6/30/17
During
the Q&A period of a recent lecture, I was asked by a member of the
audience if I thought the United States and its Constitution would be
able to survive the upheaval of the first months of 2017. The substance
of the lecture was an analysis of the Trump administration and its
governance.
I
began my answer with a complicated subordinate clause, only later
getting to the verb, because I had to think as I went. The answer was
that I did not know because we were on somewhat new ground with strange,
unprecedented developments occurring on a daily basis. Therefore
perhaps no one really knew.
Almost
immediately I realized there was more to the question than my answer
suggested. So I spoke of episodes in American history that might have
caused people to ask the same question.
Surely,
I said, our founding parents had to have been somewhat uncertain during
the years between the end of the War of Independence and 1787, when the
seven articles of the Constitution -- which did not fall to the ground
from on high in their final form -- were finally ratified by 12 states.
Insufficient,
as it turned out, the U.S. Constitution needed amendments and, after no
smooth process, Congress produced 10 of them called "The Bill of
Rights," ratified on Dec. 15, 1791. A number of representatives and
senators came to see that, without the promulgation of such rights, it
would be possible for the new nation to become a kind of monarchy of
which they had only recently rid themselves.
Later
in the American experiment came the Know-Nothing movement in the 1850s,
which turned out to be a nativist political party -- anti-immigrant and
dedicated to what they called "pure elections," i.e. keeping "impure"
foreigners (many of them Catholic) from voting. It is said that an
argument with a Know-Nothing was like trying to converse with a full
brass section playing a Beethoven finale at triple forte. Along with the
pride of knowing nothing, does any of this sound familiar? The country
survived that with its Constitution intact.
Its
greatest challenge came next: the ruinous War Between the States that
left well more than 600,000 dead on Union and Confederate battlefields. A
bitter war it was, not only over slavery but economic jealousy and the
legitimate role of the federal government. Thanks to the steady hand of
Abraham Lincoln, America emerged from those terrible years tattered but
in one piece.
Jim
Crow was soon to follow and remains today among the dark places in our
national life, despite the 14th and 15th constitutional amendments
guaranteeing equal justice under the law and forbidding denial of the
vote based on race. Both of these amendments have been sorely tried. The
racial uprisings of the mid-1960s were a reaction to those times of
trial. By 2008, American voters had elected an African-American
president, though the noose reappeared here and there in otherwise
polite company and the sale of guns went gangbusters. Yet there was
nothing approaching a secession crisis over a president with black skin
even with the Ku Klux Klan lurking.
In
less stable countries, the Great Depression of the 1930s might well
have rent asunder its political fabric. That did not happen in America,
and there is little doubt that the labors of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
and his team made the difference there. Revolution of the kind history
has documented elsewhere was far from materializing. Just the same, the
Communist Party gained membership among Americans who had ceased to
believe that economic democracy worked except for the wealthy who had
been smart enough to get out of the market before the crash or simply
had more wherewithal that the bottom did not fall out of their lives.
A
generation later came the anti-Vietnam War resistance. One could feel
the red-hot anger against its waging, against the appalling loss of more
than 50,000 American military personnel. The war was Lyndon Johnson's
downfall, leading to the election of Richard Nixon, the first president
ever to resign the office under pressure not only from political
higher-ups but a disgusted populous. Collapse came closer than we might
think at this remove, but the Constitution survived and served as the
lubrication for a peaceful transition to a post-Watergate
administration.
So
now recurs the original question as to whether the United States and
its Constitution can survive the strain put upon both by Donald Trump
and his team of grotesques. The answer I should have given at first was
this: "America has suffered worse. The Constitution has seen the nation
through hell and back a number of times in the 230 years since its
formative articles were ratified. That's no guarantee for the next 230,
but, in the meantime, it is an enviable record."
* * *
On
behalf of my editor, the good folks at Constant Contact who send out
these essays at 6 a.m. ET each Friday and myself, I wish you a
thoughtful Fourth of July holiday.
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