I posted yesterday about something that might have been missed because The NY Times chose to run it on Saturday. Here’s another opinion piece that also ran on May 4, 2024 (full access gift article). This is something that needs to be acknowledged more often:
It was written by Dr. Steven Hahn, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian at New York University and the author, most recently, of “Illiberal America: a History.” He addresses a prevalent fallacy, that the violence that gave rise to January 6 was an exception to American history. It’s not, as he details in the commentary.
...Illiberalism is generally seen as a backlash against modern liberal and progressive ideas and policies, especially those meant to protect the rights and advance the aspirations of groups long pushed to the margins of American political life. But in the United States, illiberalism is better understood as coherent sets of ideas that are related but also change over time.
This illiberalism celebrates hierarchies of gender, race and nationality; cultural homogeneity; Christian religious faith; the marking of internal as well as external enemies; patriarchal families; heterosexuality; the will of the community over the rule of law; and the use of political violence to achieve or maintain power. This illiberalism sank roots from the time of European settlement and spread out from villages and towns to the highest levels of government. In one form or another, it has shaped much of our history. Illiberalism has frequently been a stalking horse, if not in the winner’s circle. Hardly ever has it been roundly defeated.
It’s all too comforting to believe America has always been on an upward path, that we’ve always been united around a set of ideals supposedly embodied in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. As the blessed heirs to Founding Fathers, pointing out that American history has some pretty dark and bloody threads in it will not make you popular — especially if you try to call attention them as a continuing force today.
There’s a saying, something along the lines of: “Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” A corollary is that those who want to deny that history are preparing to return us to it. Hence the MAGA war on Woke.
Hahn has chapter and verse on how there has been a continuing see-saw between the illiberal forces among us and those trying to keep this a government of the people, by the people, and for the people — going back to the days of the original country De Tocqueville wrote about. Too many have tried to tell themselves America is immune to what we see happening elsewhere, that “It can’t happen here!” To put it bluntly, Trump and Trumpism is not something that came out of nowhere.
Read the whole thing. Dr. Hahn concludes with a warning we should all take to heart.
Only by recognizing what we’re up against can we mount an effective campaign to protect our democracy, leaning on the important political struggles — abolitionism, antimonopoly, social democracy, human rights, civil rights, feminism — that have challenged illiberalism in the past and offer the vision and political pathways to guide us in the future.
Our biggest mistake would be to believe that we’re watching an exceptional departure in the country’s history. Because from the first, Mr. Trump has tapped into deep and ever-expanding illiberal roots. Illiberalism’s history is America’s history.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” — Edmund Burke. Kudos to The NY Times for running this, though running it on a Saturday may not have been the optimum time to do so.