Bernie Sanders, Continued

Just a brief follow-up to my last post about Bernie Sanders. I suggested there that you need to take on forces like white supremacy and the patriarchy before you can have the kinds of economic reforms Sanders wants to have. That's not quite right; it's not really a strict chronological thing. Which is good, because the fight against white supremacy, the fight against patriarchy: these aren't really fights you win. They're fights you fight, forever if need be. If we can't have progress until those fights are won, well, we'll all be dead before we have any progress. And of course we had things like the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank without vanquishing racism or whatever.

But I do think it's important to understand the fight, and to understand that these seemingly economic fights are also the fight against these various more cultural forms of oppression. And it just occurs to me--indeed, this is the impetus for this post--that not understanding this is what leads an awful lot of Democrats, apparently Sanders among them, to be just dumbfounded as to why poor white people vote Republican. Don't they know it's against their own interests?!? Well, no, maybe because they have a different conception of those interests. This is the Southern Strategy, and it's hardly the fraud Democrats often like to make it out as when we recognize that white Southerns really, really care (many of them, at least) about white supremacy, at least in its relatively more genteel modern forms. Our instinct is to just keep repeating how much better off they'll be economically under our policies, and I think that's probably a big mistake.

I don't know exactly how you fight this fight when you understand it better. Maybe you just recognize that the opposing side is in a long-term demographic decline and content yourself with beating them. I have a feeling this country won't really become the America that it's supposed to be until we actually manage to do something about the whole "white people are awful" thing, though, even if there stop being enough terrible white people to form a viable political party. In any event the demographic decline doesn't really address the sex equality stuff. What I do know, or at least what I believe, is that you can't fight it at all if you don't understand it, and you'll find yourself losing other fights you really just can't fathom why you didn't win.

Might the Thirteenth Amendment Have Passed Earlier?

Well, no. Obviously not, not as history actually played out. No slave state was ever going to vote for the Thirteenth Amendment (not the real one, anyway, as opposed to the proposed one that would have given slavery constitutional protection for all time), and at no time prior to the Civil War were there ever anything close to enough free states to pass an Amendment all on their own. In fact, once New York and New Jersey abolished slavery the percentage of free states never wavered more than ten percentage points away from 50% in either direction.

So obviously I'm talking about a slightly alternate history. The divergence, I think, wants to start around 1831-32, when Nat Turner's slave rebellion caused many Southern states, most prominently Virginia, to genuinely consider the future of slavery, with some advocating a move toward gradual emancipation. Obviously, that side lost the debate, but what if they had won? Could there have been enough free states and gradual-emancipation states together to pass some sort of anti-slavery amendment without a war?

In 1832, there were twelve slave states and twelve free states. Three-quarters of twenty-four would have been eighteen, so we need six more free states, or at least states perhaps willing to vote for an anti-slavery Amendment. Virginia's one. But let's also say that, had Virginia seriously moved away from slavery, the border states, the ones less Southern than Virginia, would have done so as well. That's Maryland, Delaware, and Kentucky, at the very least. Maybe Missouri as well, and that's up to five, one short of the requirement. This would have made the Missouri Compromise line the line for slavery throughout the country, east as well as west. It also wouldn't quite have been enough for an amendment. If we assume that every state which joined the Union between 1836 and the start of the war would have been aligned as it actually was, this would have been the high point for the prospects of getting the Thirteenth Amendment through ahead of its time.

If, however, Virginia and the border states had rejected the cause of "slavery today, slavery tomorrow, slavery forever" in 1832, the addition of future states might not have happened as it did. Those states probably wouldn't have signed off on national immediate abolition, but they also probably wouldn't have minded admitting more free states and tipping the long-term political balance away from slavery. Perhaps Arkansas might have been admitted as a free state, which would have brought the free or quasi-free states to 72% of the country. Adding Michigan would take that up to 73%, on the eve of the Mexican-American War. But, in this scenario, that war might well not have happened. Or, alternately, prospective free states such as Iowa and Wisconsin might have been admitted before Texas and Florida were added as slave states.

Let's suppose that happened: Arkansas, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin were added to the 1832 mix, with no new slave states. That brings the total to 21 free/quasi-free states, 7 slave states: three-quarters precisely! And in that scenario, those twenty-one states would have been able to band together and pass some sort of compromise, gradual anti-slavery amendment. Perhaps prohibiting the addition of more slave states, prohibiting anyone not currently a slave from being enslaved, rolling back the fugitive slave laws, restricting the slave trade, etc. It wouldn't have been as ringing as the real Thirteenth Amendment, but it might have avoided war and after the phase-out period the practical difference would vanish.

The 1831-32 Virginia slavery debates, in other words, could have been a turning point in American history. Had the other side carried the day, it would have become awfully feasible for the opponents of slavery to achieve a political victory without resorting to a massive, bloody civil war. Now, this alternate Thirteenth Amendment might have triggered war between the seven hold-out slave states and the free majority, but they might have gone along with a sufficiently compromise-laden amendment. Hell, once they saw that the anti-slavery forces were gaining political ascendance they might have been willing to cut a deal on a Thirteenth Amendment that would gradually abolish slavery but on the most lenient terms possible. Plus, had there been a war it would've been over a lot quicker, with only a small handful of relatively small states against the entire rest of the country. American history would be an awfully lot less tragic; the future of civil rights after the abolition of slavery might even have been less of a struggle. Of course, it's probably not a matter of luck that things didn't turn out that way; the pro-slavery side won those debates for a reason, after all. But it's interesting, and a bit heartbreaking, to think about.

Perhaps the Founders Would Be Disappointed. So What?

Gallup apparently has a habit of asking, on one of its late-July polls, whether the respondents believe that "the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be pleased or disappointed by the way the United States turned out." They asked this for the Fourth of July in 1999, when 55% to 44% the public believed the Founding Fathers would be disappointed. Then there was a little surge of, I dunno, patriotism? Something, anyway, because when they asked it during the summer of 2001 (note that this is prior to September of 2001, so this wasn't a rally-'round-the-flag thing) the numbers had flipped: 54% to 42%. The bounce receded a bit by 2003, with a 50%/48% split in favor of "pleased."

Well, all that's changed now: just 27% think they'd be pleased, while 71% think they'd be disappointed.

I have two comments to make about these numbers, one short and one long. First, the short one: while I understand it on a psychological level, on any rational level it is insane for the numbers to have changed that much over the last decade. Right now we're in an economic slump, sure. That has astoundingly little to do with how the country has turned out when we're talking about 250 years! I suppose some of the stuff about intractable war has become more obvious in that time, and I guess if you're a right-winger you've probably gone all Clarence Thomas on the entire Obama Presidency. But, c'mon, in both of those dimensions honestly, from where we were in 1776 we were at least 90% or 95% of the way, ten years ago, to where we are now. The country just isn't that different from its 2001 version, compared to the mutual differences to the early Republic. If you think the tipping-point was in that particular decade, well, I'd be curious to hear you defend it.

Now the long one: I'm in the 71%. I think the vast majority of the Founders would be kind of livid if they were taken on a TARDIS trip from July 4th, 1776 to July 4th, 2013. Part of the reason why is that you have a lot of different changes, each with the potential to alienate a different Founding-era constituency. Any founder particularly wedded to the idea of America as a uniformly Protestant, or even just Christian, or even just religious nation would be disappointed. Any founder particularly uncomfortable with the idea of, you know, gay people--and let's be honest, that's essentially all of 'em!--would be disappointed. Thomas Jefferson's dream of an agrarian republic? Crashed and burned. And then, of course, there's the whole contingent who were committed to the supremacy and superiority of the white race, and the larger contingent who were committed to the political supremacy of the male sex. They're both in for a shock. (Of course, some of their wives and slaves might like what they would see in 2013, but none of them signed the Declaration.)

There may be other, subtler issues that would cause some to be disappointed. Yes, many of them probably wouldn't like how powerful the federal government has become, or that we have standing armies now, or that the practice of corporal punishment of children has gone mostly out of fashion. Or whatever. And psychologically, my guess is that finding one big change that a given Founder thought was a big negative would be enough to put that guy squarely in the Disappointed camp. Some might be judicious enough to say, okay, that's not how I envisioned it, but it looks like a nice place altogether, prosperous and free overall, and maybe my vision of the future didn't do so bad, not compared to all the hardline pro-slavery guys anyway. And honestly I think Alexander Hamilton would just plain love it. But most of them, I think, would find something to hate in how the future panned out, so I think it definitely true that most of them would consider themselves Disappointed.

But, guess what? They'd be wrong! All of those changes that they would be disappointed in? They were great! Racial and gender equality is awesome! Sexual liberation is awesome! Cities are awesome! Religion is not awesome! (Okay, I guess if you're particularly religious you might not be with me on that point...) And, you know what? All you conservatives who love to talk about how the Obama Administration is betraying the Founders' ideal of limited government? If Paul Ryan's budget were passed into law tomorrow, it would be a rounding error on the tally of how far the federal government's powers have been enlarged since 1789. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Among other things, as the Founders probably knew much better than modern "constitutional conservatives," big spending maketh not big government, and spending cuts don't fight tyranny. If you repealed the Social Security Act of 1935 and all subsequent amendments and additions thereto, you'd change the dynamic of federal power, but last I checked the Republican Party is firmly against that course of action, which means that all those conservatives are positively thrilled that we've expanded the federal government way beyond what the Founders envisioned. They just think, of course, that we went too far a couple years back. (Though of course, they're the ones happiest about something the Founders really thought was a sign of tyrannical government, namely our marvelous modern standing army.)

Really, there's only one way in which America, 2013 is substantially worse than America, 1776: our environment has spent the intervening 237 years being degraded with a vengeance, and in ways whose full devastating impact will not be fully known for another century. Other than that, all the myriad massive changes which have swept through this nation and the entire world which the people of 1776 could not have envisioned and probably would not have liked the thought of had they known they were coming have been for the better. We are a nation larger, more populous, more prosperous, more powerful, more cohesive, more egalitarian, more democratic, and, I think, freer than any reasonable extrapolation from 1776 could have foreseen. And if the Founders don't like it, they're free to spin around in their graves all they like.

(Except Alexander Hamilton, though. Seriously, that dude was awesome, and way ahead of his time. He'd feel right at home now.)

On Hurricanes and Nationhood

Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, had a comment a day or two ago about the question of federal storm relief for areas damaged by Hurricane Sandy. The gist of it was basically, sure I care about people who are suffering, but I want to make sure those naughty easterners won't just take the money and spend it frivolously before we agree to give it to them. This feels to me like it gets very deeply at the question that's kind of awkwardly at the center of American political history, "are we a nation?" For a lot of time, we kind of weren't really a nation. Nowadays, people tend to think that we are one. But consider, for example, Europe's current troubles. Europe, as it happens, is not a nation, but it has substantial governmental ties throughout the continent. And these days you've heard a lot from the wealthier German nations that they don't want to be on the hook for bailing out the naughty, irresponsible periphery countries that have gotten their economies in deep trouble after the creation of the Euro. Never mind that it really is more the fault of the Euro, the creation of European financial elites, than the periphery countries themselves. The point is, there's a feeling in Germany and Sweden and other such places that it's unfair for them to be forced to sacrifice to ease the suffering of less fortunate European nations.

Now, that's very similar to what Steve King said about disaster relief in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Iowa is virtuous, the East Coast is irresponsible and frivolous with their Gucci bags etc., why should we have to pay to help them? But note that, in this country, we have a massive system of permanent fiscal transfers from states to states, effected through the federal welfare system. That system is designed to send money from rich people to poor people, but it therefore also sends money from rich states to poor states. That tends to mean sending money from blue states, like Maryland or Connecticut or California, to red states like Kentucky or Mississippi or Arkansas. But we never discuss it in those terms. There are people who don't want the federal welfare system to continue as strong as it currently is, there are people who want it stronger than it currently is, but it's not a geographic issue. It doesn't play out as Maryland vs. Kentucky, it plays out as, well, liberal people, many of whom are in Maryland, against conservative people, many of whom are in Kentucky. Because we're a nation, so we don't tend to view the transfer of money from a rich person in Maryland to a poor person in Kentucky as anything other than the transfer of money from a rich American to a poor American. Whereas in Europe, transferring money from a rich German to a poor Greek is not seen as a transfer from a rich European to a poor European; the nationalities are very much the thing, even more than the different socioeconomic statuses of the individual people.

But Steve King's comment does not reflect this nationhood. People from the great eastern Megalopolis are not just treated as Americans, and suffering Americans at that, for whose welfare we are all obviously responsible and to whose aid, in a time of crisis such as this one, we should all gladly come. They're not from where Steve King is from, and he mistrusts their culture, so he wants no part of their troubles. He does not want, in other words, to be part of a nation that includes New York City and its environs. This side has a very long history in American politics, with its most notable manifestation coming during the Civil War but with genuine influence at most other times. It's the wrong side of the question, and it needs to lose. The whole Tea Party phenomenon has kind of felt like it at least flirts with the idea that we should stop being a nation, and Steve King's comments definitely reflect a sense that we are not, quite, entirely a nation. I suppose it's probably too much to ask that King himself actually lose his seat next Tuesday, although the race is only "Leans Republican," but it's pretty important to see that the side he represents loses as badly as possible.