"It's Horror All the Way Down"

"As for Miller's vision, it's horror all the way down. He's not looking to solve for this state of nature. He simply calls it 'the real world,' one whose anarchic rules America just needs to accept and use to its benefit. If Miller has read Hobbes, he's drawing the wrong lesson. Even if he might like the idea of Trump as the Leviathanlike authoritarian come to bring order to the chaos (and Miller's recent, and disputed, invocation of a president’s absolute 'plenary authority' would suggest that that’s the case), this is not how Trump understands his role; otherwise, he would be bolstering international institutions and multilateral relationships rather than trashing whatever and whoever does not serve his glory."

Gal Beckerman at The Atlantic writes about "the dog-eat-dog worldview of this administration."

And Rex Huppke at USA Today asks, "We're really doing another year of this?"

"A Combination of the Rich and the Ignorant"

"This combination is the embodiment of Hamilton's warning in 'Federalist No. 71' that the people are continually beset by 'the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it.' A demagogue with contempt for the Constitution, colluding with many of the wealthiest Americans on the promise that their wealth will be translated into political power and favors is just the sort of alliance that the Founders warned would corrupt popular government: that 'the people,' in Madison’s phrase, 'would be misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men.'"

At The Atlantic, George Thomas writes that today "the country is witnessing these three fears come together: a demagogue who unites the self-interested rich with the politically ignorant."

And Alexis Coe at Slate revists pertinent sentences cut from the final draft of George Washington's Farewell Address.

"We Presume We Understand It as Long as We're Not Asked to Explain It, but It Becomes Inexplicable as Soon as We're Put to the Test"

"As with climate change, however, the only thing more difficult than such an effort would be trying to live with the alternative. Whiteness may seem inevitable and implacable, and Toni Morrison surely had it right when she said that the world 'will not become unracialised by assertion'. (To wake up tomorrow and decide I am no longer white would help no one.) Even so, after 350 years, it remains the case, as Nell Irvin Painter argues, that whiteness 'is an idea, not a fact'. Not alone, and not without much work to repair the damage done in its name, it still must be possible to change our minds."

In a 2021 Guardian article, Robert P. Baird explores the "invention of whiteness."

"Dark Counterprogramming to the American Story"

"The most persistent conspiracy theories can survive on the fringes for decades, before suddenly reappearing with new details, villains and heroes, often at a time of social upheaval or economic dislocation. Sometimes, these beliefs can erupt into action, as they did on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of President Donald Trump's supporters broke into the U.S. Capitol."

David Klepper of the Associated Press writes that "Even Before The Revolution, America Was A Nation Of Conspiracy Theorists."

"Made It Express 'Timeless, Universally Binding Norms'"

"Once the Declaration had been issued, perceptions began to change. Black Americans were among the first to change them, notably the New England-based clergyman Lemuel Haynes. Soon after July 4, Haynes wrote 'Liberty Further Extended: Or Free Thoughts on the Illegality of Slave-Keeping,' an essay not published until 1983 but seen as reflecting the feelings of many in the Black community, with its call to 'affirm, that Even an affrican, has Equally as good a right to his Liberty in common with Englishmen.'"

Hillel Itelie at Associated Press discusses "[t]he long, ongoing debate over 'All men are created equal.'"

"Proved Too Weak a Mold to Reshape the Aristocratic Students Whose Formative Years Were Spent Resisting Any Form of Authority"

"The contradiction that proved most damaging to the University of Virginia was the unmanageably ruinous culture of the school's elite student body. Despite receiving state funding, the exorbitant costs of bringing Jefferson's intricate designs to life meant that UVA became the most expensive university in the country in the early nineteenth century. It also discarded Jefferson's ideal of providing scholarships for poor students. As a result, only the sons of the wealthiest families could afford to attend, and they brought with them the unrestrained arrogance, petulance, and violence of Southern slave and honor culture."

At The Bulwark, Nicole Penn reviews Andrew O'Shaughnessy's The Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind: Thomas Jefferson’s Idea of a University.

Gold from Dross

"In a world as compromised as ours, a soul so exalted was always destined for the Cross. Jefferson's Bible ends before the Resurrection, with Jesus crucified by the Roman occupiers, as the Gospels tell us he was. Jefferson’s austere editing turns the killing almost into an afterthought—a desiccated reiteration of Socrates' final encounter with hemlock, the simple consequence of having offended the wrong people. For Thurman, the Crucifixion was an emphatic lesson in creative weakness: by sticking out his neck and accepting the full implications of his own vulnerability, Christ had radically identified himself with the worst off. Those societal castoffs who could never get a break now had a savior, and a champion, and a model. This, for Thurman, is as great a teaching as anything that Jesus merely said. Where death, for Jefferson's Jesus, is an ending, for Thurman's it is a necessary precondition—just a start." 

At The New Yorker, Vinson Cunningham reads Peter Manseau's The Jefferson Bible: A Biography.

And Nicole Penn reviews Manseau's book at The Bulwark.

"Options Are Available"

"The Trump era presents a host of new challenges for evangelicals who believe in the Gospel—the 'good news' of Jesus Christ. The first step in addressing these challenges must come through a reckoning with our past. Evangelicals have taken many wrong turns over the decades even though better, more Christian, options could be found by simply opening up the Bible and reading it. We must stop our nostalgic gaze into a Christian golden age in America that probably never existed to begin with and turn toward the future with renewed hope. It is time, as the great theologian of hope Jurgen Moltmann taught us, to 'waken the dead and piece together what has been broken.'"

John Fea at The Atlantic presents a "very short history of evangelical fear."

"'Historians Can Never Forget That It Is a Debate They Are Interpreting'"

"Journalist and author E.J. Dionne once observed that we are a nation conceived in argument. None of these were more important than the meaning attached to the Constitution, which played such a central role in creating our sense of nationhood. I would caution my conservative friends from trying to hijack the meaning of the Constitution for their own ends by playing the trump card (no pun intended), that the founders were all in agreement with modern right-wing politics. How could this be true when they didn't even agree among themselves about how to interpret the Constitution? Instead, lets debate the issues of our day so the American people can make an informed choice without resorting to historically dubious claims."

Donald J. Fraser at History News Network asks, "What do historians make of originalism?"

"Race and Freedom Are of One Piece, Are Born at That Same Moment"

"The American Revolution is an extraordinarily important event in world history. And combined with the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, the revolutions in Latin America, this Age of Revolution transforms not simply our own nation but transforms the world as well.
"After the American Revolution, after the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Declaration of Independence, the presumption is that all men are created equal. Equality is the point. And what then has to be explained for the very first time in world history is inequality. And why inequality exists. In other words, if all men are created equal, why are some men and women still slaves?
"And the explanation for the persistence of slavery can be: 'Well, perhaps there is something wrong with that notion of equality.' In which case the whole notion of the post Revolutionary world, the whole notion of American nationality, is also wrong.
"Or the explanation can be: 'Perhaps these people who are enslaved are not quite men.' And of course that leads us to a whole sea change in terms of racial thought."

PBS, at its website for 2003's Race: The Power of an Illusion, offers an interview with historian Ira Berlin.

"Mutually Assured Massacre"

"In retrospect, I believe Lott's work and those who built upon it played a similar role in the post-Columbine evolution of the firearms debate. (And to be clear, I'm not equating them substantively. I'm talking about the need for a 'positive good' version of pro-gun advocacy.) Indeed, Lott's first article was published in 1997 and his first book More Guns Less Crime in 1998, just a year before the Columbine Massacre in 1999. Though his first work just preceded Columbine, it filled a critical, necessary role for 'gun rights' advocates in the post-Columbine world. The NRA wasn't always against all gun restrictions. In the 1980s and 1990s, it didn't oppose some very limited restrictions. That changed over the course of the 1990s, for a variety of reasons. Paradoxically, I believe one reason was the historic crime drop of the latter half of the 1990s. As long as crime seems out of control a lot of ordinary people want a gun to protect themselves, regardless of the larger societal impact, regardless of studies that might suggest you're more likely to be killed by your own gun than saved by it."

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo explains how the gun lobby developed a "positive good" argument.

Dead on the Fourth of July

"The importance of July 4 might have surprised some Founding Fathers. The Continental Congress declared freedom from Britain on July 2 and approved the Declaration of Independence on July 4. Most members signed the document in August.
"Adams thought Americans would remember July 2 as their 'Day of Deliverance' from Britain. In a letter to his wife, Abigail, he wrote, 'It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."

Melissa Etehad in the Los Angeles Times discusses the deaths of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe.

"Then There's That Other American Dream, the Numbed-Out, Dumbed-Down, Make-Believe World"

"Franklin Roosevelt: '[F]reedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.' The proposition goes deeper than sentiment, deeper than policy, deeper even than adherence to equality and 'the pursuit of happiness' as set forth in the Declaration. It cuts all the way to the nature of democracy, and to the prospects for its continued existence in America. 'We may have democracy in this country,' wrote supreme court justice Louis Brandeis, 'or we may have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.' Those few, in Brandeis's judgment, would inevitably use their power to subvert the free will of the majority; the super-rich as a class simply couldn't be trusted to do otherwise, a thesis that's being starkly acted out in the current era of Citizens United, Super Pacs, and truckloads of dark money."

Ben Fountain at The Guardian connects the American Dream to the "Fantasy Industrial Complex" in a 2016 article.

"May Be the Only Founding Father Who Wouldn't Be Baffled or Outraged by America as We Know It Today"

"During America's crucial first years, as the battles were fought to define American notions of freedom, and decide who should have it, Burr was the most powerful voice calling the young country to actually live up to its radical ideal of freedom for all."

In the wake of Hamilton-mania, Carey Wallace in Time defends Aaron Burr.

"Our Misguided Tendency to Blindly Worship the Constitution"

"Pennsylvania physician Benjamin Rush was less diplomatic. 'What is the present moral character of the citizens of the United States?' he asked during the ratification controversy. 'I need not describe it…. Nothing but a vigorous and efficient government can prevent their degenerating into savages.' 'Democracy,' he insisted, 'is the devil's own government.' By the late-1780s it had become conventional wisdom among political elites that, as Elbridge Gerry put it, 'the evils we experience flow from an excess of democracy.' The Constitution was designed to reverse the democratic trajectory of American politics.
"The problem with the economic interpretation, however, is that it tends to conflate elitism with selfishness."

Matthew C. Simpson at The New Republic reviews Michael J. Klarman's The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution.

"American Slavery Could No Longer Be Hidden From the Rest of the World"

"This was a rhetorical device, however, used to set up the glaring contrast between what the founders did for themselves and the condition of black people at that time. In 1776, he noted, many people viewed George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the others as dangerous subversives and insurgent upstarts despite British tyranny.
"However, with the hindsight of 1852, he said, it was no longer problematic to see 'that America was right, and England wrong.'
"Likewise, Douglass noted, in 1852, abolitionism was considered a dangerous and subversive political proposition. The implication here was that future generations would consider his anti-slavery stance patriotic, just, reasonable—and necessary."

Herbert Dyer, Jr., in Counterpunch discusses Frederick Douglass's "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro."

Christopher Wilson in Smithsonian investigates "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the life of Francis Scott Key.

And Robert G. Parkinson in The New York Times looks at slavery, Native Americans, and the Declaration of Independence.

James Livingston reponds to Parkinson at Politics and Letters.

"Hard to See and No Less Difficult to Imagine"

"The countless victims and occasional beneficiaries of Tambora's fury were oblivious to the volcanic roots of their circumstances, Dr. Wood noted, making the challenge of writing about it formidable and 'occasionally mind-bending.'

"More generally, he said, the revelation of global volcanic ruin—a portrait 200 years in the making—offers a kind of meditation on the difficulty of uncovering the subtle effects of climate change, whether its origins lie in nature's fury or the invisible byproducts of human civilization."

William J. Broad in The New York Times discusses the worldwide impact of the 1815 eruption of Mt. Tambora, "the most powerful volcanic blast in recorded history."

"A Monumental Mistake"?

"American Indians would have still, in all likelihood, faced violence and oppression absent American independence, just as First Nations people in Canada did. But American-scale ethnic cleansing wouldn't have occurred. And like America's slaves, American Indians knew this. Most tribes sided with the British or stayed neutral; only a small minority backed the rebels. Generally speaking, when a cause is opposed by the two most vulnerable groups in a society, it's probably a bad idea."


Dylan Matthews at Vox argues that Americans "should be mourning the fact that we left the United Kingdom, not cheering it."

"Hamilton’s Work, By Contrast, Reveals the Truth That for Capital, There Is No 'Outside of the State'"

"Even today, Hamilton's ideas about state-led industrialization offer much. Consider the crisis of climate change. Alas, we do not have the luxury of making this an agenda item for our future post-capitalist assembly. Facing up to it demands getting off fossil fuels in a very short time frame. That requires a massive and immediate industrial transformation, which must be undertaken using the actually existing states and economies currently on hand. Such a project can only be led by the state—an institution that Hamilton’s writing and life's work helps us to rethink."


Christian Parenti in Jacobin champions Alexander Hamilton, instead of Thomas Jefferson, as a progressive model.

"A Republic of Learning and a Learning Republic"

"It's become a conservative commonplace to argue that the Constitution establishes freedom of religion, not freedom from religion, but Stewart's eloquently argued book makes a strong case that freedom from religion is precisely what America's founders had in mind."


Wendy Smith in the Los Angeles Times reviews Matthew Stewart's Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic.