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I didnt watch President Trumps weekend speeches live. It was a holiday, so I chose to take one. As a result, I first learned about them from the reactions they elicited. As usual, it was like Rashomon for the Trump era.

According to the Washington Post, Trumps Mount Rushmore speech signaled his unyielding push to preserve Confederate symbols and the legacy of white domination, which was crystallized by his harsh denunciation of the racial justice movement. The Associated Press account was headlined, Trump pushes racial division, flouts virus rules at Rushmore. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) said on CNN that Trump spent all his time talking about dead traitors.

Many on the right had a field day in response to the responses. To their ears, Trump didnt spend any time talking about dead traitors or the Confederacy. His subjects were the American Revolution, abolition, and great Americans, including some African Americans. My friend and former National Review colleague Rich Lowry saw and heard a superb speech, tough but appropriately so.

I can see how Lowry, who has a greater tolerance for nationalist rhetoric and strained teleprompter reading than I do, heard a good speechthough superb is a hernia-risking heavy lift for me. I will concede that, once I caught up to the speeches, I found little that was objectionable in the portions that were purely historical.

So why did I dislike both spectacles so intensely?

Because Trump. The man has a thumbless grasp of history and the requirements of his job. Whenever he opines about such matters, its difficult to take any of his sentiments at face value. For Trump, words like principles, liberty, etc. are merely partisan weapons and code words for attacking Democrats and rallying his most ardent supporters.

That context explains some of the negative reactions. Everyone knows Trump has talked of Confederate symbols as an indivisible part of the American story. So when he blanketly defended our heritage at Mount Rushmore without any indication that some of it doesnt merit much defending (especially from the head of the party of Lincoln), you can understand why some would hear a defense of dead traitors.

Similarly, both of his Fourth of July speeches were explicitly campaign events, dedicated to his effort to make the election a binary choice between real patriots and bad, evil people.

And yet the yawning gap between what Duckworth and Lowry heard over the weekend goes deeper than that. Its evidence that the presidency has become the central totem in our culture war.

The trend began before 2016. People who decried Trumps campaign talk of taking back our country forget that this was a standard talking point of Democrats under George W. Bush. Our politics are like the battle between Catholics and Protestants over control of the English throne. The mere thought of the other in the Oval Office feels sacrilegious.

In this climate, if one side embraces an idea, the other recoils from it. Its bad enough when this dynamic infects (and blocks) public policy. But when the Declaration of Independence, the founding and even Abraham Lincoln become cudgels in a partisanship-infected culture war, its much more dismaying.

In England, the monarch is the head of state but not the head of government. This distinction allows the monarchy to stay above the partisan fray and be a relatively uniting institution for the country. In the U.S., presidents play it by ear; they are sometimes party leaders and sometimes leaders of the whole country. Historically, they are everyones president on the Fourth of July. For Trump, however, the holiday handed him free campaign airtime and little more.

Defenders of the president call him a nationalist and insist theres no difference between nationalism and patriotism. I think theyre wrong, but even if theyre right, the practical result is the same. Our patriotic symbols and our nations glorious narrative warts and all are now nightsticks in a zero-sum battle for political power.

When the president is a culture war avatar, a kind of antibody response dialectically emerges. President Obama elicited the tea parties, waving their pocket Constitutions and sweeping Democrats from power. Trump invites an opposite reaction.

Trumps supporters see him as a bulwark against national disintegration. Yet his inability to view any idea or cause except through self-interest and a cartoonish understanding of his own base incites and emboldens the very forces he claims to be fighting against.

And hes losing that fight.

Photograph by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.

Excerpt from:
The President, Patriotism, and the Culture Wars - The Dispatch

Culture wars aretraditionallya middle-classpreoccupation, though,aftera month ofviolence, high emotion,and iconoclasm bookended by the sequel toTrumpsAmerican Carnageinauguraladdress,the national conversation has shiftedagainfor the worse.In spite of Bidens best Obama-esquecallsfor unity, the dystopian vision Trump conjured in 2016ismoremanifestthan everand the culture wars are raging.

In his Mt. Rushmore speech, the President declared, Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children, making thoughtful Americans everywhere wonder, whose nation,whose history, whose heroes, whose values, and whose childrenare actually being referenced.Hes certainly not speaking to any permutation of the left, to the vast majority that didnt vote for him four years ago,or even tomuch of his own party.

Now fully in failure mode,Trump appears to be giving up allpretenseof trying toleadthe nation as a whole.AsRobert Costa and Philip RuckernoteinThe WashingtonPost, Although amplifying racism and stoking culture wars have been mainstays of Trumps public identity for decades, they have been particularly pronounced this summer as the presidenthas reacted to the national reckoning over systemic discrimination by seeking to weaponize the anger and resentment of some white Americans for his own political gain.Unfortunately for Trump,the allegiance ofsome white Americanswill not be enough to guarantee hisre-electionand he knows it.

One gets a very strong impression that the President wants nothing more than to go out ina blaze of glory.With a mismanagedpandemic, the lingeringspecterof impeachment, and highly visibleprotests everywhere,Trumps taken out his fiddle, since hes decided theres no stopping the flames.Afterhis divisive 4thof July speech, theanswer to Whose nation? comes across as mine,not yours.

The Washington PostviewshisMt. Rushmore addressas one of the most horrible speeches ever written, with Jennifer Rubincalling itthe worst Independence Day speech in American history andMax Boot describing it as by turns deranged and disingenuous.Rubinfurther suggests,When all a president has to offer is paranoiadirected at the hard-core cultists who buy into his blood-and-soil nationalism and his contempt for anything that sounds like social justice, you have to wonder if he even knows how to win the general election. This surely was not designed to win back voters he desperately needs in November.

It's not hard to agree with these characterizations of the President and his talking points, even if Rubin and Bootironically come acrossas partisan and hyperbolicasTrump. Still,if weconsiderthe Presidentsnarrowly definedtarget audience, its a very crafty speech, one that updates his inaugural address, taking into account the carnage that the country has suffered since Trump entered office.It has an odd, latent awareness to it, as if Trump wereadmitting his failure andasking his base for forgiveness, for a little more love along with all therequisitehate.

Nothing the President says everseemsuseful or productive. But the nature of presidential utterance is such thatwefind ourselves having to evaluatewhether theresa shred of reasonablenessin his claims.After his Mr. Rushmore speech, werein the difficult position of questioningwhethertheprotesting,monument destruction,and cancel culturethat hasfigured so prominently in the news isnowpart of an ongoingwave of destruction andupheavalthat hasextended to every corner ofAmericansociety.

Or is Trump just race-baiting again? Has the recent uptick in violence,dissent,andunrest become a permanent fixture or is this simply another opportunistic ploy by the President to increase division and keep his base activated?We know the American culture wars are real, but how realare theyand whoactuallybenefitsfrom them?

Ideas of race and class are inextricably linked in the United States.What might be termed class warfare in Englandis informed in America bythepoignantlegacy ofslavery;the Civil War (which historians have alwaysbeen at pains to pointout was not just about race butalsoabout the conflicting economic concerns of North and South and theircontrastingvalue systems);a perpetual struggle for civil rights;and, not surprisingly,a history of demonstrations and race riots.The U.S. is only about 244 years old, which is notveryold at all. Itspast is fresh, highlyrelevantto the present,and infused with violence.

Kellie Carter Jackson, in The Double Standard of the American Riot,describes such violence as an indispensable formof American political expression: Since the beginning of this country, riots and violent rhetoric have been markers of patriotism.When our Founding Fathers fought for independence, violence was the clarion call. Phrases such asLive free or die,Give me liberty or give me death,andRebellion to tyrants is obedience to Godechoed throughout the nation, and continue today.

But Jackson carefully points out that the language of violent political expression has always been spoken differentlyaccording totheskin colorof whos talking: Seminal moments in U.S. history that historians have defined as patriotic were also moments that denied patriotism to black people.If violence is a political language, white Americans are native speakers. But black people are also fluent in the act of resistance.

SoResistance may take shaperelative towhoAmericansare,totheirostensible race as well as theirsocialclass.Those trapped in poverty mayengage inpolitical violence and its rhetoricbecause itseems tofragmentthe architecture of misery keeping them in their place.Conversely, theupper classesmayremain relatively silent, havingenough resources to avoid theconflict.They can simplydepart todistant well-fortified propertiesor leave the country.If they choose to get involved,theycanalwaysdecide how much, where, and with whom they interact.

Butneither oftheseextremesappliesto the middle class, whichisforever worriedabout losing everything and entering poverty.At a time of vast unemployment due to COVID-19, the culture warshave exacerbated that worry, at least in those who dontunambiguously agree with theprogressive perspectivesdominatingcorporations andthe media.And this might be oneway to view Trumps rhetoric.Its not just about monuments or cancel culture or values under siege; its about the ever-present tensions integral to American society.In that sense, its about more than just his deplorable base.

Paul Fussell, inClass: A Guide Through the American Status System, calls it prole drift, the middle classpotentiallyslippingdownward in the Howard Johnsonization of America and theinsecurity thatcomes with it.Classis atediousbook,dated and unapologeticallyelitist,obsessed with the kind of trivia thataffordssmall diversions at otherwise dreadful cocktail parties. And itsprimarily a book written for and about white people, which wouldntcommend it to current literary journalism.However, the point it makes about prole drift appliesinterestinglyto the ongoing culture wars weaponizedbothby Trumpand his many opponentson the left.

Whena member ofthe middle class slips, when someonegets deplatformed, hashis or hercareer abruptly cancelled,or is otherwise dispensed with or silenced,theyreeasily identified as casualties of the culture wars.Depending on who we are, we can accept it as an example of prole drift, white privilege getting its due, or social justice.Depending on who we are, this might be good or it might be tragic.

So should we accept Trumps view that this is part of an insidious campaign to destroy Americanlife andculture? Bootsays no, calling it the excesses of a few progressive activists.Cancel culture, he writes, really exists, on both left and right, but it is not nearly the threat that Trump says it is.James Bennetand a variety of other high-profile journalists, entertainers, and managers might disagree. Itsa very bad time to be suddenlycancelled, which is to say,deprived of ones livelihood.

Boot glosses over the anxiety inherent in prole drift in favor of a No True Scotsman claim about white power: Only someone who binge-watches FoxNews,as Trump does, can imagine that violent hordes are marauding through U.S. citiesmost of the demonstrations occurred weeks ago, and they were overwhelmingly peacefulor that millions of political dissidents are being fired for disagreeing with anew far-left fascism.Whether or not Rubin and Boot are more accurate than Trump, its clear that at least a segment of Trumps audience(and perhaps moderates who have also come under fire)feel like they are at warand vulnerable to the slippage of prole drift.

In an incendiaryop-edforQuillette, Eric Kaufmannsuggests this createsan atmosphere where inter-personal trust is as low as humanly possible while discursive power flows to the accuser,implyingtwo competing, socially-constructed narratives.One is Trumps: our nation is under attack from cultural Marxists trying toerase its values and history.Anothercomes from the woke left, wherecritical race theoryssystemic racism, white power, and white fragility have come todefine everything in America.These narratives, like their adherents, seem irreconcilable.

Moderate political speech is an artifact of the past. Now theresonlyfear. Fear of prole drift. Fear of the other. Fear of history.Fear of authorityand those who might usurp it.But very little ofthe fearappears grounded in the lived reality of the majority seeking nothing more than the quiet enjoyment of their lives.IsTrumpjustrace-baiting?Yes, buthesalsoclass-baiting.This is easily missed but its critical for understanding how hes bookended his time as President.

If Trumps Mr. Rushmore speech is delusional and disingenuous, which seems to be the case,it neverthelessartfullyevokes emotions as potent and available as any of the other social constructionsinour atmosphere of inter-personal distrust and accusationand not just for the MAGA crowd. And the left, once again, has underestimated his capacity to strike the most culturally sensitive nerves.

With this in mind, though we may agree Trump is on his way out, we still have to look at his methods and ask, How real is cancel culture?In Trumps America, as in that of the woke left, its as realand as effectiveas any violent politicalexpression.Itsas real as we want it to be.And, like the coronavirus, it will wreak havocon all of usuntil we decide to rein it in.

Original post:
How Real Are the Culture Wars? - Splice Today

The court has backed away from that idea since 1985 first holding that states may extend aid on a neutral basis to religious schools, and now holding that neutrality is not merely permitted but required. School choice is actually the opposite of the establishment of religion by the government; it allows pluralism and diversity in education, as an alternative to the homogeneity of public schools.

The importance goes beyond freedom of religion. The inferior quality of many American public schools, especially those serving inner-city minority populations, is a primary reason for this countrys outrageous economic and social inequality. Private schools, including religious schools, bring needed competition and offer poorly served families an alternative.

Espinoza is particularly significant because increasing numbers of state legislatures wish to experiment with various kinds of school choice, but state courts often stand in the way, invoking 19th-century state constitutional provisions passed in the days of anti-Catholic, anti-ethnic prejudice. The courts decision does not require state legislatures to enact school choice programs, but it enables them to do so without the impediment of hostile state court decisions.

Wednesdays decision in Our Lady of Guadalupe v. Morrissey-Berru likewise protects pluralism in education. Building on a unanimous decision eight years ago, a 7-2 majority held that religious schools may choose those who teach religion classes without governmental interference, even in the face of discrimination claims. This helps guarantee the autonomy of religious teaching from government control, and from intrusive inquiries into whether a schools judgment about religious considerations is not the real reason for the termination of a teacher.

The Little Sisters of the Poor decision, also handed down Wednesday in a 7-2 vote, ensures that religious orders will not be required to provide health insurance for contraceptive coverage in violation of their beliefs. For now. As a legal matter, the decision merely holds that the executive branch has discretion to determine the contours of any obligations to provide contraceptive coverage discretion that could be exercised the opposite way by the next administration.

Taking the long view, this Supreme Court has been consistently supportive of religious liberty. In 13 cases involving religion since 2012, the religious side prevailed in 12 of them, sometimes by lopsided majorities. Out in the culture wars, religious freedom may be a contested proposition, but in the Supreme Court it is the most consistent part of a jurisprudence of pluralism.

Michael W. McConnell is a professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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See original here:
On Religion, the Supreme Court Protects the Right to Be Different - The New York Times

The nations stark divisions were dramatically thrown into relief this past holiday weekend. As Los Angeles turned itself into a pyrotechnic battlefield, the film premiere of Hamilton on Disney+ faced off against President Trumps incendiary speech at Mt. Rushmore two visions of America as fatally opposed as Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.

Lin-Manuel Mirandas hip-hop-infused musical about the Founding Fathers delivers Americas origin story with a diverse cast that makes good on those democratic ideals that from the inception left out whole swaths of the population. Trumps performance outdoors in South Dakota, an angrier version of his American carnage inaugural address, inflamed conflicts, stoked grievances and poured kerosene on the culture wars.

For the record:

12:06 PM, Jul. 07, 2020A previous version of this story said that Nick Cordero died in New York. The actor died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

As the coronavirus pandemic rages out of control in the U.S., Trump held an event at which masks were conspicuously and defiantly absent. He had no interest in calming the frayed nerves of a nation where more than 130,000 people have died from the virus and millions more have been infected.

Instead, he wanted to talk about statues. Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders, deface our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. Unable to win reelection based on his handling of the pandemic or his stewardship of the cratering economy, he has decided that his surest path to victory is through a race war.

Which America do you want to live in, Mirandas modern inclusive nation or Trumps wrathful and nostalgic failed state?

Once the leader of the free world, the U.S. has become a pariah on the world stage. Europe has locked its doors to American visitors, unable to risk exposure to a nation that, despite the glories of its universities and the technical virtuosities of its industries, has renounced science for the sake of a demagogues ego.

On Sunday, the tragic news came that Nick Cordero, a charismatic Broadway star who had been at Cedars-Sinai hospital for months struggling with the coronavirus and its brutal aftermath, died. A handsome, strapping 41-year-old who reportedly had no known pre-conditions before falling ill, he was cut down in his prime by a virus that Trump insists is overblown, even as new U.S. infections are skyrocketing, intensive care units are filling up and our death toll is dwarfing that of every other affluent nation.

According to Trump, whose scientific credentials come by way of having an uncle who once taught at MIT, 99% of cases are totally harmless. This fraudulent statistic, conveyed in a speech at the White House to commemorate Independence Day, wasnt supported by FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, who nevertheless was reluctant to openly criticize his thin-skinned boss when parrying questions on the Sunday political talk shows.

Speaking medical truth to would-be dictatorial power is a recipe for being silenced. On CBS Face the Nation on Sunday, host Margaret Brennan spelled the situation out for anyone wondering wheres Dr. Fauci: We think its important for our viewers to hear from Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control. But we have not been able to get our requests for Dr. Fauci approved by the Trump administration in the last three months, and the CDC not at all. We will continue our efforts.

Trumps self-serving diagnosis of whats ailing a suffering nation, however, has little to do with epidemiological data. Reelection is his only concern, as John Bolton makes clear in his book The Room Where It Happened. (The allusion to the title of one of the most electrifying numbers in Hamilton is purely coincidental, or so claims the hawkishly conservative author, who would never want to appear on the other side of the partisan divide.)

A gangbusters economy was supposed to be Trumps ticket to four more years, but COVID-19 upended that dream and in the process exposed the widening inequality that now has the middle class waiting on mile-long food bank lines.

The arts sector has been decimated. A campaign on social media, #SaveTheArts, had arts professionals posting photos of themselves at their jobs to remind the world of the plight of actors, singers, stage managers, lighting designers, sound mixers, box office attendants and, yes, arts journalists.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a rescue package for cultural and heritage institutions on Sunday of approximately $2 billion. Meanwhile, furloughed employees at Los Angeles theaters have been privately messaging me in alarm about the prospect of Congress not passing another coronavirus relief bill.

For some of these workers, all thats keeping hunger and homelessness at bay is Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a provision in the federal CARES act that helps unemployed Californians who might not otherwise be eligible for Unemployment Insurance benefits. They have good reason to be terrified. Unlike in Europe, public support for the arts (never mind direct assistance to artists) has come only reluctantly and inadequately in the U.S. Until Trump is out of office, culture will have to get used to doing without.

Hamilton, the work of art that best epitomizes the Obama era, continues to offer a countervailing leadership voice. The musical doesnt profess to have all the answers, but it isnt frightened of the questions.

Some have critiqued the show for skirting the issue of slavery and making the Founding Fathers seem less implicated in the institution of white supremacy than they indeed were. If Trump didnt see Hamilton as aligned with his enemies, he would reject this commentary about the show as part of the left-wing cultural revolution, determined to erase our heritage and forget our pride and our great dignity.

Miranda, however, welcomed the discussion on Twitter, calling the criticisms valid. As the author of a musical about the American revolution and the birth of our democratic government, he recognizes that history is a never-ending struggle, in which no one has a monopoly on the collective narrative.

Miranda believes the struggle with our divisions can move us forward whereas the real estate mogul from Queens, determined not to lose his hardcore white base, is doubling down on those divisions by tweeting his loyalty to the Confederate South.

These visions squared off on Independence Day and will continue their battle until Election Day. Let the better America win.

Visit link:
What 'Hamilton' on Disney+ and Trump teach us about America - Los Angeles Times

The Editorial Board, USA TODAY Published 5:51 p.m. ET July 12, 2020 | Updated 6:05 p.m. ET July 12, 2020

Both elegant and eviscerating, the anti-incumbency attack Ronald Reagan unleashed against Jimmy Carter in a 1980 debate was a simple question: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?With the country then struggling with stagnant economic growth, high inflation and a debilitatinghostage crisis in Iran,the question answered itself in the minds of most Americans.

Put aside for the moment how devastating that same question could be for Donald Trump amid more than 135,000 Americans dead in a pandemic, a related economic crisis andsweeping protests over racial injustice.

Imagine the querycast in a slightly different context: Is the president's Republican Partybetter off than it was four years ago?The answer has to be a resounding no.

OPPOSING VIEW: How the Trump campaign can get back on track

Start at the ballot box.Democrats capturedthe House of Representatives in 2018 with their largest gain (41 seats) since Watergate,captured a Senate seat in deeply red Alabama ina special election,and drastically slashed the GOP's historic lead in governorships from 33-16 to 26-24. The Republican majority in the Senate is at serious risk in November, and Trump's racial rhetoric hurts the party with minority groups that will become increasingly important in the years to come.

Then there's the growing number of GOPfigures publicly declaring they won't vote for Trump (Mitt Romney, John Boltonand CarlyFiorina)or contemplating as much (Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush and Cindy McCain). A small but vehement groupof Republican "Never Trumpers" hasbanded together to launch caustic political ads against the president.

Protesters greet President Donald Trump as his motorcade leaves the Trump National Golf Club in Northern Virginia on July 11, 2020.(Photo: Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images)

For much of Trump's first termhis party has stood steadfastly by him in part because of his commitment toappointingconservative judges, lowering taxes and reducing regulations, and in part because they fear the ire of the president and his base.But during this year of crises and sinking poll numbers, Trump has become consumed with deflecting blame for the coronavirus response and fueling the culture wars. The presidentcan't even articulate a second-term agenda when asked.

"He's causing a brand problem for Republicans," former Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich told CNN lastweek. "That base he has the edges of that base are beginning to fray, (it's) getting smaller and smaller."

The nation has long benefited from having two vibrant competing parties, one of them a GOP that traditionally advocatedfor smaller government, ethical conduct, fiscal responsibility, free trade, international alliances and standing up to dictators abroad. Yet today's GOP is more like a cult of personality. Onissue after issue, Trump is out of sync with public sentiment and the Republican Party's traditional values:

COVID.Republican governors of Texas and the swing states Floridaand Arizona heeded the president's call to reopen quickly, even whennone met White House coronavirus task force criteria for doing so. The states' infections, hospitalizations and deathshave since soared, even as Trump has downplayed the outbreak, sidelined scientists, pulled the United Statesout of the World Health Organizationand refused until this weekend to wear a mask in public.

Confederates.A national reexamination of race finds Trump defending Confederate names, monuments and symbols, even as theRepublican-led Senate Armed Services Committee voted to stripnames of Confederate generals from military installations, anoverwhelmingly Republican Mississippi government voted to erase a Confederate symbol from the state flag, and NASCAR bannedConfederate symbols.

Corruption.After vowing to "drain the swamp" in Washington, Trump has presided over a cesspool ofcronyism and corruption.On Friday night, hecommuted the prison sentence of longtime friend and political operative Roger Stone, who hadbeen convicted of seven felonies, including obstruction of Congress, witness tampering and perjury.

The reaction to this blatant abuse of presidential clemency power? Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, called it "unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president." Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said it was a "mistake." Beyond that:the usual silence from Trump's GOP enablers.

Republican senators had the chance to rid themselves and the nation of the Trump millstone at theimpeachment trial this year, but only Romney voted to convict and remove. Now their fortunes are tied to Trump's, even as the president recklessly tacksin a direction most of the nation doesn't want to go.

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Original post:
Under Donald Trump, is the Republican Party better off than it was four years ago? No. - USA TODAY