Title: These Truths
Rating: 3 Stars
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
This line is, of course, from the Declaration of Independence. Lepore’s book, These Truths, is a history of the United States, specifically through the lens of this line from one of its founding documents.
Despite its high sounding nature, even at the time that it was written, these words were not true. These words are not true today. Over the centuries of US history, there have been a continuing series of revolutions that have tried to make it more true.
You can say that the US experiment was flawed from its beginnings. The House of Burgesses, meeting on Jamestown Island, in Virginia, was the first representative legislative body formed in what would become the US. This was in July of the year 1619.
In August of 1619, in Hampton, Virginia, a mere 30 miles away or so from where the House of Burgesses met, the White Lion docked. Among the cargo offloaded was some twenty Africans. They were purchased and moved to Jamestown. They were the first slaves.
So, yes, within a month of each other and essentially at the same place, the first tentative steps towards a democracy were started and the first slaves were sold.
The phrase all men are created equal haunts in more than just the slavery dimension. There have been continuing struggles for equality for women, Native Americans, immigrants, and populist fights on the behalf of poor farmers and factory workers.
What gains for equality that have occurred have never come without a struggle. The Civil War is just the most obvious example. There is always someone saying that some group that’s fighting for equality is somehow un-American or are demanding some special right that they are not entitled to.
These struggles for equality clash even as our democracy becomes more sophisticated. In early days, there was no private ballot. A voter explicitly stood and was counted for the candidate that he (and yes, it was a he) supported. Later, a paper ballot afforded secrecy and was quickly broadly adopted as an improvement in the democratic process. It was especially quickly adopted in the South, where due to the low literacy rates of blacks at the time, the paper ballot was now a burden to them for voting. The South further discouraged voting by using the paper ballot as justification for literacy tests. There was an exception to these literacy tests for those lucky voters whose grandfathers had previously voted. I’m sure that it was a coincidence that the quite literal grandfather clause only applied to white voters since their grandfathers were the only ones that could vote in those earlier times.
Steps like this drove black voting in the South to negligible percentages until the revolutionary time of the 1960s, when voting rights acts were passed.
Another thread running through American history is whether truth is derived from faith or from reason. An often overlooked fact today is how secular the founding fathers really were. It is not random that the word God does not appear in the constitution (and the word Lord only appears in ceremonial phrases such as “in the year of our Lord”). They were trying to build a government free of religion.
In the early days of the nineteenth century, there swept through the US the Second Great Awakening. This wave swept over the country with such fervor that some parts completely given over to religion were called burned-over districts. Church membership soared.
This proved to be a recurring theme. There would be a wave of religious fervor that then would subside. Another example is that, in the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II, church membership was on the decline. As the US met the challenge of the Cold War by facing off against the apparently godless Soviet Union, the fires of faith started up once again. Church membership soared. It was during the 1950s that one nation under God was added to the Pledge of Allegiance.
Sometimes faith is used to further equality. The abolitionists were part of the Second Great Awakening. Sadly, it appears that more often it is used as a cudgel against equality.
At one point, the Equal Rights Amendment had broad bi-partisan support. The amendment passed easily in the House and the Senate. Many states quickly ratified it. Phyllis Schlafly helped launch the modern conservative movement by rallying opposition to it from religious organizations that felt as if they were under attack by feminists.
Similarly, believe it or not, abortion also at one time had bi-partisan support. Pat Buchanan, at the time Nixon’s speechwriter, convinced Nixon to make it a religious partisan issue (Nixon, from his tapes, actually believed that sometimes abortion was necessary; the example that he used was if the fetus was of mixed race; you can always count on Nixon to have the worst possible racist take). Jerry Falwell, having had no previous problems with abortion, took up the issue with gusto. George H. W. Bush was once such a fan of the availability of birth control that he had a nickname of Rubbers (you can’t make this up). By the time he was Vice President, he had gotten the memo and was firmly toeing the line on conservative reproductive rights.
And so now here we are. In the 1950s, people couldn’t really tell pollsters what a Republican or a Democrat stood for because a wide range of beliefs were tolerated within each party. Now, the party positions have solidified into concrete and members of each now just shout at each over the ramparts. Modern polling and political operatives have further cemented the issues in each party.
While all of this legislative paralysis sets in, the truly rich have taken the opportunity to bend laws to their advantage. The gap between the rich and everyone else is now broader than ever before. With no government check, there seems to be no way to stop this trend.
Although this work was released before the latest demonstrations, could it be that we’re in the midst of the next revolution? Will the election of 2020 usher in true change?
And if it doesn’t, what then?
dorkenstein 