The Battle for “The Soul of America”

I just got around to reading Jon Meacham’s best-selling book ‘The Soul of America.’  Like most non-fiction books, the title is intended to get your attention and the subtitle tells you what it’s about: ‘The Battle for Our Better Angels.’

Meacham is a left-leaning editor and presidential historian.  So, I expected to get some moralizing about the current resident of the White House.  But I didn’t get it.  There were a few swipes at him in the introduction and the first chapter.  That was just to set the tone for what followed.

Meacham lays out a history of the United States as we have made progress on racial justice by consistently overcoming a tribal fear of “the other.”  The story he tells - mostly through presidential history - reveals the complexity of presidents who had the political courage and the moral leadership to enact laws, enforce court orders and espouse a moral philosophy consistent with that of our founders.  

He does so while pointing out the moral failures of those same presidents.  Harry Truman used racial slurs in private but wrote to Congress in 1948 about our belief that “all men are created equal and that they have the right to equal just under the law.”  He faced down the inevitable backlash from Southern Democrats saying, “I’m everybody’s president.”

Teddy Roosevelt (TR) was the first president to invite a person of color – Booker T. Washington – to dinner at the White House. He later recalled, “the very fact that I felt a moment’s qualm on inviting him because of his color made me ashamed of myself…”  And, yet, he worried that low birth rates among the “best people” (the English-speaking, white population) might lead to “race suicide.” 

The two-steps-forward-one-step-back struggle for racial equality and acceptance of immigrants has always been a study in contrasts.  Initial reforms under TR and Woodrow Wilson were “plagued by theories of racial superiority and fears of the ‘other.’”  FDR rescued capitalism and “redefined the role of the state to lift up the weakest among us” but interned “innocent Americans of Japanese descent.” 

Meacham spends more time discussing the courage and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson than other chapter of our history.  Paying scant attention to the failure of the Vietnam War and the five decade long failure of his Great Society, he paints LBJ as a hero of the same stature as Lincoln. And, indeed he was.  Despite my distaste for LBJ who lied us into a war we should never have fought, I gained a new appreciation for his moral and political courage.  Like Truman, LBJ was a Southern Democrat whose moral sense overcame his background.  He relentlessly advocated that we as a nation rise above racism, saying, “whatever your views are, we have a Constitution and we have a Bill of Rights, and we have the law of the land, and two-thirds of the Democrats in the Senate voted for [The Civil Rights Bill of 1964] and three-fourths of the Republicans… I signed it, and I am going to enforce it…”

Meacham closes his book thusly:

“For all of our darker impulses, for all of our shortcomings, and for all of the dreams denied and deferred, the [American] experiment begun so long ago, carried out so imperfectly, is worth the fight. There is, in fact, no struggle more important, and none nobler, than the one we wage in the service of those better angels who, however besieged, are always ready for battle.”

WHO WILL LEAD?

I’m Just An Old White Guy

I decided to become a writer sometime around my sixtieth birthday.  My successes in this endeavor have been minor and infrequent.  My first book was published by Motivational Press and the editors of the Democrat & Chronicle (D&C) have graciously published my guest columns from time to time.  At least one of those – expressing the frustration of a political moderate in a Deep Blue state – was picked up through the Gannett network and published in the Des Moines Register. None of these successes have enabled me to make a living as a writer.  But I have learned a lot during my journey.

A love of language is essential to becoming a writer and there is no place language is more important than in our news media.  During my brief stint on the D&C’s editorial board, I observed true professionals as they worked to capture ideas without creating false equivalence whether writing about a sexual harassment scandal at the University of Rochester or deciding how to endorse or not endorse a candidate for mayor.  

Sometime in my journey, I created a  hashtag for myself #justanoldwhiteguy.  I fantasized that it would be followed by many on Twitter and it was NOT.  Maybe it doesn’t resonate with others as it does me or maybe other old white guys don’t know what a hashtag is for.  Whatever the reason, no one seems to care.  I am compelled to consider it in a new light this week as the media refers to white nationalism and angry white males in the wake of two mass killings within 24 hours.

The phrase ‘angry, white males’ can create a false equivalence.  It may accurately be said that the Dayton and El Paso shooters (both extremists one a conservative, the other a liberal) are both angry, white males. But that doesn’t mean all white males who are angry are likely to became mass murderers.  The broader context in which white males may become angry relates to the word ‘just’ in my hashtag.  Indeed, it’s the word ‘just’ that makes my hashtag work.  It’s obviously not meant as an adjective in the sense of being righteous.  Certainly, there are old, white guys who consider themselves righteous, render judgment and, in some cases, mete out punishment.  But, in my case, it is rather an adverb meaning ‘merely,’ as in “I’m just a temp,” the Cri de Coeur of those whose employment is not long term. 

My Cri de Coeur is that of a demographic being increasingly blamed for all the ills of society, both real and imagined.  Being a white male is now treated as an original sin as though the constitutional form of Republic asserting the equality of all and rule of law were not also created by white males.  

The word ‘old’ is also a significant factor in my feelings about such shifting social attitudes.  I am of a generation that protested the war in Vietnam but not Jimi Hendrix’ playing of the national anthem at Woodstock.  Students for a Democratic Society called for revolution, a call that was quelled as the war wound down and boomers started getting married and having babies (much as Millennials are today).  Just as the WWII generation saw us Boomers as an ungrateful lot, we have raised the generation of ungrateful rabble-rousers who now complain about our governance.  

And so, I am not justan old white guy.  I am also an angry white male.  I am angry that the Republican Party has provided us with a President who consistently fails to provide the moral leadership we need.  I am angry that the best alternative the Democrat Party can offer is a slate of candidates hellbent on destroying our prosperity through government control of the economy.  Most of all, I am angry that we are saddled with an electoral process that offers no relief.  

I’m not a gun owner or a member of a nationalist group.  I won’t find an outlet for my anger by committing mass murder.  My anger can only be resolved by political leaders who share my belief in a free American society.  Reproductive freedom means women should make their own moral choices. Social freedom means that all citizens should be entitled to equal opportunity but not equal outcomes.  Economic freedom means that capitalist transactions between a willing buyer and a willing seller should not be subject to government interference.  

Find me a candidate who embraces those ideas and I will no longer be an angry white male.  But I’ll still be #justanoldwhiteguy. 

WHO WILL LEAD?