The Fight for Reaction: Reconstruction and the Franchise

A new front in the modern Republican Party's effort to depress voter turnout has emerged from Pennsylvania, where the party seeks to alter the way the electoral college vote is counted to strengthen their hand. This comes along with a concentrated effort to restrict voting in a number of other key battleground states through restrictive voter ID bills (among other measures).

Such measures certainly fly in the face of the (generally agreed) U.S. consensus, built over our history, that democracy means people have easy access to the ballot. It also points to the way that reactionary forces in the nation's history have worked diligently to limit the vote to promote their agenda. No more dramatic example of this exists than the massive disenfranchisement of African-American voters that came as a core element of the rollback of Reconstruction in the 1870s and onward.

When discussing the fight and justice of African-American voting rights, we tend to disassociate access to the franchise from the political implications of its use. Civil rights leaders in the 1960s did not make partisan advantage a mainstay of their case; they rightly emphasized the basic immorality of denying people the right to vote in a nation which sees that power as core to its national identity. Yet, in pondering the implications of African-American men winning the right to vote in the late 1860s, and then losing it over the course of the next several decades, we should not only emphasize the basic civic and moral outrage, but the way these transformations affected the shape of American politics.

Put succinctly, it is certainly plausible, and I would say likely, that African-Americans' loss of the ballot box helped ensure an enduring and powerful conservatism at the heart of our politics. Counterfactuals are of course riddled with challenges. However, in the case of Reconstruction, we do not have to rely on pure speculation. After all, for several years in the late 1860s through the 1870s we can see how, particularly at the state level, politics would develop with the franchise available to African-American men. What one finds is a starkly different and certainly more progressive United States. Consider some of the programs and policies implemented by Reconstruction governments which included substantial African-American representation (this is all taken from pages 156 of Eric Foner's A Short History of Reconstruction):

• Public schools, hospitals, enitentiaries, and asylums for orphans and the insane were either established for the first time or whose funding was increased
  
• South Carolina funded medical care for poor citizens
• Alabama provided free legal counsel for indigent defendants
• Laws were changed expanding divorce rights, property rights for married women
• State legislatures excluded all manner of small farmers and workers from having their basic livelihoods upended by debt collectors
• Progressive taxation, primarily of large land holding implemented
  

Of course, not all policies passed by the Reconstruction governments were progressive or as extensive as one could hope. Republican governments in the South often did much to encourage big business investment through massive subsidies and cases of corruption were rampant. However, compared with the white-dominant governments that came after Reconstruction, it seems hard to argue that the trajectory of state politics in the South would have been as conservative with continued African-American enfranchisement. Remember the strength African-Americans as a voting bloc had in the South at this time; where they represented either major minorities or majorities in most of the former Confederacy (South Carolina during part of Reconstruction had a majority African-American state legislature, reflecting the state's demographics). At the national level, Reconstruction saw the election of a number of African-American congressman, as well as one Senator.

The massive step forward Reconstruction represented would never be fully reversed and to push affairs backward required a multifaceted effort. Examinations of the Civil War sometimes raise the question of why the Confederates did not adopt a guerrilla warfare approach near the conflict's end. Yet, in the late 1860s they did, only targeted specifically at African-Americans. The Ku Klux Klan was a domestic insurgent group, in some ways like a U.S. version of al-Qaeda in Iraq. KKK violence was often quite targeted, for example intensifying around election time to scare African-American voters from the polls. As reactionary elements in the South started to regain power, they moved to more "legal" means such as literacy tests and poll taxes. And thus, to this day, we still live in the shadow of a bright shining moment in our history, followed by a horrendous descent into darkness, one which took decades of struggle and blood to overcome.

The Battle to Claim the Founders, Part 105896

Ron Chernow's piece in the New York Times today about the relationship (or lack thereof) between the Tea Party's views and the thought of the founders is well worth reading. The sections detailing debate over different interpretations of the Constitution are really fascinating (I did not realize just how quickly arguments over how "strict construction" emerged!) That said, Chernow's piece contains some slightly puzzling assertions. Most problematically, he writes as if clear lines of lineage exist from the two original political parties in the U.S., the Federalists and Republicans, to our modern day political ideas and parties. For example, here is Chernow on Jefferson and the Tea Party:

Jefferson and his Republicans (not related to today’s Republicans) advocated states’ rights, a weak federal government and strict construction of the Constitution. The Tea Party can claim legitimate descent from Jefferson and Madison, even though they founded what became the Democratic Party.

This is unfortunately what happens when you take general philosophical ideals expressed in the past and wrench them out of their specific social, economic, and political context. It is true that Jefferson and Madison believed in concepts such as "weak federal government." The critical political experience in their lives up to the point of the revolution had been dealing with an authoritarian British government which clamped down severely on independent governance. Yet, that does not necessarily translate into saying that Jefferson's reasons for advocating small government bear no difference that those espoused by the Tea Party. As I wrote about in a previous entry, Jeffersonian opposition to large government had much to do with the fear that a strong federal state would employ its power to maintain and expand the power of wealthy interests (including private businesses), at the expense of independent farmers and working people. Not exactly the philosophical underpinnings of modern conservatism in the United States.

Furthermore, Chernow seems to imply that Washington and Hamilton represent the fore-bearers of American liberalism; after all they "espoused a strong federal government, led by a powerful executive branch, and endorsed a liberal reading of the Constitution." Yet, such a reading seems to fall into the trap that if conservatives are for "small government" philosophically, then liberals must be for "big government." Hamilton's desire for big government came in large part out of a desire to create a strong, imperial state and to promote the development of large enterprises and businesses. While progressives do not categorically oppose such concepts, philosophically they see a strong state as a tool to help the marginalized in society and provide a check on powerful private influences. Try pairing that with a key Hamilton statement on his vision for the new government and society:

"All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people . . . The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, as they cannot receive any advantage by change, they therefore will ever maintain good government."

Chernow's piece and any similar ones are incredibly welcome to creating a more historically accurate and complex political dialogue. What I would merely propose is that when we talk about the founders in today's politics, let's render them (to a realistic extent), the complexities of their views. One can find relevant political ideas not only from the "founding fathers," but from the slaves, working men, women activists, and so many others who forged the nation. But we should not pretend that any of us are their direct and unique descendants.

MLK: Judge On the Content of His Actual Beliefs

Banalogies friend Seth D pointed me to this piece from the Moderate Voice, which honestly is best read as an Onion-esque parody of a "sensible" moderate position. The author, Rick Moran, seeks to find a reasonable middle ground between those who believe the Tea Party is the inheritor of the civil rights legacy and those who vehemently disagree. As Seth noted to me, Moran writes as if Martin Luther King Jr. were some ancient figure whose views on modern issues we can only speculate on. This allows him (without linking to any sources) to state, for example, that King "would have scoffed at the modern interpretation of 'social justice.'" Perhaps most ludicrous is Moran's attempt to make King out to be a skeptic of government interventions to achieve greater social justice, asserting that King would have opposed programs based on ideas of "positive rights" because he believed that "change would come only when the hearts and minds of Americans were turned from hate and that only through Christian love and charity."

This is not a matter of difference of interpretation; these statements are factually incorrect. Look at the demands of the March for Jobs and Freedom in 1963; among them are higher minimum wages and a "massive federal program to train and place all unemployed workers - Negro and white - on meaningful and dignified jobs at decent wages." When King was murdered in 1968, he was assisting with a sanitation workers' strike and building to the planned Poor People's March, which again demanded massive government intervention to end poverty.

Not only were King's views on policy clear, so were his politics. Let's take the movement's fight for voting rights. Most of the time, the struggle for full suffrage rights is discussed in a way that make the goals of the movement mainly philosophical. Thus, the main point of fighting for full suffrage rights was for African-Americans to be equal citizens to whites. While this was a vital element, King and the movement also saw gaining full voting rights as a pragmatic tactic towards larger objectives, as seen in his 1961 speech to the Transport Workers Union:

"The campaign to grant the ballot to Negroes in the South has profound implications. From all I have outlined, it is clear that the Negro vote would not be utilized in a vacuum. Negroes exercising a free suffrage would march to the polls to support those candidates who would be partial to social legislation. Negroes in the South, whether they elected white or Negro Congressmen, would be placing in office a liberal candidate, if you will-a-labor candidate. (APPLAUSE) No other political leader could have a program possessing appeal to Negroes."

How about King's views on conservatives? Well, right before receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, he gave a lecture that included comments on that year's presidential election, in which Lyndon Johnson crushed conservative champion Barry Goldwater. As Rick Perlstein and others have shown, the modern right in many ways came into its own with Goldwater's campaign and a direct line runs between the Goldwaterites and today's conservatism. Here's what King had to say about Goldwater and the right-wing movement of the day:

"Another indication that progress is being made was found in the recent presidential election in the United States. The American people revealed great maturity by overwhelmingly rejecting a presidential candidate who had become identified with extremism, racism, and retrogression. The voters of our nation rendered a telling blow to the radical right. They defeated those elements in our society which seek to pit white against Negro and lead the nation down a dangerous Fascist path."

A lot of history is open to interpretation and debate. Indeed it is often highly problematic to say what a historical figure would have said about current events. However, on the question of King and modern conservatism, there really is no question where he stood.

Still Forgetting Walter

I swung by the "Restoring Honor" rally on Saturday which attempted (as many have pointed out) to appropriate the legacy and meaning of the black freedom struggle for the religious right/Tea Party movement. As Saddam Hussein might say, such an assertion may represent the "mother of all banalogies." This is one of those cases where interpretations of history do not even come into play, we are talking simple facts. In this case, it is an indisputable truth that Martin Luther King, Jr. and the key figures around him were progressives and had strong leanings towards Scandinavian style social democracy or more radical forms of democratic socialism. The black freedom struggle had an important economic component, one which many in the movement felt could only fully be addressed by first winning civil rights, but certainly not only through such measures. Figures in the movement forthrightly identified as progressives and attacked conservative political figures and ideas. Really the only way to miss all this is to pretend (as so many seem to) that the entire message of the movement is summed up in King's "content of their character" line, even a reading of the rest of the "I Have a Dream Speech" showcases the importance King placed on poverty and power relations.

It was this sort of assertive amnesia which reached its zenith during a video tribute to King at the rally. The longest single image from that montage featured a slow-motion shot of King at the rally sharing a joke with Walter Reuther, whose birthday is today. Now, I didn't expect people to recognize Reuther, but still the irony was overwhelming. Reuther was then president of the United Auto Workers, perhaps the most powerful (and one of the more progressive) unions in the U.S. at the time. Reuther and his compatriots, while a pragmatic lot, retained a vision of society that much more closely resembles the nightmares Beck sees in Obama's policies than in the reality of the current administration. They wanted to transform the U.S. economy through social insurance programs and economic planning to ensure full employment, good jobs, and even sustainable development.

It was these very views that helped cement an alliance (albeit one which strained and even broke at points) between the black freedom struggle and the labor movement. To cite one concrete detail, a good portion of the funding for the logistics of the August 28, 1963 rally (including the sound system which brought "I Have a Dream" to the world) came from the UAW's coffers. If Glenn Beck wants to be an heir to this he can feel free, but I have my doubts.

Wall Street and the Founding Fathers

Yesterday's New York Times provides a nice, anecdotal (and I mean that in a good way), look into the worldview of Wall Street businesspeople who supported Obama for president, but now are turning on him over financial reform and his rhetorical corporate America. Of particular note for this blog is the contention by hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb that “[a]s every student of American history knows, this country’s core founding principles included nonpunitive taxation, constitutionally guaranteed protections against persecution of the minority and an inexorable right of self-determination."

Statements such as these go to what should be a core "banalogical rule": if someone is claiming their political views are the direct inheritance of the founding generation and its principles, it's likely they're oversimplifying. What makes the Founding Fathers a perpetual source of fascination and debate is that they were extremely complicated and even contradictory thinkers. Let's take as an example Thomas Jefferson, given that some of his pronouncements found themselves recruited for the complaints of businesspeople on Wall Street. Here are two Jefferson quotes on economics:

(1) "Having always observed that public works are much less advantageously managed than the same are by private hands, I have thought it better for the public to go to market for whatever it wants which is to be found there; for there competition brings it down to the minimum of value." --Thomas Jefferson to William B. Bibb, 1808. ME 12:107

(2) "Money and not morality is the principle of commerce and commercial nations... Justice, honor, faith, must yield to the necessity of keeping themselves in place. The question whether a measure is moral is never asked, but whether it will nourish the avarice of their merchants."
--Thomas Jefferson to John Langdon, 1810. (*) ME 12:376

Do those two quotes make sense in the modern left-right context? Potentially, but not easily. However, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in an era when merchants and large-scale businesses were only beginning to emerge, they did. Taking Jefferson and his fellow republicans as a case study, we find that the views on economics debated by the founding generation mixed a variety of viewpoints that today we associate with left and right into patterns very different than today.

Jeffersonians certainly expressed some views which fit in well with conservative politics, as seen in the first quote. Jefferson was a strong proponent of free trade and territorial expansion to provide more lands for production. Support of such policies also led Jefferson to promote an aggressive foreign policy aimed at assisting U.S. export interests, something associated with both political parties, but often criticized from a progressive perspective. Jeffersonians also opposed government subsidies to businesses, seeing them as helping to breed monopolies which undermined a real free market system. One can also find in Jefferson's opinion on the constitutionality of a national bank his fears about excessive federal government power being employed in regulating commerce.

At the same time, Jeffersonians expressed grave doubts about merchants and manufacturers, questioning their loyalty and very morality, as well as criticizing wealth inequality as a major threat to nation and justice. As one example, take this quote from James Madison, who, in speaking about the future of the nation, urged that laws be passed "which, without violating the rights of poverty, reduce extreme wealth to a state of mediocrity and raise extreme indigence to a state of comfort." To those who might find the part about property rights a counter, one can find concrete expressions of Madison's view in places such as his support for a wealth tax in Federalist No. 21. Jefferson similarly advocated versions of progressive taxation and worried constantly about the "misery" wealth inequalities created, as well as the dangers to a fair republic they represented. As the modern corporation began to take form in the early nineteenth century, Jefferson grew increasingly concerned and his writings showed at least as much antipathy to early "big business" as to "big government." As an example, in 1816 he declared that "I hope we shall crush… in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations."

What to make of this? Well, to put succinctly, Jeffersonians feared concentrated power - they believed a nation of independent farmers (white ones of course, slaves inhabited essentially a different universe), neither particularly wealthy nor poor, mostly unrestrained by government but also protected from the greed of merchants, represented the most just path for the future. Try grafting that into our modern, post-industrial national situation.

That said, I do not mean to imply that the thoughts of the founding generation bear no relevance on today. Many of the larger dynamics they faced are still issues today. Let's just remember they were complex people in a different time before enrolling them into today's fights.

FDR Would Appoint Elizabeth Warren

The historically-minded debate over "is Obama's presidency progressive?" seems the perfect topic for this blog, so it’s long past time I jump in. To summarize: On one side are those who look at Obama so far and see missed opportunities, political cowardice, and a presidency whose ideological marker seems more mushy third-way then strong progressivism. Obama’s failings often find themselves unflatteringly contrasted to the strength and principle that Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson brought to achieving their legislative aims. Perhaps the most cited example of this involves contrasting some seemingly weak-willed, overly nuanced Obama talk about big business with the fire of Franklin Roosevelt's "I welcome their hatred" speech in Madison Square Garden in November 1936. One could also note the extraordinary pressure Johnson often brought on members of Congress to vote his way on particular bills or even Roosevelt’s noble (though somewhat disastrous attempt) to purge ultra-conservative Democrats with more progressive ones in the 1938 midterm elections.

The other side, best represented by Michael Tomasky in his piece, "Against Despair," urges progressives to take a deep breath and look at the full records of Roosevelt and Johnson. Rather than liberal stalwarts, Tomasky and writers such as Eugene Goodheart, note the many compromises and failings of both Roosevelt and Johnson in fighting for progressive goals. One need only look at the essential exclusion of African-American workers from the original Social Security program (a compromise to Southern Democrats) to see that high progressive principle was not the only pillar Roosevelt stood upon. Overall, as Tomasky describes in writing about FDR, both his presidency and Obama’s provide clear demonstrations of the “difficulties inherent in trying to effect change, the readiness to accept half a loaf, and the regular reassurances sent to the moneyed classes that the liberals hadn’t taken over the candy store.” He then goes on to detail the historical and structural barriers Obama faces that FDR and LBJ did not: the ballooning of the filibuster, the evaporation of bipartisanship, the weakening of social movements like labor, etc.

Overall, I tend to agree with the tenor of Tomasky and others who, looking at the history, find that "all this has happened before and will happen again" so to speak, a subject I hope to come back to later. For now however, let’s focus on one area where a historical perspective does not place Obama in as good standing as an FDR: diversity of advisers.

Generally, both camps have ignored the specific issue of advisers when examining Obama historically. Goodheart does cite Obama's promotion of a "team of rivals" as a positive characteristic of his administration. At a forum about his article, I had the opportunity to ask Tomasky about Obama's lack of progressive high-level appointees; his response focused on the fact that Roosevelt’s cabinet did not overflow with aggressive liberals, but rather counted among its number several conservative appointees, such as Hans "let's cut the deficit during a depression, what could go wrong?" Morgenthau.

The point however is not to expect that Obama’s policy team would be totally culled from the precincts of The Nation or the Economic Policy Institute. Rather, where some disappointment with Obama in historical context seems merited revolves around the lack of an ideologically diverse set of core advisers. I differentiate this from his cabinet in general; on that count Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis is an obvious progressive and strong cases can also be made for many on the energy and environment team such as Stephen Chu or Lisa Jackson. Thinking specifically about the economics team, the question though is how much he listens to those outside the Geithner-Summers pole of opinion. Solis for example has dramatically transformed the Department of Labor into a force siding with working people as it should (we have Treasury and Commerce Departments to look after business after all). But does Obama listen to her about larger economic matters? How much input did Solis have in health care or financial reform? Or Jared Bernstein for that matter?

Now, one could easily fit Tomasky and co.'s overall argument on to the appointee question: with the absurd filibuster continuing as a sort of tragicomical block on reform, what good would some more progressive advisers have? Perhaps none. At the same time, who knows what political and policy options currently receive scant consideration because there are not forceful advisers to make their case. As William Leuchtenburg and others have long argued, Roosevelt did not want to expend political capital on the National Labor Relations Act, although he did not fundamentally oppose the idea. It took the great upswell and pressure of organized labor to provide the space for people Roosevelt trusted (primarily then New York Senator Robert Wagner) to lobby him personally and bring the bill over the line. Similarly, it was the relentless lobbying by Frances Perkins that helped push Roosevelt to embrace and fight for the creation of Social Security. Are there similar situations for Obama? Perhaps regarding a public option or a different sort of jobs bill?

This is where Elizabeth Warren comes in. I don't know how good Obama and her relationship is or how much weight he places on her opinions. However, we do know that Nancy Pelosi takes Warren seriously, as do several key Senators. The fact that in the past she and Geithner have sparred to me is a big PLUS; they're both smart people and her presence could bring some needed variety and yes "rivalry" to Obama's team. Also, like strong progressives in past administrations, she can count on an independent public constituency (in some ways akin to Perkins, whose previous labor advocacy work gave her key allies in civil society) willing to support and assist her, one she has helped build through media appearances, including several with Jon Stewart. Certainly there are other good nominees who could run the agency competently. Warren however, would be an outsized voice, someone who could spark debate and maybe even cause some trouble from time to time. And history does show that it is often the healthy annoyances that catalyze real accomplishment.

Woodrow Wilson's Leftist Lawyer, Part I

It has been one of the more idiosyncratic aspects of Glenn Beck’s version of reality that Woodrow Wilson has become one of its central villains, with our 28th president also serving as the father of the "cancer" that is modern progressivism. Suffice it to say, no, Woodrow Wilson did not invent progressivism. Wilson fits in no easy box (one of the reasons historians keep writing about him), but certainly he embodied both progressive and conservative (even reactionary) views. Wilson certainly has many detractors on the left, who, while perhaps not as vitriolic as Beck, have found much to criticize him for, ranging from Wilson's often hypocritical foreign policy in which rhetoric (and some action) seeming to challenge imperialism cohabitated quite nicely with often imperial policies, his deep racism which saw expression in the segregating of the federal government, and his unforgivable suppression of civil liberties during World War I. Perhaps because of this, Wilson’s legacy as a sometimes quite progressive president have been sidelined, but are worth looking at. To tie these to my previous post about Beck's obsession with Obama's "radical" advisers, I want to look specifically at how major pieces of Wilson's legacy are due, in part, to the work of a "radical" adviser, who helped make the U.S. a fairer nation for the wage-earning masses.

And with that, let us now turn to one of the great unsung heroes of the Progressive Era: Frank P. Walsh. A brilliant labor lawyer from Kansas City, Walsh served as a steady ally of Wilson in the 1912 campaign. This work caught Wilson's attention and led him to push for Walsh to chair the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations (USCIR), a congressionally appointed body tasked with investigating the problems of labor in the new industrial economy (a commission, it is worth pointing out, created because of organized citizen pressure). Walsh devoted himself completely into the USCIR's work, often stirring up great controversy as its investigations proceeded. Among its most impressive features was the the set of witnesses the USCIR heard from, which consisted of a range of views one rarely sees invited into mainstream dialogue. Coming before the commission was everyone from Industrial Workers of the World founder "Wild Bill" Haywood to the grand industrialists such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. In a rather surprising turn of events, the members of the USCIR, representing a variety of interests, disagreed with each other on the final report so vigorously that they issued three separate reports! The most important of these however was Walsh's, which also advanced the most radical analysis and recommendations. With exhaustive documentation, Walsh's USCIR report gave a greater legitimacy to the struggles of workers in a time when unions were in many ways still a rogue institution. Walsh minced no words in the report, stating that "the basic cause of industrial dissatisfaction . . . .[is] the fact that the workers of the nation, through compulsory and oppressive methods, legal and illegal, are denied the full product of their toil." He called for unions to be given the right to organize and for the society to embrace the idea that "political freedom can only exist where there is industrial freedom [and he wasn't talking about deregulation], political democracy only where there is industrial democracy."

Before discussing Walsh's further work with the Wilson administration, it is worth taking a moment to comment on where Walsh stood ideologically. While his politics are somewhat hard to describe, he certainly stood on the left end of progressivism and showed at least a comfort with, if not outright support of, socialist ideals. In a letter to Eugene V. Debs, the perennial Socialist Party candidate and hero of American radicalsim, Walsh approvingly quoted one of his staffers' summary of the USCIR report, that, “[a]ccording to this report, Eugene Debs was right, and his only mistake was in being twenty years in advance of the times.” Walsh also maintained a friendship with the renown anarchist Emma Goldman, including providing legal assistance to her. Goldman felt sufficiently ideologically compatible with Walsh to call him in her memoirs a "radically minded man." Yet, Goldman also recognized the limits of Walsh's radicalism, particularly in his close relationship not just with Wilson, but with the Democratic Party, and in the next sentence after noting his radicalism she goes on to accuse him of "political blindness and social muddle-headedness." Walsh's desire to remain connected to the Democrats and the mainstream led him away from some of his more progressive stances, as in his support U.S. entry into World War I, despite having identified himself as a pacifist. Perhaps Walsh himself best expressed the seemingly contradictory relationships and positions he found himself in when he commented to feminist activist Doris Stevens that, "I hate like hell to be so respectable."

In part 2 I will discuss Walsh's involvement in helping set the first real federal labor policy through his service on the National War Labor Board.

Patriotism and History

I spotted via TAPPED this David Frum column on progressivism, patriotism, and the Obama campaign through a discussion of Todd Gitlin's book, The Intellectuals and the Flag. Frum is (surprise) skeptical of Obama's understanding of patriotism, stating that Obama:

[T]ries to distinguish between the fearfully flawed United States as it is - and the reformed country into which the United States might evolve. It is the latter, hypothetical, country that deserves patriotic affection. But there is this one problem: that hypothetical country does not as yet exist. This is not patriotism - it is a wish fantasy.

Frum's comments reveal a somewhat baffling lack of historical context. While he may label Obama's patriotism as "without content and without qualities" one need look any farther than Obama's "Yes We Can" speech to comprehend how Obama understands patriotism. Doing so reveals a historically minded view of this issue and makes a mockery of those who would question Obama's love of country.

For Obama, patriotism centers on a devotion to the ideals of freedom and democracy that the United States was founded upon; this was the "creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation." That seems a pretty standard idea which certain presidents have reaffirmed in recent years. However, as anyone with any knowledge of American history knows, the actual social and political conditions of the United States upon its' creation did not match these ideals (see for example, slavery). To secure these blessing required (and continues to), centuries of struggle by political leaders and ordinary citizens. In Obama's speech those who embraced this patriotic mission were the ones making this ideal of America a reality: from the abolitionists to women's rights activists to union organizers. To Frum however it would seem these Americans were merely "shrinking from realities," while embracing a "wish fantasy." That is how Frum describes Obama, Gitlin, and other modern day progressives who he derides as attempting to sell a "whole new approach to patriotism." Yet, last I checked, the "realities" in America include women having the right to vote and slavery being abolished, among other changes since 1776. Thus, Obama is not pining for a fantasy America, he is rather situating his campaign and its' goals within this larger narrative of history.

Of course, Obama's reading of patriotism and history is nothing new. In fact, based on his remarks, one can imagine David Frum dismissing as "without content" and merely "hypothetical" the sentiments of a short piece of rhetoric delivered in a small town in Pennsylvania one June afternoon in 1863. It is in a way unfortunate that the Gettysburg Address is so famous as it gives us an excuse to avoid pondering its meaning, which Obama is very much attempting to emulate. Lincoln ascribed to a conception of patriotism emphasizing ideals, particularly "the proposition that all men are created equal." For him at that juncture, the Civil War did not just mean preserving a union and an old America, but rather redefining American ideals to be more expansive, to create in that worn but meaningful phrase a "new birth of freedom."

Of course there are a million more things to say about how the meaning and experience of freedom has been contested throughout American history. For the moment however, I'll leave by hopefully appealing to Mr. Frum from another angle and remind him of Rabbi Tarfon's old saying: "It is not your responsibility to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but you are not free to desist from it either."