The Idea of America!

 

Spain settled St. Augustine, Florida in 1565. The English established Jamestown in Virginia in 1607. The European exploration and takeover of North America was in full swing. Yet it took until July 4,1776 for the colonies on the eastern side of the continent to declare their independence. Two-hundred-fifty years ago this very day,  211 years after the first settlements, unless you count the Norse settlements in 1000 CE. It took the folks a while to catch up with the Age of Reason and embrace the Enlightenment.

The Founders shook the world:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

Aspirational, to say the least, most of us are still trying to get our heads around the idea. It’s been a good run but not an easy one.

Can we say today that most of Americans believe that all men are created equal? Can we say that most Americans believe that all men have unalienable rights – Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness? Do most Americans believe their government should derive its just powers from the consent of the governed?

Who you are, where you are, what and where you were may shape an honest response. That friction is why we strive to create a perfect union. Our answers shouldn’t be different. Why don’t we all just look at the idea and shout YES! 

A survey by the Public Religion Research Institute indicated that 51% of Americans say they are extremely or very proud of being Americans, down from 82% in 2013.[i] This is serious stuff. (Other recent surveys show that only 60%+/- are positive about the current state of the nation.)

The survey showed that less than half of those surveyed believe the idea that working hard gets you ahead. Among 18-29 year-olds, only 36% believe in the “American Dream.” These are the folks that are going to take us into the next decade or two. If they lose faith in the greatness of America, how will the experiment survive? We rely on them to take us along, to meet the new challenges, to innovate, and to protect the homeland. Will they want to do it if they don’t believe in the Experiment, in the Dream?

Years ago, a lot of us were taught about the greatness of America in a mix of courses under the general mantle of Social Studies. The rubric was a sanitized version of history designed to make us feel proud of the country, feel patriotic, and want to serve; we were a nation of exceptionalism, the best nation on earth, believe we are the best.

After World War II, we basked in the glory of saving the world from the Axis Powers. We built planes and munition factories, sixteen million men and women joined the armed forces to fight in Europe and Asia and we won. Over four-hundred thousand didn’t come home.

Then we rebuilt Europe. We oversaw the redevelopment of much of Asia. Our rich farm land and natural resources let us feed the world and create a large middle class with good housing, good educations, and good jobs. The text didn’t teach us about segregation, the poverty of Appalachia, the notion of white supremacy even though it was all around us. Those lessons came much later.

Like so many other nations, generational change after generational change, and more change brought periods of growth and prosperity, periods of growth and despair, not so much growth and resistance, and the growth of nationalism that we experience today.

The angst on both sides of the political divide ripples outward, creating rings of concern about what it means to be an American in today’s world. Some try to be overly definitive – of white European descent, unfettered capitalism, conflating Christianity and Americanism, discounting the universal ideals of our founding documents, loss of respect for the role institutions play in the fabric of our culture and society. The more we try to be specific the more we drift from our original intent.

Being American isn’t easy. The last 250 years taught us that. Being American is difficult. It isn’t based on hard and fast rules: tribal identity, bloodlines, religious beliefs or other specifics. It is based on an idea. The only thing that we ask of anyone who is born on our soil or comes to our shores is that they buy into an idea. If you swear allegiance to the idea, you are an American.

New citizens take an oath – “… I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic…” That’s it. You’re in.

Here is the idea – “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union …”  The majesty of those words is overwhelming. They are the scepter we hold on high. It was outrageous thinking at its writing. Governments were the property of kings, emperors, dictators, autocrats, and others with big armies, not we the people. We changed the calculus. But that is the idea. “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” That’s it. Buy into that idea and you are an American.

There is no reason this republic can’t last another 250 years if its population reminds itself from time to time of the great truths and ideals upon which it was founded. The current period of misunderstanding of those ideals will be overthrown even if the incumbent oligarchs aren’t. We are ruled by “We the people” and we will insist of adherence to the ideals as we have so often in the past. The idea of America is stronger than any one cabal.

For two-hundred-fifty years the dream has lived, been tested, and endured. It lures the huddled masses. It makes us want to be free. It is a living idea that we celebrate today.

We consent to nothing less.

---

[i] Axios.com/newsletters, June 17, 2026

Decline and Fall.

 

The United States is 250 years old, and something is wrong. Very wrong.

You know it. Everyone knows it. You can feel it. People aren’t happy. It’s hard to define. How do you remedy a wrong you can’t define?

Is it the manic government we experience each day? Or is it the economics we don’t understand; or the prices we pay at the pump and the grocery outlets? Is it the divide between the have-nots, the have-a-lots, and the they-have-too-much folks?

Would better government policies cure the wrongs we can’t define? Would more competent cabinet secretaries make a difference? Is it time for religious leaders to get right-sided and preach a little kindness to us?

So what is the wrong? How do we define it? I can’t remember when so many people were so unhappy or so worried about the now and the future. Can you? It could be something that has been building for a decade or two and we just didn’t notice it, or it could be the recent debasing of our culture, or both and much more. I’m not sure, but I know wrong when I feel it.

You don’t have to read Gibbon’s six-volume classic, The History of the Decline  and Fall of the Roman Empire to see the similarities between then and now. The good news, I suppose is that the empire lasted a bit over four hundred years, so we still have some fix time.

It is almost too easy to find comparisons, not all the fault of our current leader, but heavily skewed in that direction. One could point out the economic crises we are enduring, of our own making: high inflation caused by a self-started war against Iran to achieve what had been achieved by a previous administration without a war. That leads to a discussion of the world’s distrust of our America First motives and growing willingness to use the Chinese Renminbi as the international currency.

One could point out the excessive costs of self-started wars in both money and armaments. We have shifted arms from around the world to the Near East, leaving our flanks vulnerable for years on end that it will take to rearm. To add to the strain, we have done everything in our power to excise ourselves from mutual aid agreements with other nations, reducing their incentive to come to our support if needed, as they did after 9/11.

One could point out the administration’s efforts to rule by executive decree instead of as one of the co-equal branches of the government. It has taken over independent agencies, vacuumed the halls of Congress of any power or influence and appointed sycophants to the judiciary in full view of everyone.

One could point out the depth of corruption in the current administration. We have seen corruption before; Andrew Johnson was known for his “pay-for-pardon” programs and his attempt to override the Tenure of Office Act. Grant was too loyal to his corrupt appointees’ tax evasion plots. Harding was known for graft and corruption at the highest levels, even leasing oil reserves for bribes. Nixon used his powers to direct the IRS, CIA and FBI to investigate his political enemies. We know what corruption looks like.

The level of corruption in and by the current administration would make the misdeeds of previous presidents seem trivial by comparison. Where to start?

What better way to celebrate the  semi-quincentennial anniversary than to build a monstrosity-looking fight cage on the White House lawn. To rejoice about the ability of our democracy and republic to outwit naysayers, combatants were cheered on by the nation’s leaders as they tried to do bodily harm to each other. To quote William Krystal of the Bulwark Newsletter, "it's violent, it's commercial, it's grandiose, it's tacky, and it dishonors a place once thought worthy of care and respect." It's on the White House lawn for god's sake. Remember when we were once the shining city on a hill, a light for the rest of the world to admire? This administration has no shame. It is wrong.

I’m going down a rabbit hole here, but is it just possible that we have lost a sense of class and a strong belief in democracy? The two go together.

It’s not very classy to tell someone that they aren’t very classy. But here goes. Most of our recent presidents have been classy people or at least pretended to be. They believed in the American experiment and understood the need for our fragile institutions. Our current administration isn’t very classy, from the top to the underlings. And most of them, from the top to the underlings, don’t believe in democracy, and therefore don’t mind destroying the institutions that make it work. The current use of Make America Great Again has made us a faltering democracy, a people unsure of their future, and degraded our values. We are even at the point where many question who is and who ought to be an American.

Maybe we just don’t know how to be classy anymore. It is the sort of thing you learn early on, on the knee of your elders, over time. Your institutions teach you how to behave, how to treat others, how to agree and disagree, how to socialize with folks who have different beliefs without upsetting the Thanksgiving dinner, and how to be nice even when we are being strong. We all miss the mark from time to time, but we know it, everyone around us knows it, and we apologize. Apology accepted; pass the gravy.

More deeply, we might ask if our leaders lack a decent level of civility, lack an appreciation for moderation and concession, lack basic social skills, or just have a mean streak that built up over the years. Look at some of the unclassy things they forced on us in the last couple of years.

Not to brag, but I’ve been around for the last thirty-five percent of our two-hundred-fifty years since broadcasting our independence to the world. I can’t remember a time when so many people tried so hard to destroy our institutions, our culture, and our general way of life. The lack of class is overwhelming and hard to comprehend.

In 1962, JFK gathered over one-hundred-seventy of the brightest intellectuals in the country to honor our Nobel Prize winners. He noted, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, which has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."  Today our president begs aloud for the medal and willingly accepts one as a token from someone who actually earned hers. Recently, our president indicated that he might give himself the Medal of Honor. How far we have fallen. It’s wrong.

The Oval Office was a center of world influence: simple in design, strong in dignity,  quiet unspoken power prevailing  for all to see and admire. From that singular room, decisions were made that saved the democracies of Europe, sent men to the moon, fed the world’s hungry, improved educational opportunity;  mended the ravages of war and led a world order that stifled hostile interventions for nearly fifty years. It was the center of world power for decades: quiet, unobtrusive, majestic.

Today the room’s simplicity is replaced with cheap looking golden kitsch on the walls and fireplace, portraits hanging from every square inch of wall space, and used for verbal cage matches with world leaders. Today’s decisions create turmoil in the world, erase decades of effort to create a more perfect union, destroy our cherished institutions. What was once a national treasure is no more than a shell of our past.

The seldom quoted Calvin Coolidge once said that “It is a great advantage to a President and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man.” It is hard to be a president without an outsized ego, without a tinge of grandiosity. But an inflated sense of self-importance, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy is a mental health issue. It has a name: NPD, Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Sometimes when a person suffers from NPD they want to put their names on buildings dedicated to other heroes, put large banners of their picture on government buildings, or on new currency. I’m no doctor, but I know NPD when I see it.

I did some research about other presidents who put their names on government buildings while they were in office. There wasn’t much info on the subject. Surely there must be data about past presidents who wanted to put their image on our currency. Nope, nothing. There must be data about past presidents who wanted to build monuments to bust up the great design of DC by Pierre Charles L’Enfant in 1791. Nothing there either. I’m not a doctor, but …

Democracy is losing or it is taking on a new definition. Make America great again has been the mantra of presidents since Roosevelt and likely before. It was Reagan’s campaign slogan, Clinton used it all the time. Obama hoped for it. But none of the past presidents have done so much to tear down the institutions that define and support the concept of We The People. If the polls are correct, we may not have to suffer the destruction of our democracy, the majority of Americans do not support the President’s programs or the way they are implemented.

Hopefully, this isn’t what the start of the decline and fall look like.

 

 

The Right Thing.

Progress moves too slowly for those in a hurry.  Sometimes efforts to save our democracy seem slow apace. The simple truth remains: we are an experiment in men’s ability to govern themselves. Experiments take time. You try something, see if it works, determine whether you like it, put it out for comment, and see what happens. The Founders conceived a form of government never tried, only a concept. It is still in the trial stage.

Madison told us (The Federalist #51) that dividing government into equal branches would prevent despotism by one branch over another. It was an ingenious approach for the time. He saw the House as “the people,” the Senate as the “states.” He saw the Executive implementing the laws of the Legislature, and the Judicial as the limiter of each.

A government so conceived requires tenacity to maintain equilibrium. It is easy for one branch to put its thumb on the scale.  A Madisonian republic, however, was one in which “the legislative authority necessarily predominates” and the two houses “as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit.”

Well, the last couple of decades show us what a lack of diligence can bring to a delicate attempt to be a free state. The Senate no longer calms the excesses of the House; Congress as a whole gives much of its authority to the Executive, the Judiciary seems comfortable with a strong executive at the helm, and a government less by the people than by the oligarchs and autocrats. Perhaps an extended generalization, but…

Churchill’s note that “Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else” may be coming to pass. While still a majority conservative Court, it is a protector of the Constitution. Its job is to preserve the plain speak of the Founders. Article One, section eight of our Constitution states that “the Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises …”  Article Two gives no such power to the Executive.

The Supreme Court drew a red line last week. The Constitution prevailed. Justice Gorsich stated that while “the legislative process helps ensure each of us has a stake in the laws that govern us and in the Nation’s future… for some today, the weight of those virtues is apparent. For others, it may not seem so obvious… But if history is any guide, the tables will turn and the day will come when those disappointed by today’s result will appreciate the legislative process for the bulwark of liberty it is.”

Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, consolidated with V.O.S. Selections v. Trump, was a simple case; did the International Emergency Economic Powers Act authorize the President to impose tariffs? The Court said no. The Executive complained with vitriol. I'm reminded of Socrates's notion that, "When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser."

The ruling was really less about tariffs in made-up emergencies than it was about the limits of power enumerated in the Constitution. It was also a clarion call for the Legislature to start behaving like a law-making body is supposed to act.

A number of the Supremes are in the strong-executive camp, even those who purport to be originalists. In more than twenty recent cases, it gave the Executive traditional deference, even wide latitude on issues, and has generally continued to give the Department of Justice prosecutorial discretion. In Learning Resources, though, it drew a red line. The Executive must follow the Constitution. Churchill was right.

The current inhabitants of the Executive departments show their preference almost daily, bolstered by Project 2025’s misunderstanding of the Founder’s aim – a nation with the people as the source of power.

They immediately announced continued tariffs under different legislation. The Executive’s reaction to the Court’s decision demonstrated a lack of respect for checks and balances, rancor, and name-calling. It was as though the act of appointing someone to the Court required rulings in the Executive's favor on any issue as a matter of course. It had the stench of mob rule.

The shot across the bow of the Executive branch could be a precursor of future rulings when the Constitution is trampled. It could, and would in a normal administration, return ICE to following constitutional processes in its efforts to deport those who entered the country by illegal means. It might push these agencies to provide something as simple as due process before deporting. It might dissuade the agencies from creating concentration camps across the country, expected to hold tens of thousands of people for extended periods of time. It might urge them to remove masks from their officers or add identification to their uniforms.

If none of these things happen, at least the people of the nation know that there is a point beyond which the Court will not tolerate violation of the Constitution. For those who have taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, it could be a good start toward making democracy great again.

 

 

 

I'm Confused?

 Like most of the rest of the world, I’ve been watching the uprisings on the streets of Iran. The middle-class is up in arms and being met with government arms. Thousands of citizens were killed in the streets. Hundreds threatened with hangings.

The Rial is hardly worth a Dinar anymore. Purchasing power struggles against a forty-two percent inflation rate. Who can afford food or rent? The government cracks down on the citizenry with abandon, irrespective of the validity of complaints. Up to a point, anyway.

President Trump threatened the government of Iran with an unspecified show of force if it hanged anyone, and they didn’t. Score one for Donald?

And again, like most of the rest of the world, I’ve been watching squads of masked military-dressed ICE officers in Minneapolis, beating American citizens, killing citizens, shooting them for no reason, breaking into homes without warrants, pulling foreign looking individuals out of their cars, threatening folks with deportation without due process, and just generally acting differently than you would expect from an American police force. They aren’t quelling the mobs; they are the mob.

President Trump’s Department of Justice is threatening to hold criminal investigations against the governor of Minnesota and the city’s mayor because they are pleading with the government to reduce the rhetoric, the meanness, and the rule by armed force-level federal police.

This is why I am confused. Our Dear Leader is supporting those who protest against their government in Iran, but at the same time, he and his administration are opposing those who protest against the un-American and cruel activities of our government. Measure for Measure seems to elude the federal brain.

Let’s be clear about what needs to be done and not done. The idea of getting rid of ICE is lunacy. We, the country, need a group responsible for enforcing immigration laws. Until recently, ICE has acted responsibly. What does make sense, however, is to stand down those wholly untrained thousands of people who are scaring the populace and put them through a revised proper training program. Somehow, as I watch them operate in the streets of our cities, I get the impression that they are being trained by veteran military personnel, rather than by highly trained police forces. I assume it is not a coincidence that they are dressed as military warriors and armed like soldiers of war. It scares the hell out of the people in the streets.

To oversimplify the thought, military tactics are designed to kill the enemy, while police are asked to protect and serve. That is a difference too large to be ignored. ICE agents need to be screened in the same manner as local police candidates and trained in the same way.

Senator Stephen Douglas favored slavery. Abraham Lincoln opposed it. In their famous Peoria debate on October 6, 1854, Lincoln declared that he hated it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. And then he said: “I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world – enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites – causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many good men amongst ourselves into an open way with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty – criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.”

Lincoln, as usual, has words and meaning for the ages. Once more, it is time to summon our better angels. ICE alone is making a mockery of the American way. The world watches a once-strong democratic republic lapse into just another country ruled by the whims of a strongman, regardless of the rationality of the decisions made. The longer it stands, the more hypocritical we look, and the less democracy resembles the shining light on the hill.

The world sees a nation whose legislative branch only functions to ratify what its party’s leader wants and oppose whatever the other party wants. They see a Supreme Court that has bought into the strong president concept and approved nearly every case he brought to the bench. They see masked goon-acting militia in the streets, fully masked, harassing the citizens and disappearing people. How can it do anything but remind the world of Argentina’s “disappearing” people, or Soviet gulags, or China’s Cultural Revolution? We watch every day as a little of America is snipped away, and the next day a little more.

So what are we going to do? Sitting still isn’t an acceptable reaction to what is happening around us. So, taking action seems like the only solution.

We can write our senators and representatives. Too much work, you say. Download the 5 Calls app to your phone. Write a short note, and it sends it to all of your legislators. Attend the No Kings marches. No administration can overcome the protests of twelve million people.

Take videos of unlawful police action in your neighborhood and send them to local TV stations. Join Indivisible to keep up on what is happening in the country that shouldn’t be happening.

We should recognize that too many news outlets have a mission to influence their users rather than to report the news unvarnished. We know that Fox News is ultra-right-wing, and MS Now is ultra-left-wing, especially the talking heads. The same is true of podcasts. Try to find one that is unbiased. Listen to the news broadcast from Germany, England, or even Korea. They tend to cover world news better than U.S. news outlets. We can search for truth rather than what we want to hear. Democracy relies on a well-informed population. Let’s be that. 

Let’s not be confused about what is happening in our country. 

It's That Time of Year!

 Everyone is telling you to be of good cheer. I’m trying. Before I forget, Merry Christmas.

And then there is Bah Humbug all around us. In a national address to the nation the other evening, the President told us that we had never had it so good. He told us we had the best economy in our history, and he implied that he might be a greater president than, well, Abraham Lincoln. And yet.

Our leader is an expert at the big story. It’s a standard strategy for those in power and those seeking power: tell the big lie because they are more likely to believe it than the small stories you could tell. So it is not unreasonable to think that a whole lot of people believe what they hear coming out of the White House.

The White House. Now there is something to be upset about. The home and office of the president are supposed to be simple, not grand like the palaces of Europe. We are a democracy, not a kingdom. Remember?

The Oval Office, that sacred ground of American power and grand simplicity, has been destroyed to the level of heresy. The desecration has reduced it to just another room. The mystic is gone. The symbol of world power looks like a decorator with no taste was let loose. It is gaudy, it is cliché, it is ugly. It proves money doesn’t buy class. It is embarrassing. 

The East Wing brings new fury, ripped from its connection to the White House. For what? For a ballroom bigger than the rest of the building, out of proportion to the rest of the site. It will take months to tear it down, if it ever gets built, after The Don leaves office. Could the place use a ballroom? Sure, but in proportion and without the glitz.

But back to the economy and stuff. If things are as good as we are told, why is the country in such a funk? We know that we have a pretty strong economy, but not the greatest. The polls are pretty much in agreement. The President’s numbers are in the toilet. Poll after poll indicates that the folks don’t think he is doing a good job managing the economy, the European war, the state of manufacturing, and most other issues. He does get reasonable marks for his efforts to reduce illegal immigration and close the border, but people don’t like how he is doing it.

We are not a country that sends masked men to pull people off the street and whisk them away in unmarked cars. We don’t put people on planes and send them to countries that will jail them for no reason. But we are becoming that kind of country.

Christmas letters are supposed to be uplifting, but too much is changing for the worse to be bright and shiny. We are paying too much for food, for gas, for entertainment, for basics like water and home energy. Too many will start the year with health insurance they can’t afford or no insurance at all. That is when the ER becomes the primary care provider, and our rates increase to pay for it.

There are three more years of this craziness before a term limit kicks in. My positive side says we will survive this. We survived the Civil War. We survived Teapot Dome. We survived other threats to democracy. We beat fascism in Europe, and we beat the Empire of Japan’s threat in Asia. We survived McCarthyism.

We can replace the new signs on the Kennedy Center and other buildings in DC. We can, with time, remove the Amazon-grade glitz from the Oval Office and the rest of the White House.

Based on what has happened this year, I shudder to think of what could happen in the next three. But there is hope for a better tomorrow. There has to be.

We still have great universities that are the envy of the world. We have local people trying every day to make their communities better and safer. We have millions of people in the streets across the country protesting the destruction of our institutions. When the people rise up, the people win. People can only wield power when we let them. So there is hope.

Let’s make our hope a positive force to help our democracy survive. Knowing we can do it gives me a much-needed brighter outlook as we end one year and begin another.

 

Happy New Year!!!

 

 

Hate!

 I hate America!

I didn’t know that until a few weeks ago. I didn’t come to it on my own, the Speaker of the House told me… I wasn’t singled out, mind you. It runs in the family, all four generations. Lots of my neighbors and nearly eight million others got the message at the same time. Speaker Mike Johnson told us that anyone who participated in a No Kings protest hated America. And you know me; I thought it was the other way around.

I don’t follow AOC on Instagram or Facebook; she is a bit progressive, you know, but she noted recently that calling someone who disagrees with your position on an issue un-American is the very definition of un-American.

On the other side, a young man slain for his beliefs, Charlie Kirk, garners thousands of chapters for his Turning Point organization that, in the name of saving democracy, spews views that are the antithesis of what America should represent.

A lot of what constitutes the new good is the opposite of what has defined America for generations. Affirmative Action is once again considered discrimination against white folks. A good education is no longer considered a worthwhile goal because we need more tradespeople. Why can’t we have both? Evangelical Nationalism, a growing segment of Christianity preaches the opposite of Christianity, calling us to turn to a theocracy instead of our tradition of advocating for the free exercise of any religion.

I’m registered as “No Party Preference.” I can speak out of both sides of my mouth. I’m usually just a bit left of center, but not enough to be called a leftie. I’m worried about our democracy. I’m told I shouldn’t worry about it; it’s what older folks do. Nobody cares, really. Worry about the important things, the pundits say, affordability, the new buzzword.

The recent government shutdown illustrates the dichotomy weaving its way through the country. While millions are worried about the price of health insurance, the lack of healthcare, and the price of food, other millions are worried about maintaining power and crumbling all the institutions that seem to be bothering them: universities, education in general, safety nets for the less fortunate, libraries, science research, gold-standard economic reporting, and even classic architecture. Have you noticed what they have done to desecrate the Oval Office and the White House in general?

The younger members of the Democratic Party are calling for new leadership. Those in their seventies and eighties have lost control of the narrative and ability to lead. They had the wind at their backs during the shutdown and blew it. They fought for affordability and gave in to easier flying schedules. They are a party with no discipline and no cohesive or catchy message aimed at the younger generations, arm wrestling against a supercharged and highly organized party of zealots.

The national movement to return to an affordable but democratic nation has begun. Prodded by young people and supported by folks of all ages, the nation is starting to awaken to the travesty thrust upon them in the last several months.

The first nationwide No Kings rallies a couple of years ago attracted only a few million people. The rallies last June attracted about five million people. The protests in October attracted more than seven million people.

Erica Chenoweth, a distinguished professor at Harvard, has studied the history of anti-authoritarian movements around the globe. She found that movements that achieved their goal usually represented three and a half percent of the population of the country. That is a lot of people. If the trend continues, twelve million Americans protesting against the current regime isn’t hard to imagine.

If you are a pessimist, the chances of success for No Kings are slim to none. An optimist thinks it’s possible with a little effort. It will take a lot of effort, but worth a try. But it will fail if it doesn’t bring forth a highly respected national leader.

Today, it has an organizer, Indivisibles’ Ezra Levin, but no leader. The civil rights movement had MLK. The current effort to restore our democracy needs a national leader who can rally the populists to do what is needed and what is right.

How do we know when we are in trouble?

When a nation sends its army against its own citizens, democracy is lost. When a nation sends masked secret police against its people, democracy fades. When national leaders turn the Department of Justice into a personal law firm to prosecute political enemies, democracy is done. When a nation tries to tell its universities what to teach and how to teach it, democracy is history. America was once the model of a modern democracy. Why did we let it lose its way?

We are told that it is always the economy that drives people’s feelings and their votes. Recent elections around the country tell a mixed story. The people of the State of New Jersey and the Commonwealth of Virginia elected Democratic governors. They both ran on an economic agenda, but the President’s agenda was on the ballot as well.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania returned three justices to its Supreme Court despite the opposition of the President. The Vice President’s brother lost an election in the very red State of Ohio.

The most interesting election to me was California’s Proposition 50, which reconfigures its congressional districts to offset the redistricting efforts in Texas. Not one person was on the ballot, and economics wasn’t on the ballot; it was all about the future of democracy. It garnered sixty-four percent approval from the voters. That is what a mandate looks like. Why did millions turn out to vote on one issue? Because the President had asked the State of Texas to Gerrymander their congressional district to make it easier to elect five more Republicans to Congress. When California retaliated by designing districts that would likely elect five more Democrats to Congress, the President instructed the Department of Justice to sue the state because it was an unfair tampering with the system; audacious is an understatement.

One must ask if a few elections in blue states equate to a national repudiation of the current administration’s efforts to undo our democratic processes. Maybe not. But all long marches begin with the first step.

It could also be a wake-up call for the administration. It might just let them know that their methods for achieving their economic and cultural objectives are just too severe, or just not the way we customarily do things. Masked men whisking people off the streets into unmarked cars is not the American way. It is the way of Russia and Hungary, or earlier, Chile, or Argentina. We have an annoying history of insisting on due process, even for hardened criminals.

It could be a reminder that government officials who take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution ought to follow its provisions.

But we know that this administration has no intention of protecting and defending the Constitution. They told us during the campaign that they would implement the Project 25 programs. It was a nine-hundred-page outline for changing the country from three equal branches of government to a country with a strong executive branch. It was a plan for increasing the power of oligarchs and moving us toward autocracy with a strong military dispersed among the citizenry. If it succeeds, the country is lost. If it succeeds even a little, we will not see our greatness again.

 

I don’t hate America, but I am concerned about the current state of affairs. Nobody runs for office with the promise to change nothing,  but change must be done within the norms of our longstanding institutions and culture. But people should not live in fear. Parents should not be afraid that when they send their kids to school, they may never see them again. People who follow the rules and go to the immigration office as scheduled should not be deported for following the law. Our police services, who pride themselves on serving and protecting themselves should not be forced to wear masks and walk the streets with weapons of war. Members of Congress should not be prevented from performing their oversight duties at detention centers. I don’t hate America; I just want it to be America again.

 

Not the American Way

  

I’ve never met Charlie Kirk. I don’t like the political views that he espouses, and I suspect he wouldn't like mine. But he did for his views what most of us are afraid to do for ours.

He thought them through, he organized, he went out on a limb to get his message out, he became the darling of the political right, he had the phone numbers of everyone important, and he used his influence to accomplish his aims.

His millions of followers followed him, listened to him, and supported him and his views. He was an Eagle Scout.

He took an oath years ago when he stood with his right hand held high and said: “On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my Country.”   He worked at it.  His motives were true. I disagreed with him.

Ezra Kline posted an opinion yesterday morning in the NYT that said that Kirk did his America correctly. Kline went on to say, "The foundation of a free society is the ability to participate in politics without fear of violence. To lose that is to risk losing everything. Charlie Kirk — and his family — just lost everything. As a country, we came a step closer to losing everything, too."

I agree.

So here we are again, bending a knee to the worst that is in us, shooting those with whom we disagree. Nobody should be shot for airing their beliefs. His MAGA world is roused to get even with their perceived enemies. The nut job that shot and killed him is one of many who disagree with Kirk’s hopes for the future of the nation. But he had no right to shoot him.

Naïve perhaps, but surely someone has a better argument for our future than Kirk’s. If they do, they should write about it, talk about it, organize around it, and preach about it. They should not shoot somebody because of it.

The irony, of course, is that the misguided shooting did the opposite of its intention. It didn’t stop people from speaking their beliefs, it didn’t lower the cultural temperature, and it didn’t bring calm. Just the opposite.

Now the MAGA world wants to increase the war against its adversaries. The rhetoric is and will continue to be more vitriolic. It is never good to trap the lion. It increases the tension that we have too much of.

Members of Congress, of both parties, are asking for more protection. They fear leaving their homes. Talking heads are watching their choice of words and their commute rituals. This is not the America Kirk wanted. It is not the world his verbal opponents want. It's not what I want. It is not what any right-thinking human would want.

Both sides need to come together to mourn the loss of a forceful American fighting for the America he wanted. The left and the right need to calm those who want to raise the political temperature. Liberals and Conservatives need to talk to each other, to try to bring America to a new norm, one of better discourse about issues and values, one that doesn’t revolve around hate for the opponent, one centered on the betterment of the nation.

This is supposed to be a nation for the huddled masses, for those yearning to be free. We are an experiment in the notion of self-government. But violence is shredding the fabric that is supposed to bind us together.

We should all lament the forced passing of a young man who had already made his mark. Many will say, “This is not who we are.”

But it is what we are becoming.

We can do better.