Posted on by rjonakait

The Strange Land

Just finished reading the arduous history of Chinese Americans in Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America (2025) by Micheal Luo. Chinese, we learn, started arriving on the West Coast in the1850s during the California gold rush. They continued to come for the construction of the intercontinental and other railroads after the Civil War. Chinese merchants and service workers followed. They did not all come at the same time or for the same reason, but there was a constant influx of Chinese, and a virulent hostility to them accompanied their arrival.

Today many oppose immigrants who are here illegally. They maintain that the “rule of law” requires that the “illegals” be removed from the country. That was not the reason for opposition to Chinese immigration. The Chinese were not in the United States illegally. Although some Eastern seaboard states tried to restrict Irish immigration, the federal government had placed no restrictions on immigration when the first Chinese influx began. Instead, at the time of our founding and beyond, the country welcomed immigrants. Michael Luo writes: “In the beginning the door was open. The Founding Fathers celebrated the multiplicity of difference in their young republic and recognized that filling the country’s vast, open spaces with newcomers was necessary for securing its future.”

Even so, by the 1840s, many did not want Chinese to be those newcomers. Jobs were a major concern. Today some voice a similar concern that the undocumented take work away from lawful residents. However, few leading the present deportation mania are lining up outside Home Depot for the day labor jobs or clamoring for stooped employment in the lettuce fields. In contrast, in the nineteenth century the hostility to the Chinese was led by whites, often immigrants themselves, who did want jobs in the mines or on the railroads or in the fields, and many of these jobs were held by the Chinese. Whites were not only willing to fight to do difficult and dangerous work, they were also willing to commit atrocities. Luo reports not only about unpunished murders of Chinese but unpunished massacres of them. Not only were Chinese homes and establishments burned without punishment, but time and again whole communities were torched. Luo reports so many atrocities that their recitation, a history that seldom gets reported, becomes mind-numbing.

In addition, the Chinese provoked hostility because they were the “other,” just as many immigrants are viewed today. Some Americans from the beginning had conflicting thoughts about immigration. New residents were necessary for a prosperous country, but immigrants with different customs could warp the country. Even Ben Franklin was concerned about the influx of non-English-speaking Germans into Pennsylvania. Less than a century later, it was easy to see the Chinese as “other” who could never become truly American.

The legal landscape changed for the Asian immigrants after the Civil War. The 1790 Naturalization Act restricted naturalization to “free white persons of good moral character,” a provision which was in effect until well into the twentieth century. Although he does not fully explain how, Luo reports that a few Chinese were naturalized despite this provision, but the law prevented almost every Chinese immigrant from becoming a citizen. However, the Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship to all those born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction. In 1898 the Supreme Court held that a child born in the United States to a non-naturalized Chinese immigrant couple was, nevertheless, a citizen. There was now citizenship for few of the Chinese Americans.

But the group of Chinese Americans, citizen or not, remained small because of the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. It prohibited the immigration into the United States of Chinese laborers. For the first time a Chinese immigrant was deemed illegal. Only laborers were excluded, and many seeking entry claimed to be merchants or some other profession that did not require manual labor. Someone had to decide whether the person was excludable under the Exclusion Act, and a new immigration bureaucracy was born. After the Chinese Exclusion Act paved the way, it became easier for the United States to restrict immigration by nationality, restrictions that materialized in the 1920s.

The concern over illegal Chinese immigration widened. The 1790 Naturalization Act stated that children who were born abroad of U.S. citizens were natural-born citizens unless the father had never been an American resident. After the Fourteenth Amendment, the number of Chinese American citizens increased, many of whom returned to China. Chinese, mostly male, started appearing at ports of entry claiming to be citizens as the children of citizens. Government officials often thought that the birth documents showing lineages were fraudulent. The problem of “paper sons” increased after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed birth records. Lengthy, often humiliating detentions, investigations, and interrogations were routine.

The Chinese Exclusion Act remained in effect until World War II when it became an embarrassment since China was an ally in the fight against Japan. Indeed, China had started its war of resistance against Japan in 1937, and Luo reports that 14 to 20 million Chinese were killed in the fighting by World War II’s end.

American immigration laws changed in the 1950s and 1960s, and concern over Chinese immigration morphed into something more modern. With mainland China controlled by Mao, the concern was not about laborers taking jobs away from Americans. Instead, the fear was over communist spies and the stealing of American technology by Chinese students and professionals. A similar rationale fuels many of today’s fears about Chinese immigrants.

On the other hand, many now view Chinese and other Asians as strivers in a traditional American sense, who show that “outsiders” can be successful in the United States. They are a “model minority.” If so, as Strangers in the Land illustrates, that status has been achieved in spite of a tortuous and tortured American history.

Posted on by rjonakait

The Inclusive Declaration of Independence and the Founding of America

The Fourth of July celebrates the United States of America and its birth, but with our current mood many only want to point out the country’s current and historical shortcomings. Every Fourth, I urge all to read the Declaration of Independence, and in doing so, it is natural to focus on the multiple ironies of its most famous phrase: “all Men are created equal.” However, as we know, in eighteenth century America, women, Native Americans, and indentured servants were not seen as equal. And, of course, slaves were not equal. Any fair assessment of our history acknowledges, as Thomas E. Ricks states in First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped our Country (2020), that slavery was not a “stain” on the country; it was woven into the original fabric. And that weft and warp made the celebration of liberty painful to many Americans throughout our history, which was perhaps most powerfully stated by Frederic Douglass on July 5, 1852. Just as the Declaration should be regularly read, so too should this speech. (Africans in America/Part 4/Frederick Douglass speech (pbs.org.)

The Fourth of July is our birthday, however. Some might temper a child’s birthday celebration with a discussion of the child’s shortcomings, but I would hope that the major thrust of the party is, in fact, to celebrate the kid. We should be realistic in assessing our country, but there has always been much to celebrate, and the Fourth is a time of celebration. Because it is so easy to mock the Declaration’s equality statement, it is too easy to overlook the many ways that in its founding the country also furthered egalitarianism and inclusiveness.

We know many of the Declaration’s phrases—“When in the Course of human Events”; “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”; and others. But we often miss something about the tenor of the Declaration as a whole. There are no classical allusions or references. By eighteenth century standards, the language is simple. The document was not written for the elite peers of those who signed the document but for a wide swath of what were to become Americans.

Its logic demanded an inclusive appeal. The Declaration asserts that a government derives “their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed” not from the Divine Right of Kings. It declared “the Right of the People” to change government. The Declaration with these contentions could not just be addressed to an elite, aristocratic audience. It +was not directed to the enslaved, but it was seeking the approval of almost everyone else—the farmer, the joiner, the tavern owner, the schoolteacher, the sailors, the ship captain, the log splitter, and yes, the slave owner and trader. For an eighteenth-century document, its intended audience was remarkably inclusive.

The notion of the consent of the governed was a radical, egalitarian break from America’s English roots, and the emerging country’s conception of “the people” was much broader than almost anywhere else in the world. This is reflected in who could vote. Today we note the shortcomings of a franchise limited to propertied white males, but we seldom consider, as Jill Lepore does in These Truths: A History of the United States (2018), that a higher percentage of people could vote in the colonies than in England. The franchise was narrow by modern standards, but it was broad for its time.

Part of the reason for the inclusiveness of the Founding Era’s America was the high rate of literacy among its people, perhaps the highest of any country of its times. The seventeenth-century Pilgrims, Puritans, and others who settled here held beliefs that rejected an authoritarian church. They believed that the eternal truths came from the Bible, not from an authoritarian church, and, therefore, it was important that people could read the Holy Book. Literacy was stressed as well as the ability of each person to reason. Jefferson and the others may have expected that the Declaration would be read out to those assembled in taverns and inns, but they also knew that many people would read it for themselves, and all were expected to think and reason about the document, which led to its inclusive appeal to the people.

The Declaration did mention “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” and the signers said that they had acted with “a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence,” but it did not beseech God, a god, or Jesus Christ for independence. Just as some only criticize the Declaration for its hypocrisies without recognizing its advances, some focus on the listing of God and divine providence and conclude erroneously that the Declaration was an act of religious faith, or, more particularly, the signers’ Christianity. But these references, which include the almost pagan formulation of “Nature’s God,” were not invocations of any particular divinity to grant them a new country. Government depended on the consent of the governed, not on divine will, and the appeal was to the people, not to some version of God. The Declaration’s wording was inclusive; it did not exclude any particular believer or any nonbeliever from its ambit. It rejected the too-often divisiveness of religion and relied on the reason of the people.

This lack of a religious appeal is not surprising. Thomas Ricks shows in First Principles that neither Christianity nor any other religious influence was prominent in the Revolutionary period. This only began to change in 1815. He reports that there was one minister for every 1500 people in 1775 America while there was one for every 500 by 1845. Scott L. Malcomson writes in One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventures of Race that in 1790 only one in ten white Americans was a member of a formal church. Jill Lepore in These Truths agrees that the country was founded in one of its most secular eras.

Of course, slavery existed throughout the country when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and we should not forget how that institution shaped our country. Nevertheless, for their time, the Founders also created an egalitarian and inclusive government in ways we now seldom appreciate. For example, unlike many of the state and foreign governments of the time, the United States had no property qualifications to hold office. In an era when they were common, no religious tests were required for holding office. And we seldom notice that the new country paid its officials. Many governments did not, so only the rich who could afford to be uncompensated could hold office. Unlike in other countries, all whites, or at least all white males, could hold office.

The new country also broke from history and the practices of most countries by having no hereditary offices. A formal aristocracy died in the United States. Revolutionary America also moved to a more equal society by repealing primogeniture laws, which dictated that the firstborn male child would inherit his parent’s entire estate. This extraordinarily egalitarian reform, whose importance is seldom noticed today, was led by Thomas Jefferson in Virginia.

A related change in property law was also happening during this time. Under English law, aliens could buy property, but they could not inherit it. Aliens could sell the land they owned, but they could not grant it in a will. Instead, on death, an alien’s property went to the state. Revolutionary America began to repeal such inegalitarian laws, helping to make the country more inclusive and prosperous.

The country’s first naturalization law had some of the same characteristics as the Declaration of Independence. It showed simultaneously both racial restriction and social inclusiveness. The law limited naturalization to free, white citizens who had lived in the country for two years. We, of course, notice that nonwhites were excluded. (“Free” meant indentured servants could not be naturalized until they completed their periods of indenture.) Blacks could not be naturalized until 1870, and other nonwhites could not be naturalized until well into the twentieth century. There was no legal definition of whiteness. When areas of Mexico became part of the United States in the early1850s, the former Mexicans of those lands were made citizens, and there was an implicit recognition that they were white. The Supreme Court dealt with whiteness and naturalization several times and concluded that Asians and South Asians were not white but that Syrians and Armenians were. In 1922 the Supreme Court held that a high caste Sikh was neither white nor black and could not be naturalized. He had fought for this country in World War I.

However, in addition to noting the racial restriction, we should also consider the inclusiveness of this law. It did not impose a property requirement for citizenship. The rich and the not rich could become citizens. Aristocratic origins did not matter. There was the racial limitation, but no national origin requirement. There was no religious test. At a time when Catholics could not hold office in England and Jews could not become citizens in many places, they could in the United States.

We should keep both racial restrictions as well as these inclusions in mind when we consider this country’s origins. The founding era accepted an institution whose ramifications have troubled us throughout our history, but it also gave us foundations for much of what is good in this country.

I am sure that some will mostly criticize America on the Fourth, which is their right. And I am sure that some will call such critics unpatriotic, which is their right.

Patriotism has often been a contentious concept. Vicksburg, Mississippi, offers an example of its fragility. Exactly four score and seven years ago to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, confederate General John C. Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg to American General Ulysses S. Grant after a forty-seven–day siege. This was certainly one of the most important actions of the war because it gave control of the Mississippi River to the Americans and severed the confederacy.

Thus, July 4, 1863, was another Fourth of July for patriotic Americans to celebrate, but Vicksburg didn’t see it that way. The town did not honor the Fourth of July for the next eight decades. They continued to identify as confederates, not as Americans. Vicksburg simply ignored Independence Day until after World War II when General Dwight Eisenhower visited the town on the Fourth. Even so, Vicksburg did not want to celebrate the United States. It called the celebrations during Eisenhower’s visit a “Carnival of the Confederacy,” a title I am told that was dropped only when the country and Vicksburg celebrated the Bicentennial in 1976. I’m not sure what to make of their tenacious grasp of a different brand of “patriotism.” I guess I’m just glad that they finally celebrate along with the rest of us.

And I hope all Americans can find something to celebrate this Fourth of July.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

Reports say that fourteen bunker buster bombs were dropped on Iran. Another report says that we have only six more such bombs, not enough for another raid. They need replacing. Other reports say that they cost $500 million apiece. Does the $7 billion cost come into the consideration of whether the operation was a good idea?

A young Muslim who identifies as a Democratic Socialist won the New York City Democratic mayoralty primary. If Zohran Mamdani does take office, how long will it be before Trump proclaims an “emergency” that requires, according to him, that federal troops be sent into the city?

The ad I heard was like others from funeral homes. It stressed “pre-planning.” And I wondered, Isn’t all planning, by definition, “pre?”

A new experience: On a brutally hot and humid afternoon, I parked near a hydrant. As is common in New York on such a day, the hydrant, equipped with a sprayer cap, was spewing water into the intersection. Skirting this, I walked a few blocks to Yankee Stadium. The game was interrupted several times by rain. The last was in the bottom of the eighth inning. Concerned about how long this delay would be and whether I would see the game’s conclusion, my friend said that the weather report predicted that the rain would end in seven minutes, but more was due in a half-hour. As the rain was ending, we watched a marvelous performance by the grounds crew as they hurriedly rolled up the tarp and prepared the field for the resumption of play. They, too, were aware of the weather report. The Yankees quickly secured their victory, breaking a losing streak. As we wended our way out of the Stadium, I said to my friend that I certainly needed a shower after the ninety-degree heat. When we got to the exit, my friend said that I might eschew the shower. He pointed outside where it was pouring. Neither he nor I had rain gear. We were going to get soaked. When I got near my car, after unsuccessfully trying to skip from awning to awning, I saw that the hydrant was still spraying. I thought this was redundant with the heavy downpour, but not all thought so. A middle-aged man was twirling about soaking up the rain. He then pulled out of his pocket a sliver of bar soap. Decorously reaching under his clothes, he lathered all the essential parts of his body and then went into the hydrant’s spray to rinse off. He repeated the process several times. Some passersby smiled, but he made this simultaneous washing of body and clothes seem like the natural thing to do with the rain and hydrant. As I drove off, he was still there. Although I lived in New York City for over fifty years, this was the first time I had witnessed such al fresco bathing.

The history book group’s discussion of Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America (2025) by Michael Luo included many comments about the inherent evil in humanity. Afterwards, as emails were exchanged about our next book selection, one member, after voting, added that earlier that day, he had dropped his wallet on a crosstown bus. Later the bus driver rang his apartment bell, saying that he had noticed the friend’s address was near the bus route. The driver would not take any money as a reward. The friend noted that “both decided against a hug.” The friend said that was trying to get a commendation noted in the driver’s file and concluded: “Maybe there’s hope for humankind after all.”

The friend’s experience reminded me of how often we (I) can forget random acts of kindness, but it had me remembering a call I got soon after Covid vaccines were available. The caller told me that he had found my vaccine card on the subway steps and thought that I might need it since proof of vaccination then was necessary to get into some public places. That card did not have identifying information besides my name, but the caller told me that he did internet searches to find my phone number. We arranged to meet, and I got my card back. He did take a modest reward, and I was more than happy to give it to him.

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Wunnerful, Wunnerful

The PBS station broadcasts a new incarnation of “The Lawrence Welk Show.” It contains clips, usually centered on a theme, from the program that first went on national television seventy years ago. I never watch the whole hour, but I often stop my channel-scanning for ten minutes to watch a bit. I consider it an homage to the father.

We had one television while I was growing up. There were few disputes within the family about what to watch. We generally agreed, but on Saturday nights, I most decidedly did not. If memory serves that is when The Lawrence Welk show aired. I don’t know how my older brother and sister felt about it or my mother, who did not seem to have much say about what to watch (times and families were different). The father’s vote for Welk outweighed all other considerations. He loved it. My alternative choices seemed limited. At age ten or twelve, I did not go out on Saturday nights during the long Wisconsin winters. I wasn’t about to do homework on a Saturday evening. It seemed as if I had no choice but to hear Welk’s bubbly music. I would look over at my father during the show. He would be smiling, and I would silently shake my head.

Numerous variety shows with many musicians were on television during that period. Throughout the Welk era, I might also see and hear Rosemary Clooney, Dinah Washington, Tony Bennett, Louis Prima, Jack Jones, Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald. Even to my tender, musically untrained tin ear, I could tell the difference between the music on the Lawrence Welk show and that of those other performers, and that made the champagne music even more painful. But the father insisted on the Welk show and thoroughly enjoyed it. Sometimes he would move his hands as if he, and not Lawrence, were conducting. And I would silently shake my head.

Although the songs on the Lawrence Welk show may have come from different genres—from a Jewish lament to a Broadway show tune, from Stephen Foster to Cole Porter–they all sounded the same. The same was true for the dancing. It all seemed the same — what might be described as perky but sexless with any ethnicity wiped out. Even polkas were homogenized. For those who were clinging to the notion that the country was truly homogenous, Welk was perfect.

Of course, not every act fit precisely into the same mold. Al Hirt and Pete Fountain appeared, and they sounded different, but I had only a mild appreciation for Dixieland. And the Irish tenor stood out from the rest. His maudlin singing came close to making me laugh]. But I would look over at the father and I could swear that I could catch the beginning of a tear. And I would silently shake my head.

There was more than the music on the Welk show, however. Anyone who has seen a few minutes of the show knows that Lawrence himself was strangely awkward though strangely compelling with an easily mockable, indefinable, seemingly middle European accent. Only recently did I learn that my assumption of his foreign birth was wrong. He was a native-born American. His German parents had been living in the Russian empire city of Odessa in the Ukraine before immigrating to the United States in 1892. Lawrence was born in Strasburg, North Dakota, in 1903. Strasburg was a German-speaking town, and Welk, who was as American as American can be, did not speak English until he left the family farm at twenty-one to seek musical fortune as an accordionist and bandleader. Thus, the accent.

Although Welk became a force, he was not a musical influencer. He was most associated with the accordion, both his own and those in his orchestra, but I doubt that he affected the sales of that instrument, which I guess remained tiny outside of polka territory. (This could be contrasted with the sale of electric guitars, spurred by the onset of rock, which was in its formative years when Welk first started appearing on my TV.) I don’t think that many today would claim him as an important influence. Nevertheless, he had an incredible career.

When they could no longer keep him down on the farm, he started touring as the leader of a band. That orchestra had a ten-year residence at a Chicago hotel. He settled in Los Angeles, and he with his musicians were on local television for several years before he was picked up by ABC in 1955. He stayed on that network until 1971. His show was then syndicated for another eleven years. He was on TV for over three decades, and surely nearly all Americans knew who he was.

Surprisingly, he endures. Evidence of his staying power is a new book coming out from the North Dakota State University Press: Champagne Times: Lawrence Welk and His American Century by Lance Byron Richey. It comes in three volumes comprising more than 1200 pages. A limited first edition signed by the author will soon be available for $225. (I doubt the spouse will give it to me for Christmas.)

 An orchestra bearing his name appears in Branson, Missouri, and a version of his shows appears (as noted) on PBS. (This is not a reason to slash the budgets of public broadcasting.) I doubt I saw any of the original shows that the present clips are now drawn from. They are in color, quite a collection of colors, in fact, but Welk only started color broadcasts in 1965. By then I was in college and I assuredly did not watch the show there. When I was home on a Saturday night, I went out. But the die-hard father still watched.

These days when I land on the Lawrence Welk show for a few minutes, I see our modest living room with the family around the television. I look over and see the ghost of the father, smiling, nodding, waving his conducting arm. And I silently shake my head, but now I have my own smile for the one who is long gone.

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Thoughts on the Recent Bombings of Iran

The Vice President appropriately praised the personnel who carried out the Iranian bombings. That seems odd. For months this administration has proclaimed that previous administrations have decimated the military. The personnel, however, were trained before Trump 2.0. The planes and the bombs were conceived, developed, and constructed well before he took office. Trump may have made the decision to bomb, but the capability to do the mission belongs to previous administrations. Nevertheless, I don’t expect to hear apologies.

We are unlikely to hear anything as self-effacing from Trump as John F. Kennedy said: “Those of you who regard my profession of political life with some disdain should remember that it made it possible for me to move from being an obscure lieutenant in the United States Navy to Commander-in-Chief in fourteen years with very little technical competence.” And yet, Trump assuredly shares Kennedy’s professed lack of technical competence.

While the military has been praised, no such praise has been extended to our intelligence services. In fact, they have been disparaged. Nevertheless, Iran has steadfastly maintained that it was not developing nuclear weapons, and we have no reports from U.S. Intelligence that an Iranian nuclear bomb was imminent. However, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said that Iran was only weeks away from an operational bomb. Of course, we do not know what intelligence supports the assertion, but we do know that Bibi has uttered that “weeks away” mantra many times over the last decade. It would seem that Trump accepts Israeli intelligence, or at least Netanyahu’s assertions, over our own intelligence. I find it troubling that we seem to have outsourced our intelligence to a foreign country.

It is also troubling that no intelligence — U.S. or Israeli — was presented to Congress prior to the attack. Moreover, the War Powers Act of 1973 might suggest that letting Congress know about a planned bombing of another country is, at the very least, a courtesy. Gosh, even Bush Jr. brought the invasion of Iraq to a vote in Congress. The intelligence was wrong, but…

We will soon start to get reports about how much the bombing has impeded Iran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb. Will the assertions be based on U.S. or Israeli intelligence? Why should we trust either of them?

We bombed Iran even though that country presented no imminent threat to our territorial safety. The decision fits in with an “Israel First” policy, and the operation should increase Israeli safety, but it also seems to signal that we will give an even freer rein to Israel in Gaza and the West Bank. If we so blithely accept Israel’s assertions about existential threats that we bomb Iran, must we also unquestioningly accept what they say about the importance to them of Gaza and the West Bank?

The bombings are expected to disrupt oil flows and distributions. It certainly will if Iran retaliates by successfully closing off the Strait of Hormuz. World oil prices will increase. Russia routinely benefits whenever oil costs more. Was strengthening Russia part of the goal?

Iran can retaliate by attacking our military assets in the Middle East, but it does not have the power to attack the territorial United States except, perhaps, in isolated acts of physical sabotage. It may have the ability for cyberattacks on our infrastructure, such as our antiquated power grid that the present administration ignores. However, the source of a cyberattack is often unclear. If there are such actions in the coming weeks, Iran will undoubtedly be blamed. This is an opportunity for other countries who want a weaker America to launch cyberattacks against us with Iran as their cover. And yes, I am thinking about Russia again.

Our officials say that they are only trying to end the Iranian nuclear bomb program and are not seeking regime change. I understand why they say that. During the campaign Trump and his acolytes were adamant that we were going to be out of the nation-building business, and yet, regime change inevitably leads to nation-building. In short, the proclamation that we do not seek a change is likely a lie. Some reports suggest that the Iranian people are fed up with the Ayatollah and want regime change. Is this true? And what would regime change in Iran look like? An autocrat often replaces an autocrat. Moreover, change often comes only after an ugly civil war in which other countries intervene directly or covertly. Change often spawns terrorist groups such as ISIS. What are the odds that a new Iran would be peaceful and cooperative?

We say that we seek to negotiate with either the new or the old Iran. If you were Iran, would you trust negotiations with the United States? You might conclude that nuclear weapons are the most sensible protection for yourself.

Other consequences of the bombing:

Language precision has suffered another blow. (It has already been almost fatally undermined by Trump himself.) Now comes Vance who says that we are not at war with Iran, but with Iran’s nuclear program. Huh? Trump says that we “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capacity. The next day the administration says that Iran’s nuclear ability has been “severely damaged.” Making me wonder again about the quality of a Yale education, Vance says he does not understand the difference.

Did DOGE have a role in the planning for the bombing to prevent the ever-present threat of waste, fraud, and abuse?

When all is said and done, isn’t it a good thing if the bombing operation actually has prevented Iran from getting nuclear weapons?

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Snippets–No Kings Edition

The military parade was a benign surprise. It was not nearly as much about Trump as it might have been. And I liked it that a lot of the soldiers had big smiles as if they were enjoying themselves.

Even so, there did not appear to be much point to it. Our major national holiday is the Fourth of July. We all have absorbed some of the history about Independence Day, and it is a natural time for patriotism. Military parades at the conclusion of wars make some sense, as they tend to bring out our appreciation as we realize that too many soldiers are missing, and many whom we do see marching have been through harrowing times. On the other hand, I doubt few of us could have stated when the U.S. Army came into existence and why we were commemorating a date that has gone unremarked for 250 years. Quick. When was our navy created? The marines? The air force?

Perhaps wondering about the point to the parade makes me an outlier. The commentators on Fox News were convinced that it gave all of us a huge boost in patriotism. Seeing files of tanks made them more excited than Al Roker spotting the Snoopy balloon approaching Macy’s.

Wondering about the cost of parade, on the other hand, does not make me an outlier. With a projected price tag of $45 million (not including clean-up and extra police presence), the money spent on the parade could have funded 14 million school lunches, Medicaid coverage for 6,000 people for a year, housing assistance for 4,500 families, annual disability coverage for 7,200 venterans, etc. etc. (See https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hopewatch/5-things-washington-military-parade/). I wonder how many jobs cut by DOGE could have been saved.

Well, back to the parade. Time and again I heard the Fox commentators report that freedom is not free. I think it is fair to say soldiers have helped give us freedom both here and abroad, but I wish we would routinely acknowledge that others who have helped establish our freedoms include non-military patriots who fought for first amendment and due process rights for themselves and others.

A difficult truth is that the sacrifices of many soldiers have not always furthered freedom, for not all our military actions have expanded freedom, neither ours nor others’. Sometimes they have made us (or others) more unsafe or just furthered the interests of a small part of our country.  We have never mastered a way of honoring the warrior while questioning the war.

I will have to admit that the parade concluded with one terrific fireworks display — impressive even on TV. (I wonder how much it cost?) The explosions were well synced with the music. I heard the “1812 Overture,” which I often also hear on Independence Day. Why is a piece that commemorates a Russian victory over the French part of our patriotic days?

Of course, there was also “God Bless America.” Whenever it is played, it should be stressed that it was written by an immigrant from a group that was largely banned from entering the country a few years after the classic song was composed.

It seemed however that no one knew how to end the evening. It went on and on skipping past what seemed to be several natural ending points. It became like gold bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago—simply too, too much.

________

Last week several governors were brought before a Congressional hearing apparently so members of Congress could demean gubernatorial patriotism. The governors’ states have sanctuary policies. A sanctuary jurisdiction does not mean that an undocumented person is safe from deportation. It just means that while state officials will continue to enforce state laws (as they were appointed or elected to do), they will not aid federal officers in enforcing federal immigration law. Federal officials imply that local officials are required to assist them. They must report to them whenever they know of an undocumented person. In other words, they must be an informer. That, however, is not the law. There have been societies where informing has been mandatory. They have included Nazi Germany, communist Russia, East Germany, and North Korea.

________

Trump says he knows how to handle Putin, but Putin ignores him and creates more brutal chaos in Ukraine. Trump responds by tut-tutting. The U.S. had been negotiating with Iran to get us back to an agreement that Trump abrogated seven years ago. While Trump asked him not to, Netanyahu blew up the negotiations by blowing up Iranian facilities. It would seem that Putin and Netanyahu see Trump as just someone to play. It must be hard for the other players to keep smiles off their faces when Trump comes to the poker table.

________

Almost every time I turn on Fox News, they are reporting about the mental decline of Biden during his presidency, a legitimate story. But I am surprised by how much they dwell on it. They also often try to say the electorate gave Trump a “huge mandate” in the last election, even though his margin of victory was the smallest in a generation and was much smaller than the mandate given Biden and Obama (and Clinton if we count only the popular vote). What Fox doesn’t seem to realize is that the more they stress Biden’s decline, the more they imply that voters were not so much selecting Trump as rejecting Biden.

_________

Sean Hannity, after bashing California and its governor, told his audience that if they wanted a safe life they should live in a red state. Hannity said that is why he lives in Florida. I pulled up homicide rates as a handy marker of safety. They varied slightly from year to year and by some methodological differences, but this result was typical: The five highest homicide rates were in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, New Mexico, and Missouri. These, of course, are not what you would call solidly blue states. The lowest rates were New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Utah, Massachusetts, and Maine. Florida was in the middle of the pack, higher than the rate for New York State (decidedly blue) and — get this — higher than the rate for New York City.

_________

The press secretary wears a large cross. When I see it, I remember the passage from the Gospel of Matthew that says, “Whoever prostrates and plastic ties the least of these in the field of lettuce and deports them shall find the Kingdom of Heaven.” But when I look for this teaching in my Bible, I only find something quite different about the least of these.

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Do They Really Want Viewpoint Diversity?

The Trump administration is pressuring Harvard University to have greater “viewpoint diversity.” The Trumpistas have not defined the term nor is it self-evident. This is an administration that has sought to stop the consideration of certain topics in schools and elsewhere. We do know that they consider discussions of institutional racism and certain gender issues to be verboten in classrooms. Some people cannot enter the country if they have criticized Israel. Lawful residents may get deported if they speak out on behalf of Palestinians. The administration, apart from Harvard, is trying to prevent viewpoints from being heard, not expanding the diversity of them.

Many reports indicate that Harvard has few faculty members who identify as conservative. The inference from the right is that Harvard students are being indoctrinated with liberal thinking and that such indoctrination must change. If there is indoctrination, however, it is in a narrow curricular space. In many courses the political affiliation of the instructor does not matter. The content of math, physics, astrophysics, chemistry, molecular biology, and many other subjects will not be affected by whether the professor is conservative or liberal.

Of course, the political perspective of professors might intrude on certain subjects (political science, economics, etc.), but that does not mean that students are affected by those professorial views. I have not seen, but would like to, a good study of how student political thinking changes during one’s years at Harvard. This study would require the collection of similar data from other colleges to see if any shifts might be the result of Harvard’s education or is simply the normal maturation process that students go through everywhere. Of course, we already know that the supposed liberal indoctrination — if it is, indeed, there — does not always work. Many famous, adamant conservatives have gone to Harvard, including Ted Cruz, Steve Bannon, and Ron DeSantis. If they have escaped the liberal indoctrination and have learned to “think for themselves,” surely other Harvard students can do and have done the same.

A thought experiment: How effective is the so-called “indoctrination” by Harvard? If you personally know any Harvard graduates, how many are in positions that seek to radicalize the country? How many are commie-pinkos? As far as I can tell, Harvard has not been very successful in turning out cadres of radicals. The predominant choice for a starting job for Harvard undergrads is finance. They want to make money, not destroy the country. Something similar is the choice of business, medical, and law school graduates. This, perhaps, is not necessarily good for the country, but not in the way that the Trump administration fears.

And anyway, why should the Trump administration be able to dictate viewpoint diversity at Harvard or any other university? The Trump acolytes have not made that clear, but apparently it is because the federal government gives money to Harvard for research and programs, and they think that Harvard should toe the conservative line if they are to get those funds. That is not a sufficient reason. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which many conservatives opposed), specifically forbids discrimination by programs and activities that receive federal funds on the basis of race, color, or national origin. (It does not prohibit religious discrimination, but antisemitism has been seen as a form of discrimination on the basis of national origin. That is a story for another day.) However, that Civil Rights provision does not insist on “viewpoint diversity.”

If viewpoint diversity is required of an organization that gets money from the federal taxpayers. shouldn’t that mean that an activity or program that gets all of its money from us taxpayers should have to have viewpoint diversity, too? What entities get all  their funds from the taxpayers? Answer: any division of the federal government. If Harvard is required to have viewpoint diversity, surely the same should be required of the federal government Trump has tried to appoint right wing judges. That should end if his position on viewpoint diversity at Harvard is right. State Department appointments should be viewpoint diverse as should those in the Justice Department. And so on throughout the federal government. Perhaps the Trumpistas should be concerned about winning the day at Harvard. On the other hand, they have never been famous for philosophical consistency.

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The First Was the Third

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

The email came from Kelly Shackelford, Esq., the President, CEO & Chief Counsel of First Liberty Institute, an organization that advocates and litigates for what it sees as religious liberty. Shackelford said, “Our Founding Fathers always intended for religious liberty to be our nation’s foundation. It’s why they made religious freedom our First Freedom.” One can argue with that first statement. At least in the formal sense, those founding fathers (as well as their fellow countrymen) were not particularly religious. One can, however, not argue with the second statement. It is flat wrong. The founding fathers, at least in our founding documents, did not make religious freedom our first freedom.

A popular misconception is that the rights in the First Amendment were considered the most important ones by our founders because they come first in the Bill of Rights. Since the religion clauses initiate the First Amendment, they are assumed to be the most essential rights among those collected in the initial amendment.  Shackelford is not alone in this misconception. For example, Trump’s Secretary of Education in his first administration, Betsy DeVos (whatever happened to her?), said in an op-ed piece: “There’s a reason why the First Amendment comes first. Our country was founded upon the ‘first freedoms’ it protects. The freedom to express ourselves — through speech, through the press, through assembly, through petition and through faith—defines what it means to be American.”  Alberto Gonzalez, Attorney General under George W. Bush, said something similar years earlier, stating that religious freedom is the country’s first freedom because our founders saw fit to place it first in the Bill of Rights. We should give primacy to First Amendment rights because they come first, he said, and continuing that logic, we should give primacy to the religious provisions because they are the first of the First Amendment. 

 The rights of the First Amendment don’t come first in the Constitution. They come after the seven articles of the Constitution that were drafted in 1787. Moreover, the initial amendments were drafted in 1789 and didn’t go into effect until December 1791. Our Constitution granted plenty of rights before the Bill of Rights existed, and if rights are to be measured by their placement, then these original freedoms coming years before the First Amendment must be more important than the religious and speech provisions.

For example, Section 9 of Article I prohibits the suspension of habeas corpus except when a rebellion or invasion may require it. The subsequent paragraph prohibits a bill of attainder (a legislative act that declares a person or group of people guilty of a crime and imposes punishment without a trial) or an ex post facto law (one that retroactively changes the legal consequences of an action taken before the law’s enactment). The next Section 9 provision gives yet another right: No direct taxation that is not based on the census. This was an important right until it wasn’t. The Sixteenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, wiped out the no-direct-taxation provision by explicitly authorizing an income tax. Our rights, it turns out, are not immutable.

Section 9 contains two other provisions that we seldom think about but were truly essential foundational rights for this nation, because without them we would not be one country: “No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State. No preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another; nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one state, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.” We are welded into one entity because goods and transport can freely travel among the states. Without this provision we would only be a collection of fifty fiefdoms.

The founders also placed important rights in Article III, which provides a narrow definition of treason and requires “the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open court.” It also eliminates punishments for treason that had existed in Europe. Finally, Article III, Section 2 guarantees jury trials for crimes. (If the importance of a right is measured not by its placement in the Constitution, but by the frequency of its protection, then juries are the most important constitutional right since juries are guaranteed not only in Article III but in the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendments as well.) In other words, First Amendment rights should not be given primacy because they come first; they don’t.

First Amendment rights, however, come first in the Bill of Rights, and surely that indicates our founding fathers saw First Amendment rights as having primacy. Wrong again. In fact those founders did not intend for the First Amendment to be first.

The inaugural Congress submitted twelve amendments to the states, and the First Amendment was, at that time, the Third Amendment. The states in the eighteenth century, however, did not ratify the first two proposals, and the Third became the First. But, you ask, what about the two proposed amendments that were not ratified with the Bill of Rights? Each is an interesting story providing several lessons.

The first proposal, passed by a two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress, said that after the initial census, “there shall be one representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred; after which, the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred representatives, nor less than one representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which, the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress that there shall not be less than two hundred representatives, nor more than one representative for every fifty thousand persons.”

Got that? The Constitution mandated that the original House of Representatives have 65 members, and after the first census, it grew to 105. It continued to grow but was capped in the early twentieth century at 435 members where it now stands. But what if that initial proposal had been ratified? (And it almost was, falling one state short in 1792.) Its meaning has been debated, but since that proposed amendment did not take effect, we don’t have an authoritative reading. Some scholars, however, have maintained that the unclear language would require a House of Representatives today with as few as 800 and as many as 5,000 Representatives. It is fortuitous that the first proposed amendment was not ratified, and we should learn that those early constitutional drafters like James Madison and his fellows were not superior geniuses with accurate crystal balls.

The second proposed amendment that did not get adopted with the original Bill of Rights reads: “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.” Here the language and purpose are clear. Our representatives should not be able to raise (or lower, ha ha) their pay until the voters have had the chance to (re)consider those who will receive the remunerative change. Clear, and to the real constitutional nerd, the language is recognizable; it is the text of the Twenty-Seventh Amendment, the last to have been adopted.

Say what? Yes, it’s true. The proposed second amendment was largely forgotten after it failed to be ratified in the 1790s, but in 1982, Gregory Watson, a University of Texas sophomore, wrote a political science paper contending that the old proposal could still be ratified since it had no time limit for ratification. His essay received a “C.” His grader thought Watson’s thesis was farfetched, but Watson set out to show up his teachers. He lobbied state legislatures to adopt the proposed amendment and met with success. States ratified what was once labeled the Second Amendment, and the amendment was officially ratified on May 7, 1992, as the Twenty-Seventh Amendment. A proposal submitted by Congress to the states in 1789 became part of the Constitution two centuries after it was first proposed because of an incredibly determined (or pissed-off) student. (Watson’s grade in the course was retroactively changed in 2017 to an A+.)

There are lessons here. One person can make a difference. A liberal arts education can have value besides consigning the recipient to the Burger King counter. Modern politicians can be responsive. A poor grade can motivate some students. Perhaps there are other lessons to be drawn; I’ll leave them to you. But it is surely not the case that First Amendment rights were meant to have primacy because they come first in the Bill of Rights. The notion that our country’s founders regarded First Amendment protections as the most important because they placed them first in the Bill of Rights is revisionist–dare we say fake–history?

And this fake history misleads. When the revisionists talk about a First Liberty, they are referring to the free exercise of religion, but that only comes second in the First Amendment. It is proceeded by the clause barring an establishment of religion. If it’s first at all, we can say that the first liberty is the right to be free from religion or at least state-sanctioned or -aided religion.

The so-called Establishment Clause is striking because of, among other things, its broad language. The Bill of Rights does not just prevent an established church. It bars any establishment of religion, and it does not just prohibit a formal establishment of religion, it goes much further and says there shall be “no law respecting” such an establishment. The founders did not just want to prevent an established church or the establishment of religion; their language indicates that the United States should not even be on a road that could possibly lead to such an establishment. (This divorce from religion is also evident in Article VI of the Constitution, which states that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Some states did have religious requirements for office-holding that lasted into the nineteenth century. New Hampshire, for example, required state officials to “be of the Protestant religion.”)

Neither the placement of the Establishment Clause at the beginning of the First Amendment nor the fact that it serves purposes different from the rest of the amendment means that it is more important than the others. On the other hand, it should be viewed at least as important as the Free Exercise Clause. All interpretations of free exercise must also consider whether a law respecting the establishment of religion is being made.

               Perhaps more on that another time.

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Snippets

A new word, poorly defined, has entered the official lexicon: wastefraudandabuse.

John M. Barry, writing about catastrophes during the 1920s in Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America, notes about the deference given by many to the wealthy, “They had the power of the times, when it was believed that men with money were not only better than others but acted better.” In the America Barry was writing about, there were often good reasons that supported such beliefs. The small-town banker, lawyer, and local business owner were indeed often the richest people around, but they prospered most when their communities thrived. These wealthy men had a stake in knowing about their towns. Their knowledge, while deep in some ways, was often incomplete in others, as Barry makes clear, but the small towners’ success depended on and benefited others in the community. Thus their decisions often were good for a broad swath of the people around them.

Today we have a country run by the ultra-wealthy. I don’t know how many still believe that these people are not only better than others but act better. I think few. They are unlike the wealthy of the small-town America of a century ago. First of all, they have a lot more money. There are some around Trump who have hundreds of millions of dollars, but they are pikers compared to the many sitting around the table who have billions. A community ethos and concern did not produce their riches. Even so, because they have amassed fortunes beyond our (and maybe even their own) imaginations, they (and maybe a few benighted others) feel they must be meritorious. As Jean Rostand, the French scientist, historian, and philosopher said, “Merit envies success, and success takes itself for merit.” These ultra-wealthy think, “I have made untold money. Therefore, I am successful. Therefore, I must have merit. And therefore, it is right that I should rule over the less meritorious [read, ‘less wealthy’].”

However, success in one field does not necessarily mean wisdom or even common sense in another. You can come up with your own examples, but billionaires in government do not necessarily represent the best, the most meritorious in government.

A wise person said: “There are plenty of people in the world with good reputations who have never been found out.”

Proverbs: “Four things on earth are small, but they are exceedingly wise: the ants are a people not strong, yet they provide their food in the summer; the badgers are a people not mighty, yet they make their homes in the rocks; the locusts have no king, yet all of them march in rank; the lizard you can take in your hands, yet it is in kings’ palaces.”

“Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.” Steve Wright.

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Feeling Safe

The Trump administration voices a concern about antisemitism on college campuses. In light of that, I found a recent news report interesting. It stated that according to a survey conducted among Harvard students last year,15% of Jewish students said they did not feel physically safe on campus.

Was this a high number? I wanted more context. What percentage of students overall felt physically unsafe? The report did not say.

Interestingly, the survey reported that 47% of Muslim respondents said they do not feel safe. In another aspect of the survey, 61% of Jewish students reported fearing academic or professional repercussions for expressing their political views. However, 92% of Muslim students felt the same. These data would suggest that we should be talking about more than antisemitism, but I am not expecting this broader discussion from our president.

Of course, the survey numbers by themselves could not tell me about the validity of the responses. Perhaps many who felt safe were naïve and more should have felt threatened on campus. On the other hand, some of those who felt apprehensive might not be in any real danger. (Paradoxically, people sometimes feel an increased threat from crime when the data show that crime is falling.)

Who is not in favor of people feeling safe? But the issue is more complex than the knee-jerk response indicates. Making some people feel safe often means circumscribing the actions of others. The feeling-safe-on-campus refrain today is not about guns or disease or child abuse or domestic violence. Instead, it is a reference to college protests by those who criticize Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank.

For much of my half century in New York City, I lived in what authorities described as a high-crime neighborhood. That designation may have come from actual statistics, but it could have been merely a shorthand for saying whites are in the minority, which was true where I lived.

I had reasons to agree with the high-crime label. Our cars had been broken into many times. Our cars, as well as garbage cans and bikes, had been stolen. Our house had been broken into. I was mugged at knifepoint. I was frequently apprehensive and wary on the streets near my house. In other words, I was often fearful. This reached its peak around 1980, when crime was reportedly high in New York City. Some of the time I was working the equivalent of the night shift and arriving at my home subway station at eleven at night. It was only two short blocks to my house, but I was always fearful for those two blocks. Usually I was the only one getting off the train at that stop, but if a young Black man also stepped onto the platform or if I saw young Black men walking towards me on the sidewalk, I became much more apprehensive and wary. I felt unsafe.

If we reflexively agree that I should feel safe, we need to think about what actions would be necessary to make me feel safe. The answer would have been to prohibit young Black men from being on my block at night. Thus, to reduce my apprehension, we would have to substantially curb the activities (not to mention the rights) of others. The reality is that a miniscule number of young Black men constitute a threat to me. While I have been robbed twice at knifepoint by young Black men, I have passed many many many young Black men at night. Tens of thousands. Maybe much more. What are the odds that any single person might cause me harm? The answer is vanishingly small. My odds are better with the lottery.

Similarly, to make some college students feel safer, the suggestion has been to restrain the activities (and the rights) of others. Often the activities sought to be restrained are not those of physical violence or even physical activity. Instead, many want to restrict speech that makes someone feel unsafe even if that speech does not pose a reasonable risk of physical violence.

There are several issues here. First concerns the complicated subject of when and if speech should be curtailed. Volumes, of course, have been written on this topic, but it boils down to context. Some speech is incendiary, but some speech is not. Crowds screaming antisemitic epithets as Jewish students go to their dorm should be prohibited. A speaker at a peaceful rally in an auditorium who suggests that Israel is a colonial power that never should have been created…well, that should not. Restraining speech is about context, but a consideration of context requires a nuanced approach, which too many are unwilling to do.

Making me feel safe by constraining the rights of others is a tricky and a dangerous notion.