Slavery and the Bible

It’s not a great commentary that both Christian abolitionists in antebellum America and slaveholders in the deep south used the Bible to justify and defend their positions.

White agitator John Brown, who led an attempted slave insurrection at Harper’s Ferry, W. Va., was a fire and brimstone, washed in the blood evangelical, yet, he, with biblical passages never far from his lips, was willing to die alongside his black brethren for the cause of abolition.

Meanwhile, bishop Stephen Elliott, of Georgia, and many others like him, including most southern elected officials and Confederate secession leaders, thought slavery was a positive good for Africans ripped from their communities – and often from their families – to do the work of the white masters:

Here is the very long-winded Elliott: Opponents of slavery should “consider whether, by their interference with this institution, they may not be checking and impeding a work which is manifestly Providential. For nearly a hundred years the English and American Churches have been striving to civilize and Christianize Western Africa, and with what result? Around Sierra Leone, and in the neighborhood of Cape Palmas, a few natives have been made Christians, and some nations have been partially civilized; but what a small number in comparison with the thousands, nay, I may say millions, who have learned the way to Heaven and who have been made to know their Savior through the means of African slavery! At this very moment there are from three to four millions of Africans, educating for earth and for Heaven in the so vilified Southern States—learning the very best lessons for a semi-barbarous people—lessons of self-control, of obedience, of perseverance, of adaptation of means to ends; learning, above all, where their weakness lies, and how they may acquire strength for the battle of life. These considerations satisfy me with their condition, and assure me that it is the best relation they can, for the present, be made to occupy.”

Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass saw clearly the cognitive dissonance that was so pervasive in this debate:

“Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity…”

Jesus never spoke a word against slavery, and Yahweh, of Old Testament fame, was practically complicit, so modern Christians, attempting to soften the blow and do their own interpreting, have claimed the slavery mentioned in the Bible amounted “merely” to indentured servitude, but nearly everyone, including the most learned biblically faithful readers of the entire 17th and 18th centuries, disagree with them.

Washington and the Supremacy Clause

Years before the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which led to the establishment of a strong central government, with its checks and balances on power and the critically important Supremacy Clause, elevating federal over conflicting state law, here is George Washington in his last circular as commander-in-chief from June 1783 (first quote marked in red):

“Washington and the American Revolution” by Esmond Wright (1962)

Three years later, on Oct. 31, 1786, he wrote this to “Light-Horse Harry” Henry Lee (second quote):

Let us have (a government) by which our lives, liberties and properties will be secured; or let us know the worst at once. … Precedents are dangerous things; let the reins of government then be braced and held with a steady hand, and every violation of the Constitution be reprehended: if defective, let it be amended, but not suffered to be trampled upon whilst it has an existence.

Washington was no politician, but having had first-hand experience from the war of how chaotic, unpredictable and ineffective localized leadership could be in providing necessary resources to his army during the American Revolution, he seems to have been wise enough to anticipate that if we, as a country, were to have a national government at all, it should be robust and should be able to stand above often-conflicting and self-serving sectional biases to meet the needs of the whole nation and that certain issues, especially those establishing civil “liberties” affecting the entire body politic, must be decided and enforced at the federal level, lest any individual states go rogue and try to adopt their own laws that subvert federal authority.

“Let … every violation of the Constitution be reprehended.”

The Supremacy Clause was a protection against the latter. An early notable example of its invocation was McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), in which the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had the power, under the “necessary and proper clause” of the Constitution, to establish a national bank, and Maryland did not have the right to tax the bank, pursuant to the Supremacy Clause and Congress’ enumerated right to tax and spend as it chose. The Supremacy Clause has been used many times since to establish the preemptive nature of federal law pertaining to civil rights, same-sex marriage, immigration, gun rights, marijuana legalization and more.

Esmond Wright, author of “Washington and the American Revolution,” notes that the general never wrote down a “coherent theory” on how the country should be run, despite being a key founder of it, and he obviously did not have the Supremacy Clause in mind exactly — there weren’t yet any states to have supremacy over to begin with when Washington wrote to Lee in 1786 — but the roots of it may be found in the above passages, for if the people did not have a government by which “properties and liberties will be secured,” if the central government did not have “supreme power” over the states, then its ability to enforce the securement of those rights would be tenuous at best.

The importance of the Supremacy Clause is hard to overstate. If states were allowed to subvert the Constitution and pass laws that ran counter to it, then the authority of our founding document would be nullified. Further, if states were allowed to pass any and all laws as they saw fit, regardless of their constitutionality, a chaotic, patchwork of statutes that may vary wildly depending on where one lives in the country would result. Worse still, without the clause, state legislators could threaten liberties that had already passed federal muster and potentially roll back decades of civil progress.

What would become the Supremacy Clause was later presented by Washington’s fellow Virginian Edmund Randolph in May 1787, but I can’t find another mention of the idea, or the germ of an idea, that predates Washington’s from the summer of 1783 and fall of 1786. John Locke refers to the legislative branch of government having “supreme powerwithin the government and the people having supremacy over the legislative, but the relationship between the fledgling nation and the individual colonies was completely unique at this point in world history, a dichotomy Locke could not have anticipated from his perch across the pond in the 17th century. And so here, in Washington’s early and rather unlettered political musings, even as the young nation was just then in the process of winning its independence from the mother country, lies one of the essential tenets of American political theory that has stood the test of time.

The Sins of a Nation

The United States is not the greatest nation on Earth. It’s not a great nation among many. In moral or ethical terms, it’s not even a good one. While there is indeed much that is positive about who we are as a nation and what we stand for — personal liberty; democracy by the people, for the people; hard work; perseverance; and innovation — from the context of history and current events, we are and have been, a failure.

And I am going to elaborate on this troubling reality, not to needlessly slam the country and its legacy, but because I genuinely want us to be better: more compassionate in our societal and political policymaking, more accepting of and loving toward everyone without exceptions and provisos, more open to progress, more concerned with leaving behind a bright future and a cleaner planet for future generations, more interested in science, more welcoming to immigrants and, perhaps more importantly, more embracing of our central axiom, “all men are created equal.”

Is America a Christian nation?

One of the main ideas that bring many to conclude that America is, indeed, a great nation is the set of principles that many hold dear, namely that the nation was founded on Judeo-Christian values, and by extension, this must make us inherently good. The idea comes mainly from Christian members of the Republican Party, but plenty of Democrats also believe it. Inherent in this argument, of course, is that the country is, by extension, morally upright because, well, how can a nation be founded on Christianity and not be moral?

I could make a completely different post arguing that the central tenets of Christianity, which include scapegoating, or letting someone else pay for the sins of another; compulsory love, God the father demanding that people love him or be threatened with eternal hellfire; and human sacrifice, are, in fact, hideously evil and come down to us from a barbarous age. You can click the links for more of what I’ve already written on the subject. Take these three evils, along with the Bible’s shameful record on mass genocide and slavery, and powerful evidence to conclude that neither Christianity or its god are a source of goodness. It’s actually the other way around. It is the people who believe in Christianity who are good in spite of what their religion teaches in a holy book. Yes, of course, Jesus supposedly said some nice things, but oddly enough, the Republican Party, which routinely claims for itself the moral high ground, has abandoned most of them.

Our second president, John Adams, rejected the idea that the United States was founded on Christianity, and so did our third president, Thomas Jefferson. And so do I.

The Founding Fathers were a mix of deists, Unitarians, Presbyterians and other denominations. The Declaration of Independence, which is not a legal document and shouldn’t be construed as such when arguing about the religiosity of America, contains only a couple vague references to a deity and has no mention of Jesus or Christianity. Almost every public document in this time period contained similar nonspecific references to God. The Constitution includes one reference to God, the customary “in the year of our Lord” sign off at the end, and anyone who claims this — the vaguest reference of all and the closest one can possibly get to having no reference whatsoever — as proof that we are a Christian nation or that the country was established on Judeo-Christian principles is grasping for straws in the dark.

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, outright denied the wonderworking power of Jesus, going so far as to reconfigure the Gospels to his liking, leaving what he considered the good parts and cutting out all references to miracles and the supernatural. The other founders were mostly churchgoers, as was pretty much everyone in the 18th century, but nearly all of them hewed to a rather subdued brand of faith than what has been considered evangelical Christianity in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The First Amendment statute to protect people’s ability to worship, or not, as they saw fit was important to Jefferson and the other founders. As Jefferson said in a letter to Elbridge Gerry in 1799, “I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.” Jefferson was said to have rejoiced when a proposal to insert “Jesus Christ” into the Virginia Statute preamble was defeated.

In his autobiography, he said:

(Freedom of religion was) meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it’s (sic) protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.

It is incontrovertible that we are now, as we were then, a Christian-majority nation, but the United States is obviously composed of many other religions and faith traditions, along with an increasing number of atheists, agnostics and non-churchgoers. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of people in America who are irreligious has grown from less than 10 percent in the 1970s to 26 percent in the last couple years.

Nonetheless, it is still very difficult for anyone who does not openly profess their Christianity to get elected to public office. Even John F. Kennedy, who took a lot of heat just for being Catholic — in the mind of many evangelicals, he wasn’t the right “kind” of Christian — refused to allow his faith to influence his public duty to the nation.

During a speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960, Kennedy said:

I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.

So yes, Christianity is still the dominant religion in America, and probably will be for decades to come, especially in the Republican Party. To this day, while many Democrats are certainly Christian, they tend to deemphasize their faith when it comes to making decisions, except in vague references to God in speeches or prayers, whereas Republicans usually wear their faith on the sleeves and openly use religion to influence how they govern, even though many of their own constituents do not follow the same faith.

To say that we are founded on Christianity full-stop, however, is to deny reality. Not only were we not established as such — our founding had more to do with the Enlightenment, governing principles from the motherland and political philosophy far predating the Revolutionary Era — we’re not a particularly moral nation either, and we never have been.

Make America … Good Again?

I have outlined why we aren’t a Christian nation or a good nation based on the dominant religion. What about based on history? I’m afraid the nation also gets an F in that category. Here’s a far-from-exhaustive laundry list of our “sins” (The word “sins” is in quotes because the idea of “sin” is a construct of religion, but it has value here in showing the seriousness of our collective crimes).

The United States and the founders protected the extension of slavery for 20 extra years in the Constitution. Many of the founders owned at least one slave. John Adams, bless his soul, owned none.

Our government subjugated native Americans after the colonists arrived and killed off many of them with guns and European diseases.

The nation fought a bloody war over the right of the South to continue the institution of chattel slavery, on which its economy was built, and at one time, the entire national economy, which was largely built on the backs of black folks. The North as well as the South profited from the “peculiar institution.”

After Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman and Co. crushed the rebellion, slavery by a new name called the Reconstruction was established by which many black people in the South returned to their previous subservient positions.

On Good Friday, of all days, Abraham Lincoln, the man who brought emancipation to 4 million black people, was murdered by a racist named John Wilkes Booth, thus punctuating the fact that bigotry and sympathy for the Southern cause was alive and well after thousands fought and died for four years defending both.

After a brief flicker of democracy in the late 19th century when black men in America got the right to vote, Jim Crow took root. A full 100 years passed — replete with voter suppression, segregation and lynchings — from the end of the Civil War to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when discrimination at the polls and segregation in schools and public places were officially outlawed, much to the chagrin of racists everywhere, like Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who would be revered by conservatives in my home state for decades to come.

One of the brightest beacons of love, hope and equality the nation had ever seen was extinguished on April 4, 1968, handing racism yet another victory in the long, frustrating and bloody march toward ultimate emancipation. Martin Luther King Jr. brought a message of peace and solidarity among all men and women, and he was killed for it.

Americans watched and laughed at shows like, “The Jeffersons,” “Sanford and Son” and “Good Times,” and perhaps some people secretly thought, “We’re making progress on race” now that all these black folks are getting high-profile spots on television. Meanwhile, systemic racism took hold across the next five decades, no longer the bold, firebrand bigotry of old, but the more insidious, viral kind that seeps into schools, police stations, courthouses and public seats of power. The federal government, state governments and local municipalities were all complicit.

America watched with either horror, vague sympathy or apathy as Rodney King was beaten in the early 1990s by cops in Los Angeles. In the subsequent years, Americans watched as unarmed black person after unarmed black person was either choked out or gunned down by overzealous or racist police officers. Many of us stood with Black Lives Matter and demanded change in the justice system. Many of us, far too many of us, however, did nothing. Many of us, like the current president, stoked racial tensions, and many of us dug in our heels on how our whiteness was superior to their blackness. Many of us turned our backs on our fellow Americans, and we abandoned whatever moral compass we thought we had, and by doing so, we abandoned our own humanity. No less than 21 race riots have occurred in this country since 1978.

At the same time the BLM matter demonstrations have been occurring, we have seen the true colors of a disturbingly large segment of the population, most of them claiming to be Christians and Republicans, yet apparently caring little for their own health or for the safety and well-being of their fellow citizens by refusing to wear face masks. Racism has brought the nation the most shame throughout history, but anti-intellectualism and selfishness is closely behind.

These grievances and trespasses against morality and ethics, among a people who declare so vigorously that faith, which they say is at the very center of morality, is such an important part of our lives and the national conscience, only cover issues related to race.

If we, as a nation, actually cared about people, we would have already made sure to take whatever steps necessary to end or drastically reduce hunger, poverty and homelessness.

If we, as a nation, actually care about people, we would have already happily accepted a little more in the way of taxes to ensure that every person has access to free health care. We would have already neutered the unfair and grossly mismanaged insurance industry. We would have already placed stop-gaps on the pharmaceutical industry’s runaway price-gouging practices.

Like Canada and many Western European nations, we would have already put in place a string of provisions that improve the health of well-being of every person in the country, not just white people or privileged people or rich people. If we, as a nation, actually cared about people, we would have already rooted out each politician, Republican or Democrat, who did not support the basic rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that every American should enjoy. It is a near impossibility to pursue any of them without fundamental things like safety, health and a fair wage.

That said, imagine Jesus looking out over the multitude of 5,000 hungry people before him, which, if the story even took place, was probably more like 10,000 or 15,000 because women and children didn’t count as people. Imagine Jesus seeing the people holding out their baskets in quiet desperation to sate their gnawing appetite. Imagine that he opens his mouth and says, “I can help you, but I won’t. You will have to fend for yourselves,” as he turns away and leaves them to languish in starvation and destitution. From a political standpoint, by failing to meet people’s basic needs with all the resources in the world to make it happen, this is essentially what we have done.

In ethical terms, we’re starving. We are supposedly the richest and most sought-after nation in the world, yet we routinely fail the most vulnerable among us. We fail the working class. We fail the poor. We fail the sick. We fail the uninsured. We fail immigrants. We fail children. And most of all, we fail black people. And we have failed every single one of these groups of Americans under the leadership of people who say they are Christians. This is even more true with evangelical Republican politicians, many of whom have presided over some of the most callous and harmful pieces of legislation the nation has ever seen in our 244-year history.

How good are we, really? How much do we, as a nation, actually care about people? I don’t mean some people. I mean all people. How has our status as a supposedly “Christian nation” moved the needle? It has not, and in some cases, it has moved the needle in the wrong direction.

I don’t offer any easy prescriptions; I am simply diagnosing the illness. The cure can be found in doing the opposite of all that I have laid out: in continuing to fight systemic racism, firebrand racism and subtle racism; in establishing compassionate economic and sociopolitical policies that raise all of the boats in society; in following the path of science and free inquiry; and in abandoning anti-intellectualism once and for all. When religion in the United States peters out or becomes irrelevant — and it will one day — the path forward toward a more just and ethical society will be found in secular humanism.

[Cover photo: A modified version of “Cross” by DeviantArt user Steinn-Hondkatur.]

Conservatism and the History of Voter Suppression in America

“State of Distress” by DeviantArt user cskelm.

President Donald Trump’s audacity apparently knows no bounds.

In a recent tweet, he threatened to withhold federal funding, amid a global pandemic no less, if Michigan did not cease its call to send out mail-in ballots to all of its 7.7 million residents so that, in the words of Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, “no Michigander has to choose between their health and their right to vote.”

The first thing that needs to be said is that, even if Trump doesn’t like the decision — it was issued from a Democrat, so, of course, it would raise his ire — there is nothing illegal about a state mailing out absentee ballots to its own residents. That is lie No. 1. In 2018, Michigan voters approved a “no excuse” constitutional amendment to allow any resident to apply for an absentee ballot for any reason.

Trump’s tweet, which has been liked by more than 120,000 people at present, includes two other falsehoods.

Lie No. 2 is that Michigan’s move has anything at all to do with an attempt at voter fraud. Trump has pushed this dishonest claim repeatedly, but it’s well-documented at this point that, while voting in person is obviously more secure than mail-in ballots, cases of absentee fraud have been few and far between. Michigan’s decision is about ensuring that people stay safe during the virus outbreak while being allowed to participate in one of this nation’s most cherished, and important, democratic processes.

Trump also suggested that he has the power to withhold state funding. He almost certainly does not. That might have been true if this was an authoritative regime, and I’m sure some of the people in power would like to quietly move us in that direction and give Trump all manner of unconstitutional privileges, but here in this democracy, the executive can’t simply invent powers. As The New York Times notes, the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, issued under President Richard Nixon, requires the chief executive to get approval from Congress before any money is withheld. In any case, a lot of the recently approved funding to states has already been released.

Trump also threatened, in a similar fashion, to withhold money from Nevada.

Cutting a state’s funding because they don’t do your bidding would be illegal. By threatening to do so, as Greg Sargent, with The Washington Post said, the president is “abusing his office and betraying the national interest.” Not only would Trump’s threat be illegal if put into action, it’s also undemocratic. Not that either of these bother the president.

Trump knows that in the upcoming election, he might be in trouble in Michigan. Attempts to prevent more people from voting is a tried and true part of the GOP toolkit. Current conservative strategies for limiting votes or asserting more influence in elections, including new restrictive laws and gerrymandering, are certainly more subtle in the 21st century than they were in the 19th and 20th centuries, but they are designed to achieve the same result. Republicans, and conservatives throughout American history, have long known that if they can somehow suppress votes, they have a better chance of winning. And why is that? Because conservatives have historically protected the interests of the few — the privileged and the well-connected (and usually white) — to the detriment of the many, including blue collar workers, immigrants, low-income families and those in the inner city.

Trump and his Republican cohorts know very well that the more they can suppress certain voters, the better chance they have of remaining in power. The president even admitted it. During an episode of “Fox and Friends” on Fox News, Trump was talking about measures that were proposed by Democrats to increase the number of people who could vote during the pandemic:

“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things — levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

And in November 2019, Justin Clark, one of Trump’s 2020 election advisors, had this to say in leaked audio captured by a liberal advocacy group:

Traditionally, it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places. …

Let’s start protecting our voters (regarding Election Day monitoring of polling places). We know where they are … Let’s start playing offense a little bit. That’s what you’re going to see in 2020. It’s going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program.

Clark claims this was taken out of context and that he was talking about historic, false allegations that the Republican Party suppresses votes — although the line, “let’s start playing offense” belies this argument — but when you actually do look at the historical record of how the conservative party in America actually is incontrovertibly guilty of widespread corruption at the ballot box, it becomes difficult to believe the president or anyone else in the Republican Party that their intentions are benevolent and on the up and up.

Slow Progress

Before the 15th Amendment became law, of course, the right to vote was more or less limited to white people who owned a certain amount of property. In the early 19th century, this began to change as restrictions were loosened in certain states. The constitutional amendment, ratified in February 1870, only allowed black men to vote. Black folks almost exclusively voted for the Republican Party, which was, crucially, the more liberal party in American politics at the time, while the conservatives mainly inhabited the Democratic Party. These dynamics didn’t begin to shift until around the year 1900 when “The Great Commoner” William Jennings Bryant, a Democrat, began to champion increased economic equality and railed against the robber baron class. Although he would later take an anti-Darwin, anti-intellectual stance and is known to many atheists and secular humanists mainly as a fundamentalist Christian, he set in motion the populist left movement en route to Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” platform, which was a kind precursor to Lyndon Baines Johnson’s “Great Society” programs of the 1960s.

But back in the 1870s with the passage of the 15th Amendment, the issue of voting rights for black people was far from settled. Politicians and former slaveholders in the South, who were reeling economically from the devastating effects of war and attempting to set up a form of slavery by a different name, Reconstruction began to take shape. Some black folks did get to vote, and some members of the black community even got elected to state and federal offices, but in many cases in the South, literacy tests and poll taxes were introduced as an attempt to control the numbers of African Americans who could vote. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camellia were formed to assert white influence in the nation and intimidate blacks and their supporters from participation in democracy and public life. [efn_note]”The Volume Library,” Volume II, Page 2239.[/efn_note]

Interestingly, three prominent Southern statesmen, Lucius Lamar in Mississippi, Wade Hampton in South Carolina and Alexander Stephens, the former vice president of the Confederacy, said in a public statement that denying black people the right to vote was “not only impossible but undesired,” according to “Origins of the New South” by C. Vann Woodward. Whether it is actually true or not, Hampton claimed to be the “first man at (sic) the South” to support enfranchisement for black folks, and went so far as to say that the black man, “naturally allies himself with the more conservative of the whites.” Lamar defended black voting rights and supported a plan to provide federal dollars to local schools “emphasizing the benefits for former slaves,” according to The Mississippi Encyclopedia. [efn_note]”Origins of the New South,” C. Vann Woodward, 1951, Page 321.[/efn_note] [efn_note]”The Mississippi Encyclopedia,” 2017, Page 704.[/efn_note] [efn_note]”Black Reconstruction in America,” W.E.B. Dubois, 1935, Page 443.[/efn_note]

But as Woodward notes, “The century had scarcely ended, however, before the prophecies of these statesmen were overturned throughout the South” as state after state rolled out disenfranchisement provisions through poll taxes and “other devices.”

That would largely remain the situation on voting rights until passage of the 19th amendment to the Constitution when women got the vote.

Full Access?

Probably seeing the writing on the wall and how the arc of history was progressing up to that point, and that they were, in fact, losing, white leaders in the South became even more committed to restricting access to the voting booth for black people, and thus, we have the marches, sit-ins and the battle for rights that ensued in towns like Selma, Miss., where civil rights supporters were hosed and beaten with clubs for daring to challenge the status quo. The crucial moment, 100 years after ratification of the 15th amendment, came with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, presumably giving black folks full access to the ballot box in practice, not just in theory. According to the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the bill was important to prevent some of the more egregious voter suppression offenses.

(The act) included provisions that required states and local jurisdictions with a historical pattern of suppressing voting rights based on race to submit changes in their election laws to the U.S. Justice Department for approval (or “preclearance”). In the ensuing decades, the preclearance provisions proved to be a remarkably effective means of discouraging state and local officials from erecting new barriers to voting, stopping the most egregious policies from going forward, and providing communities and civil rights advocates with advance notice of proposed changes that might suppress the vote.

In the ensuing years, young people were able to vote and new protections were put into place for foreign-language speakers and disabled people.

Undermining Democracy

Although both the Democratic and Republican parties have used the tool of redistricting to their political advantage at various times, it has consistently been the conservatives who have sought to strike a blow for voting rights and make it restrictive for more people to make their voices heard.

The blow came with blunt force in 2013 when the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision and with a conservative majority, removed the “preclearance” provision of the Voting Rights Act, to which liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg remarked, “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” The Atlantic said this decision “set the stage for a new era of white hegemony.”

The Voting Rights Act was only a starting point that was, itself, shamefully, more than 100 years in the making. As Trump is currently predicted to lose the popular vote once again, according to NBC News, we should probably expect more crowing from Trump and Co. about election fraud and additional methods, subtle as they may be, to try to prevent access to the ballot box.

The president may be called a “populist,” but little about the conservative platform or policies suggest that the party cares one whit about the will or interests of the people. They care about obtaining and retaining power. They can more effectively do that by undermining enfranchisement, which in turn, undermines democracy.

[Artwork credit: “State of Distress” by DeviantArt user cskelm.]

Repairing Our Democracy and a Return to ‘Republican Virtue’

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. — James Madison, “Federalist No. 51”

***

As those who have followed the debate about health care will remember, Supreme Court Justice John Roberts sided with four liberal judges in issuing a majority opinion that the individual mandate behind Obamacare, the key component of a bill that compelled uninsured people to become insured, was constitutional if it was viewed as a congressional tax. This critical moment punctuated decades of failure with regard to health care legislation and positioned Roberts as one of the more moderate, fair-minded judges on the bench in an age when partisanship and compromise were becoming a lost art form in politics. In essence, amid political rancor, when his fellow conservatives were fighting tooth and nail to obstruct Obama and his programs at every turn indeed, the Democrats rammed through Obamacare without a single Republican vote Roberts saved the legislation. Although the law was far from perfect, those with a forward-thinking vision realized that health care reform was desperately needed because of runaway costs and the fact that profit-minded, not patient-minded, insurance and pharmaceutical companies had acted with near impunity for half a century.

Life on the Fringe

Now that Senate Republicans have shirked their responsibility and voted to acquit President Donald Trump, despite most of them being in agreement that he committed impeachable offenses, to hold the man accountable and drive home the fact that no one is above the law, now that we have seen three years of the president of the United States attacking the press, attacking free speech, denigrating women and almost every ethnic group in the nation, suggesting that we shoot migrants and laughing about it, courting the support of white supremacists and further ginning up racial tensions across the country, not to mention the sustained threats to the constitutional rights of all Americans, perhaps now it is our democracy that needs saving. While I certainly don’t agree with Roberts on a lot of issues, repairing what has been damaged by Trump and the GOP will take people like him, conservatives and liberals, stepping up and doing the right thing for the betterment of the nation. We have had scant little of that kind of bipartisan action the last 10-plus years.

One could argue that while the political divisiveness has always been a prominent feature of government in America, it really picked up steam in the mid- to late-2000s with the advent of the Tea Party and the populist, know-nothing movement that began to take over the Republican Party and slowly move it away from the center under people like Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., to the fringe under newly christened stars of the GOP, an “every man” blue collar worker nicknamed Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin. Almost in lockstep, as the Republican Party turned away from the center, the far left did the same thing.

One really had a feeling that after Palin and presidential candidate John McCain lost the election and with the lofty “hope and change” message of unity and solidarity that Obama brought to his pre-election and presidential speeches, the passage of the Affordable Care Act and the Supreme Court decision to legalize gay marriage in all 50 states, it seemed that the nation may have turned a corner. But what actually happened is that Obama, either because of his liberal values, the color of his skin or some combination of those two, precipitated a kind of conservative backlash, made even more heated and insidious by the 24/7 Republican news cycle that piped in commentary that catered, and still caters, to the lowest common denominator of white, blue-collar fear. (The late John McCain, by the way, whiffed on picking Palin to run with him, but he was another example of a Republican leader with courage and integrity who could have worked to turn the nation more toward the center had he won the election. Before he died, of course, McCain also did not escape Trump’s ire, and Trump could not resist insulting the veteran even in death.)

In any case, the idea that we, as a nation, had turned a corner was an illusion, and when Donald Trump entered the national discourse prior to the 2016 election, the stage was already set. Existing quietly under the surface of all the progressive fervor during the Obama years lurked the prejudiced, anti-immigrant, anti-gay demons of our past. The populist right from the mid-2000s never went away, and in 2016, they found a new hero in Trump, despite having virtually nothing in common with the billionaire real estate mogul and reality TV star.

The Republican Party has fallen even further into the mire. As if failing to impeach a guilty president wasn’t enough, the current GOP and their president have attacked the country’s constitutional principles and core values at nearly every turn, from tripping over themselves to nominate Trump’s now-multiple picks after illegally refusing to provide so much as a hearing for Obama’s Supreme Court selection, to kowtowing to the president and letting him lie and make outlandish claims without censure, rebuke or recourse, and attempting to roll back protections in the First Amendment and using it as a tool to loosen regulations and increase discrimination.

Ironically enough, shortly before the Senate impeachment trial was about to commence and thus, shortly before Republicans in Congress were about to embarrass themselves again and take another turn away from justice, it was Roberts who offered some instructive words in what has been, by all accounts, a deeply troubling presidential term.

‘Debate and compromise’

In his annual report about the work of the federal courts, Roberts told a “sadly ironic” story about how John Jay, one of the co-authors of “The Federalist Papers,” along with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, was attacked by an angry mob in New York and because of his injuries, was apparently unable to continue contributing to the series of essays, which were written as a vigorous defense of the Constitution and the democratic principles of our republic.

Roberts wrote:

… We have come to take democracy for granted, and civic education has fallen by the wayside. In our age, when social media can instantly spread rumor and false information on a grand scale, the public’s need to understand our government, and the protections it provides, is ever more vital.

As Adam J. White, with the American Enterprise Institute, wrote about what Roberts had to say, the United States needed to display “self-restraint, goodwill, and moderation” in order to get back to a place of republican virtue,” which, according to the late Irving Kristol, means:

… curbing one’s passions and moderating one’s opinions in order to achieve a large consensus that will ensure domestic tranquility. We think of public-spiritedness as a form of self-expression, an exercise in self-righteousness. The Founders thought of it as a form of self-control, an exercise in self-government.

And this also includes

probity, truthfulness, self-reliance, diligence, prudence, and a disinterested concern for the welfare of the republic.

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsch, one of Trump’s nominees, added to these ideas when he said that we should

… talk to one another respectfully; debate and compromise; and strive to live together tolerantly. … (The) essential goodness of the American people is a profound reservoir of strength … cannot be taken for granted (and) … need(s) constant tending. … (We have) the duty of having to listen to and tolerate other points of view … (and) democracy depends on our willingness, each one of us, to hear and respect even those with whom we disagree.

These values have been all but lost in the current political climate, and by quoting conservative sources, I am, as a progressive, attempting to demonstrate that compromise, civility, the sharing of good ideas, no matter where they come from, and, yes, even, virtue, should transcend party allegiance if we are to return to a place where integrity in politics matters.

A Better Way

Integrity in politics matters to Mitt Romney, another Republican who gives me hope that politics in America isn’t a lost cause. Romney, who stood alone among the GOP in his public admission that Trump was guilty, made a stunning speech today outlining why the evidence compelled him to vote to remove the president from office, noting Trump committed “an appalling abuse of the public’s trust.”

If Romney’s actions were just an anomaly and integrity doesn’t actually matter anymore, if decorum and virtue don’t matter anymore, if American politics is just destined to become a vast, wild-west frontier of insults, flame wars and misinformation, then, by all means, we can continue on a path of intellectual dishonesty, tribalism and identity politics, where the national discourse gets more fragmented and where winning an argument for your team is more important than moving the nation forward in an ethical way that benefits everyone.

But if virtue in politics and government does still matter, as I hope it does, then it seems that both our elected officials and the electorate need to walk it back and ask: If this approach isn’t working and it’s not what can we do differently and how can we be better, individually and collectively? How can we compromise and work together to change the spirit of the conversation and make it more positive? Conservatives are not the enemy, and liberals are not the enemy. Partisanship and a failure to compromise. Cynicism and apathy. Cowardice. Dishonesty. Hypocrisy. And intolerance. These are the real enemies that haunt our republic.

[Cover image: “Checks and Balances” by DeviantArt user RednBlackSalamander.]

In Denial: Free Speech and Holocaust Conspiracy Theories

People are sick of the myths and alibis. — Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust”

***

A book that I am currently reading, “120 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature” by Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald and Dawn B. Sova, divides the works into four categories: books that were banned for political reasons, religious reasons, sexual reasons and social reasons. The book contains about 20 titles that I have already read and several that I would like to read in the future, including “All Quiet on the Western Front,” about World War I; “Andersonville,” about the Confederate-manned, Yankee prison camp in the Civil War and “The Satanic Verses,” by Salmon Rushdie, which resulted in a fatwa being issued on Rushdie’s life for supposed blasphemy against the Muslim faith.

While I may write additional blog articles on subsequent chapters in the book on censorship, I wanted to add a few thoughts about what undoubtedly is one of the controversial of controversial works in the whole collection — “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry” by Arthur R. Butz. Many books in the collection were flagged by various religious groups or school districts for either coarse language, racial stereotypes, political views or other controversial content. Butz’s work is a piece of revisionist history — to call it “revisionist” is being both generous and polite — claiming that the Holocaust and the systematic extermination of Jews in Germany and other parts of Eastern Europe was a “propaganda hoax.” Butz, who has a background in control sciences and electrical engineering — not history — is currently a professor at Northwest University, which has protected his right to espouse his personal views while condemning those same views.

It is to the credit of the authors of “120 Banned Books” that they don’t make value or moral judgments about the works they are describing. They simply provide a summary of the narrative arc of the novel or thesis of the nonfiction work, whichever is appropriate, and then outline in some detail the censorship histories of each work. The authors’ handling of Butz’s work is no different.

According to “120 Banned Books,” Butz’s contentions about a conspiracy theory related to the Holocaust are far and wide, and the book attacks nearly every major detail we know about the Holocaust — information, in other words, that makes the Holocaust one of the more egregious offenses against humanity in the history of, well, humanity.

Butz argues that the judges who worked during the war crime trials after World War II had already made up their minds about the presumed guilt of the defendants, which implies that the trials were unjust. Butz questions world Jewish population figures at the time of the planned extermination and the sources by which those numbers were devised. He writes:

… in the demographic argument for a five or six million drop in world Jewish population, the sources and authorities for the figures used are Community and Jewish and thus, essentially useless.

Butz contends that about 750,000 people were resettled from Germany to other areas, while many others died because of disease and starvation, not an attempted wholesale extermination. He said it was likely that a “fair number” died during the resettlements, while others relocated to others areas, like the United States and parts of Europe or the Middle East.

Typhus, Butz said,

plagued the German concentration camps since early in the war. A typhus epidemic at the Belsen camp, for example, is cited as the major cause of death, resulting from a “total loss of control” at the end of the war, not a “deliberate policy.”

noting that disease caught the Germans off guard, and they were unprepared to handle such catastrophic loss of life, which is presumably one reason, according to Butz, that so many piles of unburied bodies were scattered across the Germans landscape and the historical record.

Butz discredits the number of Jews the Germans supposedly killed, citing “inconsistencies and implausibilities” in estimates ranging anywhere from 750,000 to 7 million. He alleges that the area did not have enough crematoria to handle such a large influx of bodies.

As the authors of “120 Banned Books” point out, Col. Rudolf Hoss, who ran Auschwitz, confessed that 2.5 million people were murdered at that concentration camp alone. This was a revised figure. He previously claimed the number was 3.5 million. Needless to say, when killing human beings becomes almost as routine as your morning coffee or brushing your teeth, when women and children are treated like dogs, spat upon, called names, murdered and then are unceremoniously tossed into mass graves like their lives meant less than nothing on a daily basis, it’s easy to see how Hoss and other Nazi officials could have gotten confused as to whether the number of people killed at Auschwitz was 2.5 or 3.5 million in lieu of record keeping. In the calculus of human lives in the Nazis’ depraved sense of morals, what’s difference does a million lives here or there make? A million multiplied by zero is still zero.

But Butz goes farther. He claims that the infamous gas chambers were actually used to disinfect clothing in order to kill lice, which carry the typhus bacteria. This might be one of the more shocking and absurd claims. Here is Butz:

… all ‘survivor literature’, sincere or inventive … report the same basic procedure involved in entering a German camp: disrobe, shave hair, shower, dress in new clothes or in old clothes after disinfection.

Far from exculpating the Nazis for their role in the gas chambers, Hoss has testified that this was a lie concocted by the SS to fool the victims into willingly walking into their own death traps so, presumably, the guards would not have to go to the trouble of forcing them into the buildings. That said, I don’t know why this ruse was even necessary. Surely, the victims could see the writing on the wall. They saw the haggard appearances of their Jewish brethren. They saw the rampant sickness and hunger. They heard the screams. They were forced to march all over the German and Eastern European landscape, sometimes with no shoes or in extreme weather conditions, at the whim of the Nazis. The SS had no problems forcing the Jews to do other tasks, and many had to dig their own graves. So, marching or forcing them into the chambers should have been just as routine as the other mindless, inhumane things they did to the Jews.

Finally, Butz traces the figure that 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazi to various sources in articles from The New York Times and to the World Jewish Congress, which he said gave an estimation that there were 5,721,800 “missing” Jews to the International Military Tribunal. He claims the Americans and British embellished the numbers of Jews that were killed as a “propaganda basis for their war,” presumably as a way to gin up support to attack Germany and oust the Nazis.

***

I want to be careful to say that I am not presenting a comprehensive picture of Butz’s views as he lays them out in “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century.” Perhaps at some point in the future, I will read Butz’s full thoughts on the Holocaust, if it’s even worth my time — I’m not sure that it is — but in this blog entry, I think I have fully represented Butz’s view as summarized in the book on censorship, and lest someone claims that I have taken his views out of context, I think it’s fair to say these were clearly were Butz’s views, and the views of other Holocaust deniers, at the time he wrote the book, and as I understand it, these are still his views, namely that the Nazis had no state-mandated policy to exterminate the Jews, thus no “final solution;” that the gas chambers were not killing centers; that the Germans did not kill 6 million Jews; that the Jews who did die fell victim to starvation and disease; and that the trials of 24 top officials of the Third Reich after World War II were carried out unfairly on the presumption of guilt and their testimony was largely invalid.

Given enough time and space, I could dispute all of these views, but many people have done this before, and Butz’s arguments have been roundly criticized and debunked since the book’s publication in 1975. On the question of whether the Nazis received a fair trial and whether their confessions were given under duress, and can thus be discarded, I offer the following passage from the BBC:

This, however, ignores the fact that some of the more detailed confessions were written after the perpetrators had been sentenced to death. It also ignores the fact that many of the perpetrators described – sometimes in great detail – what happened, but insisted that they either had nothing to do with it or were forced by their superiors to participate.

Thus this argument fails to take into account the statements of Nazis such as the Commandant of Birkenau concentration camp, Rudolf Höss, who described the mass murders that took place in his camp in a document written after he had been sentenced to death. It also fails to account for Adolf Eichmann who, in the memoir he wrote during his trial, spoke of the gassing of the Jews.

It also fails to take into account, as Daniel Jonah Goldhagen does in detail in “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” the large number of everyday Germans — local police officers, civic leaders and church officials who either openly supported the wholesale persecution and murder of Jews in Germany and elsewhere in Europe — who were fully on board with the Nazi regime’s plan and even took part in some of the killings themselves, either directly or indirectly. Although Goldhagen’s book was published 20 years after “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century,” one could conclude, without even considering the reams of first-person testimony we now have about how utterly devoted much of the German collective was or how devoted they eventually became to antisemitism and the extermination project, that it would be impossible to fabricate such large numbers of photos of mass graves, physical evidence attesting to the “final solution” and Nazi propaganda material and meeting minutes that document the Third Reich’s intentions to eliminate the “Jewish problem,” not just to resettle them elsewhere.

More than that, it would be impossible to imagine a scenario in which the Nazis could have carried out their heinous acts in a vacuum without widespread support from the populace. The sheer scale is unprecedented and had to have involved much of the entire country. If that is hard to fathom, that an entire country could be caught up in an antisemitic and murderous fervor, one only need consider the embedded hate against the Jews that began centuries before with the death of Christ and continued into the early 20th century. The Germans and other antisemites branded the Jews as Christ-killers, even though the Romans ultimately killed Jesus, at least as the story goes in the Bible, and in Hitler’s time, they were largely blamed for the economic recession that struck the poor and working class people of Germany. Antisemitism was deeply embedded, not just in Hitler’s Third Reich government, but in the entire nation. It was a powerful, destructive force. The idea that the final solution was a manufactured genocide in order to start the war is belied by the evidence, both cultural and actual.

Nonetheless, as offensive as Butz and the Holocaust deniers claims are, not only to Jews, but to lovers of humanity who think all life is valuable regardless of sex, gender, race or religion, the entire point of a book like “120 Banned Books” is to suggest that we must protective people’s right to be offensive, and we must protect people’s right to, if they choose, counter the offensive material with either mockery or facts. The prohibition of thought does not move society forward; in fact, it acts as a regressive force, and as we know, the repression of thought has led to and fed some of the most dictatorial regimes in history.

Butz continues to be employed at Northwestern because in the college and in this nation, and others that value free thought and expression, supports his right to speak his mind, whether we think he’s wrong or not. I will end with a statement from Northwest University’s former president Henry S. Bienen, who served in that role for 14 years before retiring in August 2009:

Northwestern University Associate Professor Arthur Butz recently issued a statement commending Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s assertion that the Holocaust never happened. Butz is a Holocaust denier who has made similar assertions previously. His latest statement, like his earlier writings and pronouncements, is a contemptible insult to all decent and feeling people. While I hope everyone understands that Butz’s opinions are his own and in no way represent the views of the University or me personally, his reprehensible opinions on this issue are an embarrassment to Northwestern.

There is no question that the Holocaust is a well-documented historical fact. … Butz is a tenured associate professor in electrical engineering. Like all faculty members, he is entitled to express his personal views, including on his personal web pages, as long as he does not represent such opinions as the views of the University. Butz has made clear that his opinions are his own and at no time has he discussed those views in class or made them part of his class curriculum. Therefore, we cannot take action based on the content of what Butz says regarding the Holocaust – however odious it may be – without undermining the vital principle of intellectual freedom that all academic institutions serve to protect.

[Cover image credit: “Holocaust Memorial” by DeviantArt user Good Mythical Miles.]

I was inspired by what the artist behind the artwork above had to say about the tragedy of the Holocaust and thought it was apropos to share part of it here:

I drew this, it’s supposed to be in reference to the dehumanization of the Jewish people in the concentration camps and their fight to retain their identity. There’s a lot of tiny things in it inspired by details in the class lectures and the books we read, but the biggest one is that the numbers are supposed to be projected onto the sculptures from a distance, so the viewer blocks the numbers from reaching the figures and instead sees them on their own person, and becoming part of the piece themselves.

Reclaiming the Dream

Being a product of white America in the South, lacking historical perspective and maybe even some early prejudice, I’m ashamed to say that I did not grow up with a lot of admiration for Martin Luther King Jr. Each February when Black History Month rolled around, and usually at no other time throughout the year, I heard about King’s dream for a more equitable society, one in which, even in the Deep South, black children and white children could play together in harmony and mutual admiration and respect. I heard about his call for equality at the ballot box, in the workplace and in retail stores and restaurants throughout the nation. I heard the high rhetoric and remember actually saying, probably simply parroting the opinion of an adult, that, sure, King dreamed big, but what did he actually do to make the nation better?

The ridiculous arrogance and ignorance of that question became apparent to me when, a little later in life, I began to learn about MLK in college and on my own time thereafter. Consequently, I studied Civil War history, and to whatever extent it is related, Civil Rights Era history at Clemson University in northwestern, South Carolina. Clemson can’t escape its checkered past. It has for one of its founders a racist firebrand by the name of “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman, along with a hall named in his honor.

The college is home to the Strom Thurmond Institute for Government and Public Policy, which is named for one of the staunchest pro-segregation, anti-civil rights politicians of the 20th century and a true enemy of progress. And for some good, old-fashioned, southern-fried symbolism, as it was pointed out to me by a professor of mine when I was a student there, the sidewalk design near the library that proceeds to run above the Strom Thurmond center, which is underground, is in the shape of the Confederate battle flag’s stars and bars.

And so, as a student, I was aware of the debate surrounding how educators and students, past and present, reconcile what many consider to be the age of the New South — not abandoning the past, but learning from it and fostering a more progressive, inclusive track record on race and culture — in short, how to honor the past but move forward from it into a new era.

After college, I began working at a newspaper about an hour north of Clemson in a quaint town called Clayton, Ga. Here was an interesting mix of wealthy, white Republicans and Democrats, a smattering of black folks, including the chief of police at the time, and a not insignificant Hispanic population. In spite of that eclectic mix of people, the county was mostly populated by local white, low- to middle-class residents, who valued school, church and community. Essentially, this was an even more conservative place than Clemson, but it was here, ironically, that I went even deeper into my research on the Civil War and the push for equality.

I also fully abandoned conservatism because, as I saw throughout American history, it was conservatism that fostered an atmosphere of secession in the 19th century — my home state being the first to leave the union and the last to rejoin after the Confederacy lost the war — it was conservatism that largely led to the failure of Reconstruction, the Black Codes and Jim Crow after the Civil War, and it was conservatism in the early- to mid-20th century which spoke out so vehemently, and sometimes punctuated by violence, against equal rights and equal protection under the law for women, blacks and other historically marginalized groups. I don’t think conservatism alone is a problem, but I think conservatism created the atmosphere, and is still creating the atmosphere, by which some of the most pernicious ideologies in American history could flourish, much to the detriment of our national character and collective conscience.

I had read W.E.B. Dubois’ lyrical work, “The Souls of Black Folk” while at Clemson, but it was here in Clayton that I picked up Dubois’ much longer and detailed book, “Black Reconstruction in America,” which outlined, in painful detail, the part that black people played, as the subtitle suggests, “in the attempt to reconstruct Democracy in America.” I read books and information on people like white abolitionist John Brown, who, terrorist though he was, fought alongside his black brothers for their freedom, which he saw as a right consecrated from on high. I read about white abolitionist newspaperman, William Lloyd Garrison, who wrote vigorously and tirelessly, often at risk to his personal safety, on the importance of racial equality and ending the “peculiar institution.” I read about the lives of slaves and about slave religion and how, just as many slaves found comfort in the story of the Pharaoh’s enslavement of Israel and their subsequent freedom and the story of Jesus, plantation owners and supporters of slavery used the same scripture as justification to keep their property in shackles, since the Bible both condones slavery and offers no rebuke to chattel slavery. I read books on the sometimes tense, but working relationship, between Lyndon Baines Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr. in the run-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and LBJ’s “Great Society” programs that were designed to address issues in education, urban development and housing, transportation, employment and other areas.

And finally, with all of this as context, I come to MLK himself. So, what did he do, to answer my own question from 25 years ago, that specifically warrants honoring him year after year, to rewatch or reread his speeches, to shed new tears over the high-minded, courageous path that few people on earth ever walk?

First, this adoration for the man is not in the least an obligatory gesture, and I would say that if we are only thinking of MLK one day out of the year, or at most, for one month — the shortest month at that — we are doing the man, his legacy and what he stood for a grave disservice. Indeed, given the current environment of prejudice in the highest office in the land and the sustained bigoted remarks that began when Trump was a candidate and has continued to this day, the institutional racism that pervades the justice system and the overarching hostile position our nation has taken against legal and illegal immigrants the last few years, the need to remember what King stood for, how he remained above the fray and elevated a nation and what he accomplished in life and death, the need to recommit ourselves individually and as a nation to reclaiming his dream is as important now as it’s ever been.

The following is a short list of reasons why we honor King today and throughout the year.

Nonviolent resistance

King brought the idea of nonviolent protests to the forefront of America’s conscience in the tradition of Mahatma Gandi. Whereas some justifiably angry black and white activists thought the best way to enact change was through a strong-arm approach, King and his nonviolent protesters appealed to and pricked America’s collective conscience with what he called “soul force.”

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protests to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny.

Cynthia Tucker, a black columnist working at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the same time as when I got my start at the newspaper, has argued that Black History Month is a relic and we should not just remember the accomplishments of black leaders during one month out of the year, and she argues, echoing King, that the history of black folks in America is inextricably linked to American history writ large.

In short, black history is our history.

First president of the SLCC

It feels kind of silly pointing out the more obvious parts of King’s life and legacy, but as the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King was instrumental in helping to start the political action organization after the Montgomery bus boycott of the mid-1950s to begin a series of other nonviolent protests across the South to facilitate and support desegregation of public spaces and numerous freedom movements across the nation.

Before the March on Washington, the organization perhaps saw its biggest win come in Birmingham with its goal of desegregating the downtown area. This series of nonviolent sit-ins of businesses that previously denied access and service to black residents was met with a disturbing level of violence by local police under the leadership of Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety Theophilus “Bull” Connor, who, through his virulent opposition to equality and commitment to segregation, came out looking like a true villain, attempting to squash protests with violence and intimidation. In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” King writes to local clergy about why that was a time for action in Birmingham:

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. … Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights.

The march

The full name of the famous event, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, drew somewhere between 200,000-300,000 people and apparently went off without a hitch and without violence or skirmishes. It was organized by King, James Farmer Jr., with the Congress of Racial Equality, Roy Wilkins, with the NAACP, John Lewis, with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and others as a push toward desegregation nationwide and more equality in the workplace and in culture. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was brilliant for the way in which it positioned America’s highest ideals in, not just religious terms, to which many Americans, then and now, understand and relate, but in foundational terms. It explained that the nation has yet to fully grasp the full measure of Thomas Jefferson’s famous line from the Declaration of Independence, that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream today. … I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. 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. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountain side, let. freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

King then ended his speech with some of the most stirring lines ever uttered in American history that thundered back through time and continue to reverberate to the present.

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaeeous slopes of California.

But not only that. Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountain side. Let
freedom ring …

When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,”Free at last, free at last, great God almighty, we are free at last!

In October 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in racial justice and nonviolent resistance, and the next year, he helped organize perhaps the second most significant march of the civil rights era, the march to Selma en route to Birmingham to protest inequality and advocate for voter rights. This is the march in which John Lewis, and many other nonviolent protesters, got hosed and beaten by members of the Alabama state police. The incident became a powerful symbol for nonviolent resistance and led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Fifty years later on March 7, 2015, Barack Obama, the first black president in United States history, delivered a speech to commemorate the famous march. I was watching the moment on CNN that day, and I can tell you, seeing Obama’s presidential motorcade rumble over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which was named for a former grand wizard of the KKK, was one of the most powerful and enduring images of racial progress I have ever seen, and it’s something I won’t soon forget.

The legacy

As we know, King was killed April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tenn., as he was in the process of planning an occupation of Washington, D.C., called the Poor People’s Campaign. On April 3, probably seeing the writing on the wall and seemingly foreseeing his own untimely end, based on the hate that had been generated against him from the conservative right in the South and elsewhere, he delivered his final, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” speech, an extremely powerful affirmation of this nation’s First Amendment rights.

… Somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.

Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we aren’t going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren’t going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.

And then, like a lightbulb going off in his mind, he turned inward and one could see tears welling up in his eyes as he could see the end peering him in the face.

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.

And I don’t mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I’m happy, tonight.
I’m not worried about anything.
I’m not fearing any man!
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!

And in that moment, he looked completely spent, as if all of his emotional fervor and rhetorical power had all been used up in preparation for the next day’s events. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech has gone down as the most important of his career, but the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech was the most vulnerable moment of King’s public career in my view.

King was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work in civil rights, and MLK Day was established in parts of the nation in 1986. Not until 2000 did all 50 states celebrate the holiday.

So, what of his legacy? Despite the almost obsessive efforts of J. Edgar Hoover to discredit King, expose his supposed marital infidelities and paint him as a communist, King was central in putting pressure on LBJ and other leaders in Washington to get the ball rolling on the Great Society programs and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made discrimination based on sex, gender or race illegal. Shortly after King’s death, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was passed. It’s hard to underestimate the impact of these programs on American politics and culture. While they weren’t perfect and while racism and discrimination were far from resolved in King’s lifetime — they are still far from resolved now — these were obviously landmark achievements that may not have been possible without King’s persistence, intelligence, courage and unshakable faith in humanity. Working in tandem with his dedication to nonviolence, King was also against the disastrous war in Vietnam.

I have said all of that to say this: I might not have known much about MLK and Civil Rights starting out in high school and the early part of college, but the more I learned, the more convinced I became in adult life that wherever we go as a nation, we must go together as different people unified in mutual respect and understanding and be committed to the idea, even if previous generations were not, that all men, all human beings, are created equal — full stop — without qualifiers and without exception.

We must be committed to the idea, the idea for which King gave his life, that there is no white America or black America. There is only one America. And while in this era of blatant bigotry and hostility to immigrants spearheaded by Trump and his largely white, unlettered supporters, we can’t give in to apathy. We must believe that we will overcome ideologies that attempt to divide us and that we will overcome racial prejudice and injustice and create for ourselves a better tomorrow. Perhaps King’s greatest legacy to us, then, was that he offered more than a dream. He opened a door so that we could begin the long march toward its ultimate realization.

[Cover image: “I Have a Dream” by DeviantArt user Rachel Laughman.]

Why I’m not celebrating July Fourth

Not to rain on all the parades and fireworks, but I honestly don’t know what it is we’re supposed to be celebrating.

We are being led by the most incompetent, cruelest administration since Andrew Jackson and Co. shipped out the Native Americans. We elected Donald Trump into office via a democratic process after he got finished insulting nearly every voting bloc in the nation, including blacks, Hispanics, women and the disabled.

We are now a nation that treats Hispanics at the border — innocent people who are seeking opportunity and a better life for their families and away from gang violence, drugs and poverty — like common thugs and criminals, although illegal immigration itself is just a misdemeanor.

We are now a nation that castigates grown men for exercising their right to protest police violence against unarmed black people, leading to an asinine decree from the NFL that received gleeful support from the dear leader.

We have, indirectly or otherwise, handed the regressive party, the GOP, the reins to all three branches of government, the same party that illegally refused to consider Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court — Merrick Garland was a centrist by the way — and now that Mitch McConnell is most likely going to go against his own rule and rush through Donald Trump’s pick, the party is threatening to rollback decades of hard-won progress on equal rights before the next election.

The same party that spent eight whole years, not legislating or leading, of course, but cock-blocking everything Obama tried to do purely out of bitterness and spite. The same party that left thousands of people, mostly black folks, high and dry in New Orleans. The same party that led us to war against Iraq under false pretenses. The same party that married itself to the Moral Majority, corrupt corporations, Big Pharma, the coal industry and the gun lobby.

The same party that is currently doing little to improve life for Americans, and in fact, is making it worse in most sectors, amid ongoing concerns in health care, immigration, the environment, the national debt — the highest its ever been under leadership of the self-proclaimed “fiscally conservative” party or under any other administration — and the general contempt Trump has fostered for us the world over, except, of course, in Russia and North Korea.

Our GOP-led Congress is largely bought and paid for by the NRA. We are a nation that, despite how many children die from loons with guns year after year, does absolutely nothing about the problem, as people cry about their precious Second Amendment rights — no matter that the amendment was written in the fucking 18th century when the founders could not have anticipated the widespread proliferation of machine guns and weapons of war in civil society.

Once claiming to be a man of principle, our House Speaker, Paul Ryan, has suddenly gone silent, as his party runs roughshod over people’s rights, wages war on the media and refuses to criticize Trump for his hundreds of lies, half-truths and bullying tactics.

Trump’s rise to power and charged rhetoric has stirred the base into a frenzy of outright bigotry and nationalism. No longer relegated to some corner of their mother’s basement and shamed into the darkness by the march of progress, these people are now out and proud about their insufferable intolerance. They need to crawl back into the cellar.

As a general statement, the Democrats are weak-kneed, aren’t that much better than the GOP and have their own problems kowtowing to corporations and special interests. The party shamelessly and purposefully derailed Bernie Sanders’ campaign in favor of Hillary, who was too contentious a figure to win anyway, and caused its own rift between mainstream liberals and the progressives, thus paving the way for someone like Trump to pick up the far-right populist mantel of the old Tea Party, although his followers were too duped to realize they were voting against their own vested interests.

The more Trump screws up, the more reasons we have to be optimistic that a new guard will be voted into Congress, but like most things, it will probably get worse before it gets better. This is serious business, and we have little cause for celebration.

I wonder at what point — after we cede more of our rights; dismantle health care; continue the war against the media and free speech; refuse to heed the warnings of scientists about climate change and deny the truth of global warming; erode the wall between church and state; make life harder for blacks, women, Hispanics, and low-income Americans; and keep flirting with nationalism and fascism — will we simply get fed up with the clown running the circus and the know-nothings who enable him?

We have lost the plot, brothers and sisters, and I think we should put down the hot dogs and beer for a few minutes today and take a long, sobering look inward.

[Image credit: “You’re Doing It Wrong” by DeviantArt user pagit.]

Religion played ‘key’ role in social evolution?

Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar and a team of researchers at Oxford University revealed during a recent American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting a new and frankly, rather confounding theory suggesting that religion played an integral part in the social evolution of human beings, as reported in The Washington Post’s article, “A scientist’s new theory: Religion was key to humans’ social evolution.”

As this hypothesis goes, religion, with its communicative and interactive elements, helped to drive the social development and bring people together in important ways through singing, traditional rituals and customs and shared experience. Dunbar has argued that these religious components release endorphins, which, in turn, support feelings of in-group closeness and togetherness. According to Dunbar:

You need something quite literally to stop everybody from killing everybody else out of just crossness. Somehow it’s clear that religions, all these doctrinal religions, create the sense that we’re all one family.

Dunbar is best known for coming up with a sociological system known as “Dunbar’s number,” which is a tally for how many connections humans can maintain at any given time. For instance, he has argued that we can maintain ties with five intimate friends, 50 good friends, 150 friends more casual friends and as many as 1,500 acquaintances. He posits that his number is so high for humans largely because of religion. Here is The Post:

And then Dunbar turned to figuring out why Dunbar’s number is so high. Did humor help us manage it? Exercise? Storytelling? That riddle has been Dunbar’s quest for years — and religion is the latest hypothesis he’s testing in his ongoing attempt to find the answer.

“Most of these things we’re looking at, you get in religion in one form or another,” he said.

I doubt I will be the first to point out that his proposition on the role of religion on social evolution suffers from multiple fatal flaws.

First, and perhaps most obvious, is that the social evolution of humans began many millions of years before religion. Earliest estimates indicate that developing humans did not begin what we might consider religion activities (i.e. the ritual burying of the dead) until 100,000 ago or slightly earlier.

Matt Rossano, a psychology professor with Southeastern Louisiana University, in his paper, “The African Interrugnum: The ‘Where,’ ‘When,’ and ‘Why’ of the Evolution of Religion,” argues that the evolutionary foundation for religion began between 60,000-80,000 years ago:

A crucial aspect of their (anatomically modern humans’) increased sophistication was religion. It was during the time between their retreat from the Levant to the conquest of the world (The African Interrugnum) that their religion emerged. Using archeological, anthropological, psychological, and primatological evidence, this chapter proposes a theoretical model for the evolutionary emergence of religion — an emergence that is pin-pointed temporally to the ecological and social crucible that was Africa from about 80,000 to 60,000 ybp (years before present), when Homo sapiens (but for the grace of God?) nearly vanished from the earth.

Even before that, scientists have concluded that our primate ancestors coalesced around a common cause for the purposes of hunting, staying alive and yes, some kind of primitive form of socializing and even levity in between meals and child rearing. All things considered, I would even go so far as to argue that since religion has only been around for a such a short period of our common history based on the vast stretches of evolutionary time — tens of thousands of years versus millions — that it can hardly be considered as having been a major factor in the social evolution of humans. Although it might have brought some level of “sophistication,” as Rossano points out, religion was a late bloomer on the horizon of humanity.[pullquote]Religion was a late bloomer on the horizon of humanity.[/pullquote]

***

If The Post article accurately reflects what Dunbar thinks on religion, a couple other parts of this article are wide of the mark.

In the first quote I posted here, Dunbar suggests early humans would have just torn each other apart limb from limb in wanton displays of aggression and bloodletting were it not the moderating influence of religion and doctrine in these early human communities. Intergroup aggression and nearly endless quarrels over land and resources were hallmarks of early societies and are well documented, but even within individual communities, certainly males acted with hostility and jealousy toward other males who might threaten to wrest their mates away from them.

Even so, the sense that “we’re all one family” inside a particular tribe or culture was largely rooted in place — in the particular spot that group had captured or settled and called home, not in religion. At least in more modern ancient times, gods were viewed as distant and inaccessible. All of the other elements of religion, like singing, dancing, rituals and burial and mating practices, were secondary to maintaining and protecting whatever the concept of “home” meant for them.

Dunbar also seems to draw too close of a connection between religion and singing, as if religious worship has a monopoly on being able to evoke emotion and draw people together. Here is another quote:

What you get from dance and singing on its own is a sense of belonging. It happens very quickly. What happens, I suspect, is that it can trigger very easily trance states. Once you’ve triggered that, you’re in, I think, a different ballgame. It ramps up massively. That’s what’s triggered. There’s something there.

One can’t read this quote from Dunbar without wondering if he has been to a secular music concert in his life because if he had, he would realize that hearing an inspirational and uplifting rock anthem or a love song or a ballad produces precisely the same kinds of emotions as one can experience inside the walls of a church or in a kind of spiritual “trance.” Suggesting that singing and dancing in the name of religion is any more meaningful or creates anymore of a sense of belonging than doing these activities for their own sake or with friends or loved ones in a moment of innocent revelry seems like too far of a leap from one hypothesis to the next. These can be, and have been for millenia, enjoyed in and of themselves independent of any admonishments from heaven.

Women dancing on a vase in the Museo Borbonico, Naples.

Women dancing as depicted on a vase in the Museo Borbonico, Naples.

Completed reading list: 2011-2015

Since at least 2011, I have, along with a former co-worker, kept a list of books completed each year, along with dates, the number of pages per book and the number of pages per year. My cohort has since changed jobs and moved to a different state (as have I), so we haven’t really continued what I previously dubbed as our friendly office read-off between the two of us, but I have continued my own list. Here’s a brief recap: In 2012, I read about 5,000 pages, and in 2013, the total came to 7,616. Last year, I managed 7,925 pages.

This year, since I haven’t had the influence of Blake in my ear five days a week in quite awhile — he seemed to inspire me to read more nonfiction — I have reverted, if “reverted” is the right word, to my old ways of reading more fiction than history, but I still mixed in several substantive nonfiction works. My favorite nonfiction book for 2015 was “Ratification” by Pauline Maier (my second reading), and in fiction, my pick is “O Lost” by Thomas Wolfe, which is the unabridged version of “Look Homeward, Angel,” the epic semiautobiographical work set in a fictionalized Asheville, N.C.

The reason I have continued keeping a detailed list of books, including dates and page counts is because it challenges me to try to read more each year, and I can track how specific interests have changed over time. Following is my list for this year — I just finished my last book today — and for posterity’s sake, I’ll go ahead and post lists for the previous four years, with page totals, completion dates, etc.

2015

1. “Game of Thrones” Book II by George R.R. Martin; started November 2014; did not finish by Dec. 31; 194 pages in 2015.
2. “Demons” by Fyodor Dostoevsky; started Jan. 10, 2014; finished Jan. 25; 681 pages.
3. “Dark Bargains: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution” by Lawrence Goldstein; started Jan. 21; finished Jan. 31; 195 pages.
4. “Ratification” by Pauline Maier; started Jan. 31; finished Feb. 25; 768 pages.
5. “The Ghost Writer” by Phillip Roth; started Feb. Feb. 21; finished Feb. 24 (?); 131 pages.
6. “Giants” by John Stauffer; started Feb. 28; finished March 14; 314 pages.
7. “Dreams from My Father” by Barack Obama; started March; finished early April; 442 pages.
8. “The Call of Cthulhu” by H.P. Lovecraft; started April 18; finished April 29; 360 pages.
9. “Blindness” by Jose Saramago; started about April 30; finished May 4; 326 pages.
10. “American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers and the Making of a Nation; started May 5; finished May 10; 250 pages.
11. “Underworld” by Don DeLillo; started May 10; June 6; 830 pages.
12. “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates; started Aug. 15; finished Aug. 16; 98 pages.
13. “Game of Thrones: A Storm of Swords” (Book III) by George R.R. Martin; started June 6; finished Aug. 30; 1,261 pages.
14. “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins; started Aug. 23; finished Sept. 13; 368 pages.
15. “O Lost” by Thomas Wolfe; started Sept. 6; finished Oct. 22; 662 pages.
16. “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt; started late October; finished Dec. 6; 559 pages.
17. “Flags in the Dust” by William Faulkner; started Dec. 20; finished Dec. 31; 433 pages.

Total: 7,872; average per book: 463.

2014

1. “War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells; started Jan. 1; finished Jan. 9; 160 pages.
2. “House of Leaves” by Mark Z. Danielewski; started Jan. 3; finished Jan. 29; 662 pages.
3. “All On Fire” by Henry Mayer; started Jan. 30; finished March 9; 632 pages.
4. “The Planets” by Dava Sobel; started March 10; finished March 17; 231 pages.
5. “Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson” by Darren Staloff; started March 17; finished April 6; 361 pages.
7. “The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier” by Scott Zesch; started April 9; finished April 20; 300 pages.
8. “The Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follet; started March 16; finished May 25; 973 pages.
9. “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris; started May 25; finished May 26; 114 pages.
10. “A Manuel for Creating Atheists” by Peter Boghossian; started (?); finished in April; 280 pages.
11. “Beyond the River” by Ann Hagedorn; started late April; finished May 27; 279 pages.
12. “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” by David Wroblewski; started June 1 (?); finished July 22; 640 pages.
13. “Novus Ordo Seclorum” by Forrest McDonald; started July 23; finished summer 2014; 293 pages.
14. “Possession” by A.S. Byatt; started September; finished Sept. 27; 555 pages.
15. “Needful Things” by Stephen King; started summer 2014; finished Oct. 5; 736 pages.
16. “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov; started October 2014; finished October 2014; 309 pages.
17. “Game of Thrones” Book I by George R.R. Martin; started November 2014; finished Dec. 11; 862 pages.
18. “Intruders in the Dust” by William Faulkner; 227 pages.
19. “Game of Thrones” Book II by George R.R. Marti; started November 2014; did not finish by Dec. 20; 611 pages.

Total: 7,925; average per book: 417.

2013

1. “Cleopatra: A Life” by Stacy Schiff; started Jan. 1; finished Jan. 20; 324 pages.
2. “Reconstruction” by Eric Foner; started Jan. 21 (?); finished March 31; 612 pages.
3. “The Oedipus Cycle” by Sophocles; finished April 7; 251 pages.
4. “Why I Am Not A Christian” by Bertrand Russell; started March; finished April 7; 259 pages.
5. “The Portable Nietzsche,” edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann; started April 6; finished May 6; 687 pages.
6. “Absalom, Absalom!” by William Faulkner; started May 7; finished June 5; 303 pages.
7. “The History of White People” by Nell Irvin Painter; started May 7; finished June 29; 396 pages.
8. “Judgment Days” by Nick Kotz; started July 20; 434 pages.
9. “Big Chief Elizabeth” by Giles Milton; started July 20; finished Aug. 16; 344 pages.
10. “The Fiery Trial” by Eric Foner; started Aug. 14; finished Sept. 8; 336 pages.
11. “The Negro Classics” by Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois and James Weldon Johnson; started Sept. 28; finished Oct. 4; 511 pages.
12. “V.” by Thomas Pynchon; started Sept. 8; finished Sept. 28; 533 pages.
13. “Half Slave and Half Free” by Bruce Levin; started Oct. 4; finished 6; 255 pages.
14. “The Dante Club” by Matthew Pearl; started Oct. 5; finished Oct. 10; 380 pages.
15. “Six Women of Salem” by Marilynne K. Roach; started Oct. 13; finished Oct. 26; 400 pages.
16. “God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World” by Walter Russell Mead; started Oct. 27; finished Nov. 13; 413 pages.
17. “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon.; started Nov. 15; finished Dec. 1; 385 pages.
18. “Go Down, Moses” by William Faulkner; started Dec. 1; finished Dec. 11; 383 pages.
19. “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells; started Dec. 9; finished Dec. 13; 104 pages.
20. “Morgan: American Financier” by Jean Strouse; started Dec. 14; finished Dec. 31; 689 pages.

Total: 7,616; average per book: 381.

2012

1. “Grant” by Jean Edward Smith; finished late January; 428 pages (628 total, 200 pages read in 2011).
2. “The Killer Angels” by Michael Shaara; finished Feb. 12; 374 pages.
3. “General Lee’s Army: From Victory To Collapse” by Joseph Glatthaar; 475 pages.
4. “This Mighty Scourge” by James McPherson; 272 pages.
5. “State of Denial” by Bob Woodward; finished April 2; 491 pages.
6. “The Greatest Show On Earth” by Richard Dawkins; started late March; finished May 13; 437 pages.
7. “Madison and Jefferson” by Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg; started May 16; finished July 21; 644 pages.
8. “From the Temple to the Castle” by Lee Morrissey; started May 13; finished July 22; 144 pages.
9. “Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism” by Bruce Scheulman; started mid-July; finished Aug. 19; 245 pages.
10. “You Can’t Go Home Again” by Thomas Wolfe; started Aug. 19; finished Oct. 10; 743 pages.
11. “Grant and Sherman” by Charles Flood; started Oct. 10; finished Nov. 7; 402 pages.
12. “The American Civil War” by John Keegan; started Aug. 19; finished Dec. 31.

Total: 5020; average per book: 418.

2011

1. “Positivist Republic: Auguste Comte and the Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1920” by Gillis Harp; 264 pages.
2. “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris (reread); 114 pages.
3. “John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights” by David S. Reynolds; 592 pages.
4. “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho; 165 pages.
5. “Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life” by George Eliot; 794 pages.
6. “1491;” 403 pages.
7. “Thomas Jefferson Vs. Religious Oppression;” 150 pages.
8. “Night” by Elie Weisel; 120 pages.
9. “1421: The Year China Discovered America” by Gaven Menzies; finished in the spring; 491 pages.
10. “From Sea to Shining Sea: From the War of 1812 to the Mexican War, the Saga of America’s Expansion” by Robert Leckie; finished in late spring; 623 pages.
11. “The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson” by Charles B. Sanford; finished in summer; 179 pages.
12. “Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief” by James McPherson; finished in summer; 384 pages.
13. “Slave Religion: The ‘Invisible Institution in the Antebellum South” by Albert Raboteau; finished in summer; 321 pages.
14. “Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society” by John Andrew III; finished in August; 199 pages.
15. “Union 1812: The Americans who Fought the Second War of Independence” by A.J. Langguth; finished Sept. 7; 409 pages.
16. “Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788” by Pauline Maier; finished Oct. 2; 489 pages.
17. “The Federalist Papers” by Madison, Hamilton and Jay; finished Oct. 30; 527 pages.
18. “Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism” by Susan Jacoby; 370 pages.
19. “The Theory of the Leisure Class” by Thorstein Veblen; 400 pages.
20. “Erewhon” by Samuel Butler; 260 pages.
21. “The Anti-Federalists: Critics of the Constitution 1781-1788” by Jackson Turner Main; 286 pages.
22. “Grant” by Jean Edward Smith; 200 pages, (628 total, 428 in 2012).

Total: 7,740; average per book: 352.

Total since 2011: 36,173.