No. of Recommendations: 20
Attached is a link to an appearance of historians Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman at an event last week. Cox has been making similar appearances at other events with a few curring themes that are included here as well. It is 83 minutes long so it's it's not a 2 minute sound byte but something worthy of listening to in the background as you complete other tasks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20jHmZnkxUQThose that REALLY need to hear this conversation likely won't but on the off-chance that some highlights might entice someone to listen who might not be inclined to, I will toss out a few highlights.
WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DECADE MAKES -- at 25:40 -- Cox was asked about the stress many present day Americans feel about being so close to a "brink" of political tactics that seem to threaten the rule of law and the future of the country. She recounted the events that transpired between 1853 and 1863. During that period, the Kansas-Nebraska act passed Congress and upended the prior tense truce over the balance of slave and free states created by the Missouri Compromise. At that time, abolitionists felt the country had lost a battle that was going to fill out the rest of the continent with slave states and pull apart the country. As of 1853, forces willing to permit slavery controlled the White House, held a majority on the Supreme Court and had control of the Senate. In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act overrides the Missouri Compromise, 30 members of Congress meet in DC at the home of Emily Dickinson's father and that collection of Whigs, Democrats, Known-Nothings and Free-Soilers and conclude that we disagree about EVERYTHING ELSE but we all agree that we cannot turn over democracy to oligarchs who want to preserve slavery. In 1855 and 1856, this movement swept out the majority of people in the House who voted for the Kansas-Nebraska act. By 1859, Lincoln begins framing the role of the federal government and its obligation to protect the rights of all citizens. Lincoln is elected in 1860, by 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation is issued, the Gettysburg Address explicitly reframes the aim of the Civil War and the direction of the country is completely changed.
THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE -- at 53:08 -- We haven't always had the DOJ. It was created after the Civil War as a means of enforcing the then-new principle that the government's sole purpose in life was no longer just to protect PROPERTY but its obligations included protecting the RIGHTS of its citizens. You know... Gettysburg Address and such. The DOJ's first focus was on stamping out the Ku Klux Klan which emerged after the Civil War to resist Reconstruction efforts and was quite successful at it, until Reconstruction was abandoned as a result of a corrupt deal in a Presidential election.
NO CAPITAL F IN FOUNDERS -- at 1:09:40 -- Today's "originalists" have converted the founding fathers into the Founding Fathers, partly to support their present day rationales for extracting 250 year old ideas out of context and using them to justify political goals of the present. In reality, those who participating in the founding had ZERO nostalgia for what they had accomplished and the circumstances under which they did it. Historians of the early 1800s had already made a habit of traveling great distances across the country to visit surviving founding fathers in an effort to hear directly from the proverbial horses' mouths what the founders actually thought of their work, how it came about and what it meant in the present. One such historian pleaded with John Adams for a chance to interview him. Adams wrote back essentially saying "We had no idea what we were doing. We were simply trying to hammer out a deal that could keep the country moving down the road. We didn't think we created a master plan that would never need to change. We didn't create a set-it-and-forget-it country. We were not any better than you. The assumption is, "take it away, this is up to you guys, we didn't live in a golden time where we were better than everybody... This isn't auto-pilot. If you think we set everything in motion and you can just let it go on, you're wrong."
PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY -- at 59:52 -- The idea that a President would be granted immunity from the law is the last idea that would have ever occured to any of the founders. After the Supreme Court ruling, Freeman attended a video conference call with a collection of historians who had helped contribute to an amicus brief that had been submitted to the Supreme Court for that Trump case. If you are handed power, you are supposed to accountable for the ways you have used that power. We just broke away from a king. If you read the debates of those who debated the Constitution, thought had been given to a Presidential COUNCIL with three. Others quickly ruled that out because they were worried one bad member of the council could act badly and hide behind the other two, THUS AVOIDING ACCOUNTABILITY. Those who wrote the Constitution explicitly expected a President to be accountable to the other branches of government and to the law itself.
WTH
