'Christian America' -- secular nation faces religious challenge

Gordon L. Weil

Sign seen last week on the side of a Maine barn: “I stand for the flag. I kneel for God.”

While there may be nothing unusual about such sentiments, posting them in letters big enough to be read by passing drivers is a clear public statement.  The passer-by may come away thinking the farmer is promoting a link between religious belief and patriotism.

Also last week, the governor of Louisiana signed a state law requiring that the Ten Commandments, God’s directives given to Moses, should be posted in every classroom. This move is meant to promote a basic link between religion and the civil state.

Donald Trump, the once and would-be president, almost immediately endorsed the Louisiana law as worthy of wider adoption. 

The First Amendment of the Constitution states there shall be no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise.  Under the Amendment, the barn sign works, but the Louisiana law probably doesn’t. 

Yet many advocates of recognizing the religious foundation of government call for acknowledging that the U.S. is a Christian country, because it was founded by Christians and reflected their beliefs. Perhaps proponents think they can get around the “establishments clause,” because most major religions recognize the Ten Commandments.

Such a theory runs into practical problems. Even more importantly, it faces overwhelming constitutional issues.

The practical question is simple: which Ten Commandments?  Multiple versions of them exist, even among Christian denominations, to say nothing of Jewish and other versions. Who would decide the correct version to be posted?  Would the choice favor one religion over another or over nonbelievers?

More important is the principle underlying the Constitution that the American government is secular, separate from any religion and neither promoting nor rejecting any religion.  This was part of the revolutionary thinking of the new country.

In Great Britain, the monarch was (and still is) the head of the Church of England. Other European countries have had established religions.  The French Revolution, occurring immediately after the U.S. Constitution came into effect, created a secular state, designed to end the dominance of the Catholic Church. 

Even before the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, the U.S. had ruled against the imposition of religious beliefs.  In the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the Continental Congress decided in the first of the “articles of compact” that no American would “ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments.”

In the core Constitution, which went into effect two years later, the Framers provided that, upon taking public office, a person should show their allegiance by swearing an oath to God or affirming their commitment, if they would not take an oath.  It also stated there would be “no religious test” for holding public office.

In 1790, President Washington wrote: “All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.  It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was the indulgence of one class of people….”

Then came the First Amendment in 1791.  It confirmed that there would be no established religion and no government control of a person’s religious beliefs.  It intentionally assured diversity.

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence.  It is difficult to think of anybody more a Founding Father. In 1802, he wrote to a Baptist group that the Constitution built a “wall of separation between church and state.”

Many of those who founded the country or drafted the Constitution would not meet the definition of being Christian if that required accepting Jesus into their personal life.  They were deists, who believed in a creator of the universe but not in a deity involved in human affairs.   

Those arguing the U.S. is a Christian country focus on the supposed religious beliefs of most of the Founding Fathers. They suggest that their beliefs should always determine the essential character of the country.  Justice Samuel Alito seeks to recover “godliness,” a virtue that never enjoyed official status.

The Louisiana governor gambles that a conservative Supreme Court will approve his state’s effort to topple Jefferson’s wall.  Once again, religious conservatives would use the Court to impose their views on others.

In a narrower sense, this push for a Christian regime creates yet another wedge issue for the Republicans.  A wedge issue can attract voters to a party or a candidate solely on that issue alone, giving its politicians a blank check on all else. 

Trump has succeeded by adopting this and many other wedge issues originated by others.  He now seeks to assume the mantle of a man of faith and is forgiven his trespasses as a reward for his newfound allegiance.  His backers say “he keeps his promises,” because he faithfully and persistently pushes each wedge issue button in return for their support. 

U.S. partisan split: 'One side is going to win'

 Gordon L. Weil

A person, who later claimed to be a documentary reporter, interviewed members of the U.S. Supreme Court at a social event.  She hid her microphone, and they probably thought they were engaging in a purely personal conversation.

The reporter’s ambush was against the ethics that most journalists are expected to observe.  A responsible and free press is essential to our democratic form of government. But it hardly works if the media that is supposed to uncover cheating is itself a cheater.

The words of Justice Samuel Alito made their way into the media.  However questionable the method of collecting them, they proved informative, if not totally surprising.

Alito is an unrelenting partisan who reveals his orientation in his words as a justice.  So, if he took a conservative position reflecting his views and values in this chat, his comments were nothing new.  They apparently were meant to be revealed as evidence of his bias, though little more evidence was needed.

But Alito went beyond his political leanings to do a bit of political analysis. In stating his view, he was clear and forthright, characteristics often absent from political speech.  Not only might such clarity be helpful, but it may well have been an analysis understood by partisans on both sides.

Talking of the deep divide in the country, he said: “One side or the other is going to win. There can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.  They really can’t be compromised. So, it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”

The essence of compromise is each side gives ground.  They split the difference, though not always equally.  Look at the deals to avoid mentioning slavery in the Declaration of Independence or to create a House of Representatives, elected by the people, and a Senate representing the states.  These deals resulted from big compromises.

Traditionally, when the two houses of Congress have disagreed, they created a conference committee to come up with a compromise, which is a deal that leaves both sides equally unhappy.  These committees have disappeared.

Beginning with the GOP Contract with America in 1994, compromise began to fade to the point that it hardly survives even on routine matters.  Republicans would not compromise, leading the Democrats to play hard ball.  Donald Trump exploited the grievances of frustrated Republicans to gain the presidency.  In turn, they gained greater power thanks to him.

In the Republican controlled House, the GOP intentionally adopts bills on which compromise is impossible.  They use such bills to create election issues. In the Senate, the majority Democrats picked up the practice.

Alito’s friends emphasize that he had offered that people could find ways to work and live together “peacefully.”  But he did not explain how.

Occasionally, Republican members of Congress, especially those in vulnerable districts, claim they are willing to compromise.  But it turns out that compromise means that agreement depends on Democrats accepting their positions.  Even if that were to happen, horse-trading in which they accept some Democratic positions doesn’t happen.

Take former GOP Speaker Kevin McCarthy. He wanted Democrats to join with loyal Republicans to oppose his ouster.  They had jointly supported his successful effort to keep the government open, overcoming right-wing GOP opposition.  Yet, just before the ouster vote, he bashed the Democrats, assuring they would not join his supporters and retain him.

What if compromise, the historic hallmark of American politics, is virtually dead, as Alito suggested?

The situation might drive American voters to give the Democrats strong congressional majorities and the presidency.  As a party much less unified than the GOP, they are familiar with compromise and would know how to restore it.  They might produce results.

But that depends on the people. Are we so nearly evenly split that a governing majority is not possible without Trump’s authoritarianism?  If so, matters will have to get much worse before a popular majority for compromise emerges.

If not, today’s abortion battles may show the way.  The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Alito, said abortion would be left to the states, and they jumped to the challenge.  Leave more policy to state decisions and limit the Supreme Court’s powers by passing legislation to limit its jurisdiction.  Both sides might agree on that.

The result could be more conservative states than liberal states, but with an overwhelming majority of the American people in those liberal states.  Maybe some people would move.  The National Popular Vote for president would become increasingly likely.  In this continental country, a less centralized federation might become appealing.

Alito clearly sees national division.  Perhaps he believes that the Court could guard the conservative gates.  It shouldn’t, and it can’t.

British election a preview of U.S. contest

 

Gordon L. Weil

Before you pick a movie, you can often watch a trailer offering a brief preview, designed to induce you to see the whole feature.  Wouldn’t it be great if we now had a trailer for the 2024 election story?

It looks like a cliffhanger.  More than a struggle between two candidates or parties, it may be a drama about the changing country itself.

Breaking news:  a preview is now available.  This trailer is the British campaign, which leads to the U.K. election to be held on July 4, believe it or not.  Like all trailers, it leaves a lot out.  You can wait for the American version, but there’s much relevant across the pond.

The British electorate is mainly divided between the Labour Party, which has become moderately liberal, and the aptly named Conservative Party, also called the Tories.

Each voter is not of equal weight, just as in the U.S. presidential vote.  The population from one U.K. constituency to another may vary, just as the American electoral vote gives more influence to rural state voters. In neither country is there a national popularity contest despite national polling.

In the U.S., the Republican Party has been taken over by extreme right MAGA forces.  They label traditional GOP partisans as RINOs – Republicans in Name Only – and they are either driven out or marginalized. Where the RINOs end up on Election Day and what they do might have a major effect on presidential and congressional elections.

In Britain, the hard-right takes the form of the Reform Party, created to promote Brexit, when the U.K. left the European Union.  Nigel Farage, its leader, is closely aligned with Donald Trump.  Reform will take votes away from the Tories.  In fact, combined with them, conservatives could come close in the polls to Labour, the expected winner by a landslide.

Farage comes across as a brash and outspoken leader, like Trump.  Rishi Sunak, the Tory Prime Minister, seems to be a wealthy technocrat out of touch with the people, and Keir Starmer, his presumed Labour successor, suffers from a charisma deficit.  Farage mirrors Trump, while Starmer, though much younger, recalls Biden’s diminished dynamism.

Both MAGA and the Reform Party favor more authoritarian rule but less government regulation and taxes.  Political opinion may be flowing in their direction.  Last week, in elections for the European Parliament, right-wing parties across the Continent made big gains, pushing governments in France and Belgium to call for immediate, new national elections.

The agendas of the right-wing, from the U.K. to the EU to the U.S., reject the legacy of the Second World War.  After that global conflict, international cooperation emerged as the alternative to more wars.  Traditional nationalism was to fade in favor of alliances and peacekeepers.  The U.N., NATO and the EU itself were the tools.

But nationalism is back. The expected value of international organizations has not been realized and they have mostly weakened.  Sunak and Farage even talk of taking the U.K. out of the European Convention on Human Rights, an effective judicial organization that Britain helped create. 

Even the U.S., China and Russia increasingly look inward. The right-wing agenda has become popular around the world. 

Conservatives divide in Europe, with the extreme and nationalist elements rising, as is also true in the U.S.  Many Republicans seem ready to let Ukraine fall to Russia.  Reform might win more votes, if not more seats, than the Tories.  The British election could be a preview of the U.S. vote.

While Donald Trump is really his own political party, he has successfully adopted the hard right’s demands as his platform and path back to the White House.  Having found their spokesman and been legitimized by him, extreme conservatives want to pursue the same kind of policies as the Reform Party.

There must be one reservation about all this, as the U.K. trailer shows – the unexpected event that can change everything.

Sunak abandoned the D-Day anniversary events in France to do a political interview, causing major outrage even from his own party.  He assured his defeat and may have given Reform an election boost that could kill the Tories, just as MAGA is killing the GOP.

Either Biden or Trump could make a major campaign error or age could catch up with them. That could change everything.

This year, the U.K. trailer may be a preview of coming attractions.  How can the U.S. save its system and avoid the chaotic change that may be this year’s scenario?

The national popular vote for president, approved by Maine, would make every citizen’s vote equal.  Either Maine’s ranked-choice voting or California’s primary for candidates of all parties, with the “top two” meeting in the general election, deal with fracturing parties.

But the U.K. preview reveals that politics this year could be a horror show.

Trump trial: Dont gloat or groan, it hurts America

 

Gordon L. Weil

You can’t gloat or groan about the Trump guilty verdict.

It was a bad day for America.

His critics seem to glory in highlighting his felony conviction as the first for a U.S. president.  His allies strive to dismiss the entire trial as being nothing more than pure politics.  The pundits run wild with speculation about the election effect of the Trump conviction.

The pundits ought to take a deep breath and a step back.  They focus too much on speculating about immediate effects and provide little perspective.

Both sides may be right about Trump and the pundits may provide some wisdom, but what of the effect of the trial on the country and how it will affect our sense of American exceptionalism or the world’s sense of us?

Maine’s congressional delegation shows the split between partisanship and patriotism.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins doesn’t like Trump but remains a partisan politician.  She loyally reverted to GOP form to condemn the politics leading to the trial.  Maybe she was announcing her next re-election bid and wanted to discourage a future primary challenge from a hard-right opponent.

Middle-of-the-road Democratic Rep. Jared Golden, who served in the military, focuses on praising the functioning of the American judicial process.  That’s safe ground and ought to be the bipartisan truth.  Also, it’s patriotic.

The problem is not the substance of the case.  Trump was guilty.  How do I know?  Because the jury, 12 randomly selected citizens, said he is.  We have never devised a better way of determining the facts in a criminal case.  Given all the evidence and a reasonable judgment of it, he is guilty.

Of course, you can disagree.  That’s a right everyone has.  In the end, it’s likely that anyone who either gloats or groans is influenced by their own political views.  It is difficult to say that a partisan conclusion is better than the work of a jury, whatever their personal prejudices, trying patriotically to follow the careful and complete instructions given them by the judge.

The problem is that the case was even brought.  While the guilty verdict may seem to justify the decision of the Manhattan District Attorney to start the process, it obscures the question of whether it was in the best interest of the United States to try a former president for this kind of felony, even given its political overtones. 

Trump is correct. Guilty or not, this case was politically motivated. That’s because everything in public life is politically motivated.  For example, Trump brags that he intentionally appointed justices to the Supreme Court to reverse Roe v. Wade.  Those appointments surely were politically motivated.

The former president claims that President Biden is behind the cases that have been brought against him. Obviously, Biden does not control county DAs. To the extent that Trump’s claim is true in the federal cases, it turns out he has a friend in the White House.

Merrick Garland, Biden’s Attorney General, seems to think he is still a federal judge.  Going slowly to avoid any impression that his president had primed him to get Trump, he handed Trump, the candidate, what amounts to a free pass in an election year.  It is difficult to believe that Trump would have done the same if the situation were reversed.

Garland’s delay in starting the federal trials gave Trump a good chance of avoiding any major negative decision during the campaign.  And that break has nothing to do with pardoning himself.   Garland’s hand-picked prosecutor managed to ensure that he would get Trump’s lackey on the Florida bench in the documents case that should have been a quick win.

Trump’s “America First” policy launched the U.S. on the path to international irrelevance.  If he’s elected, leaders in friendly countries might worry the American world role will further weaken.  Then there’s the worldwide embarrassment of House Speaker Mike Johnson and actor Robert de Niro standing in the street outside the courthouse, campaigning for or against Trump.

Threats aimed at jurors, requiring their anonymity and police protection, are worse than embarrassing.

Collins and other Trump cheerleaders undermine respect for the judicial system when they join his ceaseless complaining.  Trump and the GOP say the real decision on his guilt will be made by his political appeal to voters in November.  The problem is that if he loses, he’ll claim electoral fraud and not admit guilt.

Certainly, voters can decide whether voting for a convicted felon matters and for many, it won’t.  But votes cannot overturn or affirm a court decision.  Meanwhile, stand by for endless appeals, mainly designed to confuse or delay a final result.

What matters more than the 2024 election is preserving the American system of government from partisan sabotage.  Attacking orderly justice to score short-term political points doesn’t help.