCarthy bought communism in much the same way as other people purchase a new automobile, the slaesmant showed him the model; he looked at it hith interest, examined it more closely…. And bought it.”
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FBI report said, communist infiltration was a thing, but by 1950 it was thougth to be done. McCarthy pushed it.
According to Cohn, McCarthy saw “dramatic political opportunities connected with a fight on communism… his sense of what made drama and headlines…”McCarthy was compared to Hitler in his tactics. 187
Truman reacted to McCarthy:“There is no difference in kind between Hitlerism and McCarthyism both being the same form of bacteriological warfare against the mind’s and soul’s of men… I think the greatest assets the Kremlin has is Senator McCarthy.” “The GOP is more interested in partisan advantage than in national security. For political background the Republicans have been trying vainly to find an issue on which to make a bid for the control of the Congress for next year. They tried statism, they tried welfare state, they tried socialism, they are trying to dig up that old malodorous dead horse called “isolationism” and in order to do that they are perfectly willing to sabotage the bipartisan foreign policy of the United States,.”
Senator Margaret Chase of Maine“Declaration of Conscience”She rejected McCarthy.Senators were now afraid to speak their minds, to take issue with him…”“I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition. It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear.I speak as a Republican. I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States Senator. I speak as an American.I think that it is high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution. I think that it is high time that we remembered that the Constitution, as amended, speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation.Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism: The right to criticize; The right to hold unpopular beliefs; The right to protest; The right of independent thought.”
McCarthy Manipulated the PressAuthor is arguing that the Press reinforced McCarthy’s popularity and exacerbated his impact. The Press thrived on McCarthy’s attitude and he manipulated them.He tried to dominate public consciousness using press/TVCriticism did not quickly reduce McCarthy’s popularity.McCarthy created fake/fabricated interviews… he had press release recordings produced himself.
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Historian Hofstadter of Columbia University wrote at the time: On the Media: “growth of mass media of communications and their use in politics have brought politics closer to the people than ever before and have made politics a form of entertainment in which the spectators feel themselves involved. Thus, it has become, more than ever before, an arena into which private emotions and personal problems can be readily projected. Mass communications have made it possible to keep the mass man in an almost constant state of political mobilization.” 194
TV was important, 5 million TVs 1950 to 24 million in 1954.
Author is implying connections to TrumpDo editors simply report the news or do they have a responsibility to “point out the lies”
Palmer Hoyt of the Denver Post“Reporters should apply any reasonable doubt they may have to the treatment of a story. It seems obvious that many charges made by reckless or impulsive public officials cannot and should not be ignored… the reading public will be able to measure the real worth or value and true meaning of the stories. Report the facts.”
McCarthy tried to discredit the Jurnos as being biased he deliberately wanted to create doubt for the public. “I think I can convince a lot of people that they can’t believe what they read in the journal.”
Eisenhower was advised not to confront McCarthyRegarding the attack on Gen. George Marshall and questioned his loyalty…McCarthy said, “A conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.” 197
Eisenhower responded in a speech but was persuaded not to confront McCarthy due to political reasons… He didn’t stand on moral grounds.“I made up my mind how In was going to handle McCarthy… to ignore him… I would give him no satisfaction. I’d never defend anything. I don’t care what he called me…”He would, “not get into the gutter.”
Eisenhower always regretted his failure to respond and defend Gen. Marshall 198
Edward R. Murrow Journo, TV news pioneer1954 News Broadcast attacking McCarthy… (video) “WE do not come from fearful men.”A few weeks after Eisenhower made a speech where he talked about fearAuthor says, “Eisenhower described the disposition necessary to survive life in an age of strain and uncertainty.”“So we do not fall prey to hysterical thinking… It is the American belief in decency and justice and progress, and the value of individual liberty, because of the rights conferred upon each of us by our creator, that will carry us through…”200
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McCarthy Army Hearings Roy Cohn and David Schine, Cohn’s intimate/secret lover… Schine was draftedMcCarthy and Cohn tried exert pressure to “secure favors for Schine”Hearings tired to expose this pressure.
Joseph WelchCounsel for the ArmyMcCarthy attacked an attorney working with Welch 201Welch responded, “until this moment Senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness, little did I dream you would be so reckless and cruel as to do an injury to that lad… I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think that I am a gentleman, but you forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.”“let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator, you have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” 201
End of the year McCarthy was censured by senate, reprimanded and limited in his control of committees…
Prescott BushConnecticut SenatorSaid McCarthy, “has caused dangerous divisions among the American people. There can be no honest difference of opinion… either you follow or you are a communist, or a communist sympathizer.” 201
McCarthy dies at 48 years old.
Roy Cohn about McCarthy“Human nature being what it is, any outstanding actor on the stage of public affairs- and especially a holder high office- cannot remain indefinitely at the center of controversy…The public must eventually lose interest in him and his cause… Joe McCarthy had nothing new to offer but more of the same. The public sought new thrills… ”He was impatient, aggressive, overly dramatic… he acted on impulse. He tended to sensationalize the evidence he had in order to draw attention… he would neglect important homework…”He was selling the story of America’s peril…”
Author argues, “The urge to overstate, to overdramatize, to dominate the news, could be costly, and so it proved to be for McCarthy… He over sold and the customers the public tired of the pitch, and the pitchman.” 203Hofstadter Pseudo-Conservatism Lecture“Paranoid style in American politics.”Said the American right was animated not by classical conservatism…” Crazy conspiracy conservatives (AKA some Trump voters)
He called this
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Who is the pseudo conservative and what does he want? It is impossible to identify him by social class, for the pseudo conservative impulse can be found in practically all classes in society although its power probably rests large upon its appeal to less educated members of the middle classes. The ideology of pseudo conservatism can be characterized but not defined because the pseudo conservative tends to be more than ordinarily incoherent about politics. The lady who when, General Eisenhower’s victory over senator Robert A Taft for the Republican presidential nomination had finally become official in 1952, stalked out of the Hilton hotel declaring “this means 8 more years of socialism” was probably a fairly good representative of the pseudo conservative mentality. The restlessness, suspicion, and fear shown in various phases of the pseudo conservative revolt, give evidence of the real suffering which the pseudo-conservative experiences in this capacity as a citizen. He believes himself to be living in a world in which he is spied upon, plotted against, betrayed, and very likely destined for total ruin. He feels that his liberties have been arbitrarily an outrageously invaded.
Political life is not simply an arena in which the conflicting interest so various social groups in concreate material gains are fought out; it is also an arena into which status aspirations and frustrations are, as the psychologists would say, projected. It is at this point that the issues of politics, or the pretended issues of politics, become interwoven with and dependent upon personal problems of individuals. We have, at all times, two kinds of processes going on in inextricable connection with each other: Interest politics, the clash of material aims and needs among various groups and blocs; and status politics, the clash of various projective rationalizations arising from status aspirations and other personal motives.”
Interest PoliticsMaterial Aims and needs of various groups
Status PoliticsStatus aspirationsThe clash between groups for ideas?Projective rationalizations Personal Motivations
Ch. 7 What the Hell is the Presidency For? “Segregation Forever,” “King’s Crusade,” and “LBJ in the Crucible”LBJ President Nov. 22, 1963Wanted to Pass Civil Rights Bill“I’m going to pass the civil rights bill and not change one word of it. I’m not going to cavil, and I’m not going to compromise. I’m gong to fix it so everyone can vote, so everyone can get all the education they can get…” 212
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Governor Wallace June 1963 Tried to prevent integration of University of AlabamaNext DayJune Medgar Evers (NAACP) activist, was assassinated in MississippiAugust MLK, “I have a Dream”Organizes the March on WashingtonSeptember 4 Birmingham, AL Church Bombing4 girls killed 16th Street Baptist ChurchNovember, JFK Assassination
Political DivideDemocrats split into Northern Liberal- pro civil rights and Southern Segregationist
LBJ was never a champion of Civil Rights until PresidencyPolitical Courage came with the Presidency “Now, I represent the whole country, and I can do what the whole country thinks is right, or ought to.” 213LBJ Post AssassinationAddressing Congress, November 1963 LBJ said:“John Kennedy’s death commands what his life conveyed- that America must move forward. Let us turn away from the fanatics of the far left and the far right, from the apostles of bitterness and bigotry, from those defiant of law, and those who pour venom into out Nation’s bloodstream.” 214
Author is presenting a picture of racism as a tool of politics.Referencing Richard Wright, who suggested poor whites will be mobilized through race fear, politicians will preach the doctrine of White supremacy…“Wright noted, by appeals to poor whites for whom color was everything since they had nothing else.” 214Huber Humphrey of Minnesota, 1948“Get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”
Dixiecrats left to make their own convention in BirminghamDixiecrat Rebellion began to us the Confederate Battle Flag and became more entrenched.1956 Georgia used battle flag in its flagSouth Carolina, 1962 flys the Confederate battle flag over capitol.
Maya Angelou, memoir, I know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Memoir of Jim Crow rural childhood.Story of fear of the boys, Klansmen…
Robert Penn Warren, Author and professorWrote, All the King’s Men 1946 and later 1956, Segregation the Inner Conflict in the South,
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George Wallace (discussion) 218Author is suggesting, Wallace was moderate early in career, then because he lost a Governor’s race. He proclaimed, “John Patterson out-nigguhed me, and boys, I’m not going to be out-nigguhed again.”219
Elected Governor 1962Inaugural Address:“This cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland, In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny and I say… segregation now… segregation tomorrow… segregation forever.”
Author argues, Wallace, “Wallace brought something intriguing to the modern politics of fear in America: A visceral connection to his crowds, an appeal that confounded elites but which gave him a durable base…. “He made those people feel something real…” “He provoked devotion and rage.”“In Wallace the lost cause found new relevance.”220
University of Alabama Integration, June 11, 1963Ordered by the federal CourtWallace used this to his political advantage, trying to defy the Yankees, calling on the tradition of the Lost Cause.
Kennedy addressed the nation: June 11, 1963, responding to Wallace“Today, we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free. This is not a sectional issue, difficulties over segregation and discrimination exists in every city, in every state of the Union, producing in many cities a rising tide of discontent that threatens the public safety. Nor is this a partisan issue… We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear s the American Constitution.
“If an American because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public official who represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place?” 221
MLK BackgroundMLK Sr. Atlanta, Ebenezer Baptist ChurchMLK Jr. 221
1. Morehouse College (Atl, GA)2. Crozier Theological Seminary3. Boston University4. 1954 Dexter Ave Baptist Church (Montgomery, Ala)
Dec 1955, Montgomery Bus BoycottJust after Rosa Parks was arrested:“WE are here this evening for serious business… we are American citizens, and we are determined to apply our citizenship to the fullness of its meaning… and you know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.
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There comes a time my friends, when people get tired of oppression. There comes a time my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. Their comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July, and left standing amid the piercing chill of Alpine November…
We are here this evening because we are tired now. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream!” 223
MLK had fear of being killed:“Lord, I’m down here, trying to do what’s right, but lord I must confess that I’m weak now. I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage.” 223
One Big Message MLKHe is considered a new Founding FatherMLK had a great strategyAppealed to the conscience of AmericaCalled on people to be: non-violent soldiers of freedom” 226He appealed to the nation’s conscience.Force of numbersBoth church and stateTo his followers, “Activists need to maintain a high moral ground”“In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds, we must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.” 227Invoked the principles of the founding fathersArgued for expansion of the founders’ vision “He summoned the nation to justice and won his place in the American Pantheon”April 4, 1968 MLK is Assassinated in Memphis, TN“Fierce urgency of now”Author says, “King spoke with the voice of a prophet, urging a nation to repent and return to righteousness.”
King left his script and spoke impromptu. “I have a dream… this is our hope this is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.”
Sit insFreedom ridesFreedom SummerChildren’s crusade
March on Washington 224-226Wednesday, August 28, 1963It had:Bob Dylan, Charlton Heston, Marlon Brando, John Lewis, A Phillip RandolphJFK worried about alienating the white Dems in the south
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1964 Civil Rights BillLBJ got the bill on the right path He appealed to American patriotismManeuvering it out of committee in congress.228 Good example of LBJ’s political skill.Getting a bill passed especially a controversial bill of Civil Rights Good insight on his political maneuvering.The treatmentTelephone callsMeetingsStrategiesSee quote 251-52 LBJ’s negotiating style.
Passed the House Feb 1964Senate needed 67 votes for cloture, cuts off Southern FilibusterSen. Russell of GASen Hubert Humphrey (D of MN)Sen Everett Dirksen (R, IL)
July 2, 1964
Hope and Fear ThemeAuthor argues, the civil rights act was the result of incredibly intense work by the President to force the triumph of hope and history over political calculation and fear. 232
232 Quote LBJ About how we need to think about Civil RightsAccording to Author,“The key thing, LBJ believed, was to make the moral case for racial justice so self-evident that the country could not help but agree.” 233 LBJ supported and used the Bully Pulpit of TR… “Then everybody goes home and asks What’s wrong with this? And they go searching their conscience.”
“If we are to heal our history and make this nation whole, prosperity must know no Mason-Dixon line and opportunity must know no color line.”
He called for unity against the forces of fear. “Now, the people that would use us and destroy us first divide us…. If they divide us, they can make some hay. And all these years they have kept their foot on our necks by appealing to our animosities, and dividing us.” 234
Now was the time to rise above racism. “Whatever your views are, we have a Constitution and we have a bill of Rights, and we have the law of the land, and two-thirds of the Democrats in the Senate and three-fourths of the Republicans… I signed it, and I am going to enforce it, and I’m going to observe it, and I think any man that is worthy of the high office of President is going to do the same thing… I am not going to let them build up the hate and try to buy my people by appealing to their prejudice.”234
March 7, 1965 Selma to Montgomery March
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Peaceful marchers attacked and beaten in Alabama.John Lewis“In the final analysis, we are one people, one family, one house… the house of America.”
Born 1940 Family, sharecroppers Founder of the SNCC Freedom Rides March on Washington Selma March
See 238-39 for Lewis “we must humanize our social and political and economic structure…”
Theme of Light vs. Dark The Moral Struggle Selma attack was broadcast on TV and had a profound impact on American Public Opinion.Author says, Lewis… dramatized the injustice of segregation and to call white America to redemption and witness.” “The Civil Rights Movement represented the age old light and dark.”“Whether the best of the American Soul:Grace + LoveGodlinessGenerosityCould finally win out over the worst of American Soul:RacismHatredFearCruelty
235 LBJ discusses how he only has power in the beginning and he needs to get to work and get things done before he loses power.
241 LBJ Meets Wallace in the White House“Now, listen, George, don’t you think about 1968, think about 1988. You and me, we’ll be dead and gone then, George…. What do you want left after you, when you die? Do you want a great big marble monument that reads, “George Wallace- He Hated!”
2 days later Monday, March 15, 1965“We Shall Overcome”I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of Democracy. I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that cause.At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There, long suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many of them were brutally assaulted. One good man--a man of God--was killed.
There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope and for faith in our
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Democracy in what is happening here tonight. For the cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this great government--the government of the greatest nation on earth. Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country--to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man. In our time we have come to live with the moments of great crises. Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues, issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression.
But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, or our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, and should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. For, with a country as with a person, "what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem.
And we are met here tonight as Americans--not as Democrats or Republicans; we're met here as Americans to solve that problem. This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose.
The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: "All men are created equal." "Government by consent of the governed." "Give me liberty or give me death." And those are not just clever words, and those are not just empty theories. In their name Americans have fought and died for two centuries and tonight around the world they stand there as guardians of our liberty risking their lives. Those words are promised to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This dignity cannot be found in a man's possessions. It cannot be found in his power or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in freedom. He shall choose his leaders, educate his children, provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being.
To apply any other test, to deny a man his hopes because of his color or race or his religion or the place of his birth is not only to do injustice, it is to deny Americans and to dishonor the dead who gave their lives for American freedom. Our fathers believed that if this noble view of the rights of man was to flourish it must be rooted in democracy. This most basic right of all was the right to choose your own leaders. The history of this country in large measure is the history of expansion of the right to all of our people.
Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument: every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to insure that right. Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes.
Every device of which human ingenuity is capable, has been used to deny this right. The Negro citizen may go to register only to be told that the day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the official in charge is absent. And if he persists and, if he manages to present himself to the registrar, he may be disqualified
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
because he did not spell out his middle name, or because he abbreviated a word on the application. And if he manages to fill out an application, he is given a test. The registrar is the sole judge of whether he passes this test. He may be asked to recite the entire Constitution, or explain the most complex provisions of state law.
And even a college degree cannot be used to prove that he can read and write. For the fact is that the only way to pass these barriers is to show a white skin. Experience has clearly shown that the existing process of law cannot overcome systematic and ingenious discrimination. No law that we now have on the books, and I have helped to put three of them there, can insure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it. In such a case, our duty must be clear to all of us. The Constitution says that no person shall be kept from voting because of his race or his color.
We have all sworn an oath before God to support and to defend that Constitution. We must now act in obedience to that oath. Wednesday, I will send to Congress a law designed to eliminate illegal barriers to the right to vote. The broad principles of that bill will be in the hands of the Democratic and Republican leaders tomorrow. After they have reviewed it, it will come here formally as a bill. I am grateful for this opportunity to come here tonight at the invitation of the leadership to reason with my friends, to give them my views and to visit with my former colleagues.
I have had prepared a more comprehensive analysis of the legislation which I had intended to transmit to the clerk tomorrow, but which I will submit to the clerks tonight. But I want to really discuss the main proposals of this legislation. This bill will strike down restrictions to voting in all elections, federal, state and local, which have been used to deny Negroes the right to vote.
This bill will establish a simple, uniform standard which cannot be used, however ingenious the effort, to flout our Constitution. It will provide for citizens to be registered by officials of the United States Government, if the state officials refuse to register them. It will eliminate tedious, unnecessary lawsuits which delay the right to vote. Finally, this legislation will insure that properly registered individuals are not prohibited from voting. I will welcome the suggestions from all the members of Congress--I have no doubt that I will get some--on ways and means to strengthen this law and to make it effective.
But experience has plainly shown that this is the only path to carry out the command of the Constitution. To those who seek to avoid action by their national government in their home communities, who want to and who seek to maintain purely local control over elections, the answer is simple: open your polling places to all your people. Allow men and women to register and vote whatever the color of their skin. Extend the rights of citizenship to every citizen of this land. There is no Constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong--deadly wrong--to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country.
There is no issue of state's rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights. I have not the slightest doubt what will be your answer. But the last time a President sent a civil rights bill to the Congress it contained a provision to protect voting rights in Federal elections. That civil rights bill was passed after eight long months of debate. And when that bill came to my desk from the Congress for signature, the heart of the voting provision had been eliminated.
This time, on this issue, there must be no delay, or no hesitation, or no compromise with our purpose. We cannot, we must not, refuse to protect the right of every American to vote in every election that he may desire to participate in.
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
And we ought not, and we cannot, and we must not wait another eight months before we get a bill. We have already waited 100 years and more and the time for waiting is gone. So I ask you to join me in working long hours and nights and weekends, if necessary, to pass this bill. And I don't make that request lightly, for, from the window where I sit, with the problems of our country, I recognize that from outside this chamber is the outraged conscience of a nation, the grave concern of many nations and the harsh judgment of history on our acts.
But even if we pass this bill the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.
And we shall overcome.” 243
LBJ Last Speech December 1972:“So, let no one delude themselves that our work is done. By unconcern, by neglect, by complacent beliefs that our labors in the field of human rights are completed, we of today can seed our future with storms that would rage over the lives of our children and our children's children. Yesterday, it was commonly said the Black problem was a southern problem. Today, it is commonly said that the Black problem is an urban problem – a problem of the inner city. But as I see it, the truth is that the Black problem today, as it was yesterday and yesteryear, is not a problem of regions or states or cities or neighborhoods. It is a problem, a concern, and responsibility of this whole nation.
Moreover, and we cannot obscure this one fact, the black problem remains what it has always been: the simple problem of being Black in a White society. And that is a problem, which our efforts have not yet been addressed. To be Black, I believe to one who is Black or Brown or what not is to be proud, is to be worthy, is to be honorable. But to be Black in a White society is not to stand on level and equal ground. While the races may stand side-by-side, Whites stand on history's mountain and Blacks stand in history's hollow. And until we overcome unequal history, we cannot overcome unequal opportunity.”
March 31, 1968 LBJ announced his intention not to run for reelection.April 4, 1968 MLK is Assassinated in Memphis, TN“Fierce urgency of now”Author says, “King spoke with the voice of a prophet, urging a nation to repent and return to righteousness.”
Robert F. Kennedy at the death of MLK,What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness; but is love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.” 248
Nixon, Author Argues, “campaigned on cultural populism, arguing that elites and implying that minorities were undercutting American greatness.” 248
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
Shirley Chisolm and Equal Rights Amendment, (Civil Rights Law)Mr. Speaker, when a young woman graduates from college and starts looking for a job, she is likely to have a frustrating and even demeaning experience ahead of her, if she walks into an office for an interview, the first question she will be asked is “Do you type.”
As a black person, I am no stranger to race prejudice. But the truth is that in the political world, I have been far oftener discriminated against because I am a woman than because I am black.
Prejudice against blacks is becoming unacceptable although it will take years to eliminate it. But it is doomed because, slowly, white America is beginning to admit that it exists. Prejudice against women is still acceptable. There is very little understanding yet of the immorality involved in double pay scales and the classification of most of the better jobs as "for men only.
What we need are laws to protect working people, to guarantee them fair pay, safe working conditions, protection against sickness and layoffs, and provision for dignified, comfortable retirement. Men and women need these things equally. That one sex needs protection more than the other is a male supremacist myth as ridiculous and unworthy of respect as the white supremacist myths that society is trying to cure itself of at this time.”
Conclusion: “The first duty of an American citizen” 255Starts with Truman early 1948“Our American Faith” 10 Point Civil Rights ProgramHe was able to transcend the attitudes of his personal background in Missouri. “We believe tah all men are created equal and that they have the right to equal justice under law.We believe all men have the right to freedom of thought and of expression and the right to worship as they please. We believe that all men are entitled to equal opportunities for jobs, for homes, for good health and for education.We believe that all men should have a voice in their government and that government should protect, not usurp, the rights of the people.”
Truman to Critics“Those Bill of Rights applies to everybody in this country… and don’t you forget it.”I am everybody’s President, I take back nothing of what I propose and make no excises for it.” 257
The Author suggests need of Federal protectionWho will ensure these rights, in the evidence of historical state violations of these rights? Hence, the need for Federal action to fulfill the nation’s promise on voting, employment, housing, criminal justice, and public accommodations.”
Truman About Choosing a President“You just can’t tell in advance… you’ve got to pick… on the basis of past history and the views he expresses on present events and situations.”
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
Author Argues, leaders reflect the people“The vices and virtues of the people at large, for leadership is the art of the possible, and possibility is determined by whether generosity can triumph over selfishness in the American soul.” 258-59
Theme of Light vs. Dark (The Eternal Struggle)Can we live up to the American idea of inclusion?Will our best instincts win or our worst?A tragic element of history is that every advance must contend with forces of reaction.”Progress = advanceReaction = RetreatIn the main, the America of the 21st Century is for all its shortcomings, is freer and more accepting than it has ever been
What can we learn in our time from the past?1. Compromise is the oxygen of democracy2. WE learn form those that came before… “Look at them in the eye of Truth”, taking their true
measure as human beings.”3. We can ask ourselves, “What injustices are we perpetuating/perpetrating even now that will
someday face the harshest of verdict by those who come after.”4. Presidents can be as big or as small as they want to
Better Presidents:Author argues< “The better Presidents do not cater to the Mob, such forces they conquer them, with a breadth of vision that speaks to the best parts of our soul.” 260Best leadership is hope. “The nation is rising. It is already great and could be made greater.”
ReaganReagan had a positive message, “City Upon a Hill” reference to John Winthrop, Reference to America’s Generosity of Spirit 261“I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it…But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to go there. That’s how I saw it, and see it still…. And she’s still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness toward home.” 261
Bill Clinton at the time of the Oklahoma City Bombing“Let us let our own children know that we will stand against the forces of fear. When there is talk of hatred, let us stand up and talk against it. In the face of death let us honor life…. Let us not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” 261
Author implies that good presidents denounce hate and extremism:Example of GHW Bush denounced terrorism not Islam advocated goodness and loveClinton Oklahoma City Bombing
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
Obama South Carolina, Church Shooting he spoke of hope “According to Christian tradition, grace is not earned. Grace is not merited. It’s not something we deserve. Rather, grace is the free and benevolent favor of God as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings. Grace – as a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, God has visited grace upon us for he has allowed us to see where we’ve been blind. He has given us the chance; where we’ve been lost, to find our best selves. For too long we’ve been too long, we’ve been blind to the way past injustices continue to shape the present. Perhaps, we see that now. Perhaps this tragedy causes us to ask some tough questions about now e can permit so many of our children to languish in poverty or attend dilapidated schools or grow up without prospects for a job or for a career. Perhaps it causes us to examine what we’re doing to cause some of our children to hate.” 264
Obama Comment on same sex marriage“Our nation was founded on a bedrock principle that we are all created equal… The project of each generation is to bridge the meaning of those founding words with the realities of changing times- a never ending quest to ensure those words ring true for every single American. Progress on this journey often come sin small increments, sometimes two steps forward, one step back, propelled by the persistent effort of dedicated citizens. And then sometimes, there are days like this, when that slow steady effort is rewarded with justice that arrives like a thunderbolt. (the ruling) reaffirmed that all Americans are entitled to the equal protection of the law… regardless of who they are or who they love…. Today should give us hope that on the many issues with which we grapple, often painfully, real change is possible. Shifts in hearts and minds is possible.”264-65
Grace: “is some combination of generosity and magnanimity, kindness and forgiveness, and empathy- all above the ordinary call of duty and bestowed even when not particularly earned.”What’s so Amazing about Grace?
Truman said, “The country has to awaken every now and then to the fact that, the people are responsible for the government they get.” Voters have the ultimate authority
Author Says:Trump represents:Undermining the Rule of LawUndermine Free PressUndermine a Sense of HopeCreating Stress Creating Anxiety of the future.
What Can Be Done?1. Enter the Arena2. Resist Tribalism3. Respect facts and deploy reason4. Keep History in Mind
In the Arena: Political engagement
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
Pay attention Vote Express opinions
Resist TribalismDon’t be too radicalTalk with the other sideDon’t be all critical or complimentary
TR in favor of free press“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” 269
JFK in favor of free pressGist- to keep the president connected to another perspective“I think (the press) is invaluable, even though, it is never pleasant to be reading things that are not agreeable news. But I would say that it is an invaluable arm of the Presidency… There is a terrific disadvantage in not having the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily… Even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn’t write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn’t any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press.” 270
Keep History in MindKeep things in perspectiveDemocracy does make mistakes and we should be on guardTruman said, “The people have often made mistakes but given time and the facts, they will make the corrections.” 271
“The past and present tell us too , that demagogues can only thrive when a substantial portion of the demos-the people- want him to…”
Truman about Lincoln:“He was a president who understood people, and when it came time to make decisions, he was willing to take the responsibility and make those decision no matter how difficult they were.He had a good head and a great brain and a kind heart…. He was the best kind of ordinary man, and when I say that he was an ordinary man, I mean that as high praise, not deprecation. That’s the highest praise you can give a man, that he’s one of the people and becomes distinguished in the service that he gives other people. I don’t know of any higher compliment you can pa a man than that.” 271
Lincoln addressing the Troops why we fight:“It is in order that each one of you may have, through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field, and fair chance for your industry, enterprise, and intelligence; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life with all its desirable human aspirations- it is for this that the struggle should be maintained, that we may not lose our birthrights… The nation is worth fighting for, to secure such an inestimable jewel.” 272
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The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham, 2018 Notes
Author’s Last Word:“For all of our darker impulses, for all of our shortcomings, and for all of the dreams denied and deferred, the experiment begun so long ago, carried out so imperfectly, is worth the fight. There is, in fact, no struggle more important, and none nobler, than the one we wage in the service of those better angels who, however besieged, are always ready for battle.”
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