"A Better Ex-President Than President"

"Businessman, Navy officer, evangelist, politician, negotiator, author, woodworker, citizen of the world--Carter forged a path that still challenges political assumptions and stands out among the 45 men who reached the nation's highest office. The 39th president leveraged his ambition with a keen intellect, deep religious faith and prodigious work ethic, conducting diplomatic missions into his 80s and building houses for the poor well into his 90s."

Bill Barrow of the Associated Press reports the death of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter.

Jos Joseph at The Hill writes that "Jimmy Carter was the Christian most politicians pretend to be."

Lindsay M. Chervinsky at The Bulwark adds that "Jimmy Carter redefined his legacy after his presidency."

But Jonathan Schlefer at The Nation contends that by "[t]urning sharply toward neoliberalism (before that term was commonplace) and weaponizing markets, [Carter] set the US economy on its path toward lousy working-class wages and steeper financial crises."

"The Idol of Origins Is an Attractive God Because It Tells Us What We Must Do"

"If the filibuster's opponents wish to avoid being misled by false gods they have to ask inconvenient questions. What about John Davis and John Quincy Adams? What about the 289 non-civil rights filibusters, far outnumbering measures focused on civil rights, that Binder and Smith also found between 1837 and 1992? Does the fact that the filibuster appears nowhere in the Constitution mean that it is unconstitutional? Has the Senate, our political system, or our deeply fractured society changed in ways that might make the filibuster in some form necessary or even desirable? Jentleson argues that the filibuster favors conservatives because they only need to stop things to accomplish their mission, while liberals need to do things. But does anyone doubt that Trumpist Republicans, if not conservatives, have quite a lot they want to do?"

Robert Elder at The Bulwark challenges the charge that John C. Calhoun created the Senate filibuster.

"The First Victim of American Imperialism"

"Many important figures of the epoch, with shame and regret, recognized its nature. That 'most outrageous war' (John Quincy Adams wrote) had been 'actuated by a spirit of rapacity and an inordinate desire for territorial aggrandizement' (Henry Clay), and began with a premeditated attack by President James Polk, thanks to which 'a band of murderers and demons from hell' were 'permitted to kill men, women and children' (Abraham Lincoln).

"After the naval bombardment of the civilian population of Veracruz, Robert E. Lee wrote to his wife, 'My heart bleeds for the inhabitants.' In his memoirs, Ulysses S. Grant lamented that he had not had "the moral courage to resign' from what, as a young officer, he had described as 'the most wicked war.' For a number of other politicians and thinkers, including Henry David Thoreau, the war contradicted the democratic and republican values on which the country had been founded and was opposed to basic Christian ethics."

Enrique Krauze at The New York Times writes about an effort to invalidate the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Paranoid Styles

"A contributor to the Hartford Courant declared that President Thomas Jefferson is 'the real Jacobin, the child of modern illumination, the foe of man, and the enemy of his country.'
"In the 1820s and ’30s, apprehensions about what the Masons were getting up to in their secret Lodge meetings fueled a national political movement. Former President John Quincy Adams (who had been defeated by the Mason Andrew Jackson) ran for governor of Massachusetts on the Anti-Masonic ticket in 1834. In his book 'Letters on Freemasonry,' he wrote that Masonry 'is wrong—essentially wrong—a seed of evil, which can never produce any good.' If the Illuminati had been feared for their irreligion, the Masons were condemned not just as freethinkers, but as occultists, Jesuits and even Jews of a sort. The anti-Masonic panic was followed in short order by the know-nothing era of anti-Catholic Nativism.
"And of course there is race."

Arthur Godwag in Salon connects past conspiracy theories to today's politics.

Young Man Eloquent

"Today, he writes a concise 109-character entry on the weather and his current location: 'Thick fog. Scanty Wind. On George’s Bank. Lat: 42-34. Read Massillon’s Careme Sermons 2 & 3. Ladies are Sick.'"

Amy Farnsworth of The Christian Science Monitor reports that the Massachusetts Historical Society has started a Twitter feed reprinting John Quincy Adams's diary of an 1809 trip to Russia.