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Although it has only been a few decades deemed the worlds hyperpower, the history and cultural developments driving its current slide towards political and economic sclerosis are rarely discussed. Instead, Americas troubles are explained by particulars, like Donald Trumps tweets and Joe Bidens dementia. I am therefore grateful to have the opportunity to present a few high points from my book, Radical Betrayal: How Liberals & Neoconservatives Are Wrecking American Exceptionalism. It goes beyond the banalities of Trump haters, media bias, and academic prejudice, to explain todays crisis through the (cracking) lens of American Exceptionalism.

Because my analysis deals withU.S. nationalism, it is best to begin by recalling that national narratives have been a political force since Antiquity. However, most of these proto-nationalisms focused on the kings who maintained them, not the common people. Thus, they didnt develop into forces strong enough to sustain national identities through periods of conquest and weakness. As a result, states rose and fell at a breathtaking rate, and peoples like the Jews, Athenians, and Spartans continued to define themselves as members of small tribes rather than larger nations. There were some exceptions, of which the Romans are the best known. By extending citizenship, they created a sense of community and gave people in conquered areas a vested interest in the empires well-being.

During the Middle Ages, European rulers reverted to a king-oriented state ideology. In England, however, a proto-nationalist narrative emerged after King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215. This document created a number of English freedoms encouraging the development of a new type of society marked by, for example, personal rights for to all freemen of our kingdom, and power sharing between Parliament, the King, and courts. Later, this ethos merged with the Puritan view of North Americaa New Israel settled by God-fearing people who were destined to create a model nationforming the embryo of American Exceptionalism in the process.

In 1776, the colonists desire to protect their English freedoms triggered the American Revolution. Through the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, Christian beliefs, English realism, and Enlightenment idealism combined in the worlds first full-blownand so far, most successfulmodern nationalism. However, to grasp the full scale, scope, and influence of this original form of exceptionalism, two episodes of early U.S. history must be considered.

First, Alexander Hamiltons viewthat U.S. markets needed to be protected by tariffs outlived Thomas Jeffersons ideal of America being an Empire of Liberty. As the country grew large enough to escape the snags of protectionism, that outcome preserved a small government and free market regime that rapidly made America the richest country in the world. It also cemented the American inclinations towards personal freedom, local resolution of social issues, and more.

The second event was George Washingtons decision in 1789 not to support the French Revolution in an active role. This created a non-interventionist tradition that, with some exemptions, endured until World War II. In other words, America settled on being a model, rather than a creator, of freedom in other lands. As John Quincy Adams put it in 1821, We Americans do not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

Bolstered by exceptionalist sentiments, these episodes formed a unifying worldview strong enough to hold the Union together despite growing ethnic, social, and cultural differences. Moreover, principles like limited government, states rights, low taxes, and a non-interventionist foreign policy, formed a super-ideology embraced by nearly everybody. Nineteenth-century U.S. politics overall accordingly became an ideologically dull affair, punctuated only by serious clashes about particulars such as the need for a federal bank, the continuation of slavery (that even led to a Civil War), and the level of tariffs.

Around 1900, this unity began to crumble. One reason for this was that, as the U.S. became affluent, so also grew the strength of the missionary impulse implicit in viewing America as a model society of freedom. In other words, as people realized that the U.S. had the means, they felt obliged to start spreading freedom and their values more vigorously. So, with the Spanish-American War in 1898, the U.S. began expanding its international role, such as by acquiring outposts in the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Simultaneously, the Democrats started moving politically leftward. The reason for that change was because, since the Civil War, the party had faced a precarious electoral position due to its support for slavery and its association with the Ku Klux Klan. Subsequently, in an effort to rebrand itself, by nominating populist firebrand William Jennings Bryan for president in 1896, 1900, and 1908, it began to depart from its traditionally libertarian program, adopting more statist-market intervention stances instead.

In 1912, these developments coalesced when Woodrow Wilson became president. Elected with only 42%t of the vote (as the Republican vote split between President William H. Taft and ex-President Theodore Roosevelt) and as a figurehead of the Progressive Movement, he held several views that were alien by American standards. For example, he regarded the U.S. Constitution as outdated, believed in human perfectibility, and thought that the U.S. Government could be used as a force for good. Thus, the Democrats view of America and its role began to oppose the original belief in exceptionalism.

Nonetheless, by expressing himself vaguely and by redefining traditional terms, Wilson managed to push through his policies. At home, he signed bills creating the Federal Reserve and introducing a federal income tax. And in 1917, using exceptionalist-sounding rhetoric, he dragged the U.S. into World War I with the goal of creating a New World Order. The Treaty of Versaillesbased on Wilsons personal beliefs rather than exceptionalist valuesset the stage for World War II. By then, the transformation of America from a free republic into a full-blown welfare-warfare state had begun, yet radicals would continue to drape non-American policies in exceptionalist-sounding rhetoric.

For example, Franklin D. Roosevelt sold parts of the New Deal as temporary deviations aimed only at resolving the Great Depression and preserving the American way of life. And after John F. Kennedy mastered the art of boxing liberal policies in exceptionalist wrapping paper, Lyndon B. Johnson pushed through both a tax cut and his Great Society program, promising to fix everything: from addressing the lack of local libraries to the eradication of fear, want, poverty, and racism. And the budget deficit this created was only one effect; the federal apparatus turning into a true Leviathan, set at fixing everything from potholes to global warming, was another.

However, the Great Society made the difference between exceptionalist-sounding rhetoric and liberal policies too stark to resolve and, after 1970, many liberals began to sound more like European than American politicians. This dual rhetorical-policy departure from American tradition triggered the Cultural Wars, a series of conflicts between conservatives and progressives over issues of identity, values, and morality that has become so bitter that it today threatens the survival of the Union.

Certainly, the Right is partially to blame for Americas current problems. Even if the GOP has remained committed to low taxes, few regulations, and individual freedom, the party hasunder the influence of so-called neoconservativesdeviated from its earlier principles in other areas, the most important of which are foreign policy and budget discipline. In a word, neocons have bested the Democrats advocacy for an aggressive foreign policy and, by uncritically adopting supply-side economics, have contributed to todays chronic budget deficit and a national debt of $33+ trillion.

Much more could be said about these and other matters. However, these considerations alone show how badly flawed is the established narrative about modern America, its characteristics, and its policies. As just one example, for more than 50 years the cultural wars have falsely been blamed on the GOP taking a hard right turn under Ronald Reagan. More serious is that both parties have distanced themselves from the ethos of American Exceptionalism. This has created a gap between popular and elite discourses about what the U.S. is and what its goals should be, blurring peoples sense of community, and weakening exceptionalisms role as a glue that holds the country together.

Furthermore, even if both sides do share blame for these developments, the Democrats nevertheless bear the principal responsibility. By adopting European tax, welfare, and other policies, they have given roughly half the population a schizophrenic view of what it means to be an American. Over time, they have effectively offered provisions for purely anti-American views and sentiments stemming from within media and academia.

After Wilson, FDR, and LBJ, the main culprit in creating this state of affairs was Barack Obama. He concluded the Democratsmutation into a full-scale left-wing party focused on giving entitlements to strategic voter groups and keeping the countrys borders open, rather than helping struggling people improve their situations. Also, in his bid to create a new electoral majority of youth, women, unionized workers, immigrants, LGBT, and college-educated liberals, he exacerbated the culture wars and reversed decades of progress by deliberately stirring social, racial, cultural, and other forms of mistrust.

Moreover, Obamas failed policies led to a depressed new normal that Donald Trump turned out to be a master at challenging. His pledge to stand up against the globalist cabal in D.C. and to make the country great again went hand in glove with the concerns of disgruntled Americans. And by (e.g.) focusing tax cuts on working- and middle-class people (instead of important voter blocs and special interests) and renegotiating unfavorable trade deals, he succeeded. Almost, for at the last minute, Democrats and the media managed to use the COVID-19 hysteria, along with some creative voter collection methods, to derail his reelection.

Now, the Biden administration has reversed most of Trumps successful policies and implemented new ones that have added to the vilest part of the old order. It has increased federal spending to a new record level, which in turn has led to both a rise in inflation and the national debt; it has raised popular expectations of what the government can do in the realm of welfare by promising things like a student loan forgiveness program that would be extremely expensive and destructive to fostering a sense of personal responsibility; and it has promised infinite amounts of military and economic aid to Ukraine and Israel, which has tied up the country in two new endless wars in faraway countries (next to Syria and other current conflicts).

In summary, America must bridge its economic, cultural, and other divides by reinvigorating American Exceptionalism. Otherwise, the U.S. will fall, which would not only be historically poignant but also dangerous, since powers like Russia, China, and Iran would gain immensely from such a disaster. And, because the Democrats bear the principal responsibility for todays situation, they must back away from the brink and once again embrace more exceptionalist rhetoric and policies. If they do not, the political, social, and cultural tensions in America will continue to increase until the nation rips itself apart. The only alternatives to such an outcome would be to split the Union peacefully beforehand, or for the federal level to become more autocratic. Unfortunately, given events such as U.S. intelligence agencies mass surveillance of U.S. citizens, the White Houses efforts to censor free speech online, the hiring of 10,000 new and armed IRS agents, and the legal maneuvers designed to jail Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 election, the latter is where things seem to be going.

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Sclerotic America The European Conservative - The European Conservative

Ohio lawmakers have failed, at least for now, to pass a bill that would exert control over discussion of controversial beliefs about climate policies in college classrooms.

Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens, a Republican, said this week that the bill doesnt have enough support to pass the House, where it has sat for months following passage in the Senate.

Senate Bill 83 contains a wide-ranging set of rules for public colleges and universities, including bans on most diversity training and new requirements that alternative viewpoints on such topics as climate policies, immigration and abortion are discussed. Its main sponsor, Sen. Jerry Cirino, a Republican, said he was taking on the woke fiefdom of higher education.

The bill faced intense opposition from faculty, students, environmental groups and unions, leading to hours-long hearings over several months. Supporters of the bill made many changes to attempt to find a version that could pass, including the removal of language that banned strikes by higher education unions, but it wasnt enough.

A provision dealing with controversial beliefs or policies remained in the bill, which helped to inspire resistance from people who teach and study science; they warned that Ohios public colleges and universities would be impaired in their ability to teach climate science.

So many people have come out against this bill and have pushed back and have rallied, not only against this bill, but so much other harmful legislation, that I think its given me hope, said Keely Fisher, a Ph.D. student in the School of Environment and Natural Resources at Ohio State University.

She spoke to Inside Climate News in May about how the bill made her wonder if she belonged in Ohio. Now she feels pride in the way her faculty and classmates and those at other universities defended their ability to do research unfettered by this regulation, she said.

Ohio Rep. Casey Weinstein, a Democrat, said he is not surprised to see the bill has failed to pass based on his conversations with Republican colleagues who were uncomfortable with various parts of it. Republicans hold large majorities in both chambers of the Ohio General Assembly.

In Ohio, we love our universities, so the fact that theyre attacking and potentially striking blows against our beloved public universities that are so critical to our workforce and our economy, that was a tough hill to climb, he said.

Cirino, the lead sponsor, testified before a House committee in May and faced questions from Weinstein, who asked how the measure would affect the teaching of the Holocaust. While Cirino didnt endorse inaccurate views of how the Holocaust should be taught, Weinstein said he is troubled that the bill seems to open the door to treating Holocaust denial as just another point of view.

I dont think he did himself any favors by, unfortunately, being honest about his bill and saying that he was trying to both sides slavery, 9-11 and the Holocaust, Weinstein said.

Cirino did not respond to a request for an interview.

The bill says faculty and staff shall allow and encourage students to reach their own conclusions about all controversial beliefs or policies and shall not seek to inculcate any social, political, or religious point of view.

The bill then lists examples of controversial topics, including climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion.

A previous version of the bill referred to climate change instead of climate policies. Cirino changed it in response to concerns that the measure would regulate the teaching of climate science, but opponents said the bill would continue to impair teaching about climate change even with the new wording.

ICN provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going.

Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, has been monitoring the Ohio legislation and is pleased to see that it doesnt appear likely to pass. His organization, based in California, opposes threats to the accuracy of science education in K-12 schools and higher education.

The Ohio bill is trying to sweep up higher education into the culture wars that Cirino and his supporters want to pursue, he said. Climate change is a fairly minor battlefield for them in the culture wars, but it is, indeed, part of what they want to fight about.

He said attacks on science education at public universities are much less common than what he sees happening in K-12 schools.

For example, his organization has been working to oppose efforts before the Texas State Board of Education to restrict the use of textbooks that accurately describe climate change and evolution.

Branch said the Ohio bill was so brazen and it offended so many interest groups, including labor unions, people of color and science educators, that it was not difficult to defeat. Other threats to science education are harder to fight.

But policy ideas can always come back in new forms, so there remains a possibility that Cirino or some other Ohio lawmaker could pursue aspects of this bill again. Senate President Matt Huffman, whose chamber passed the bill in the spring and still supports it, said this week that he will continue to push for the measure.

If that happens the coalition that opposed it will be ready to respond.

Fisher, the Ohio State student, said she welcomes not having to worry about the legislation for a while.

It is this weight off my shoulders that I didnt know I needed, she said.

Dan Gearino covers the midwestern United States, part of ICNs National Environment Reporting Network. His coverage deals with the business side of the clean-energy transition and he writes ICNs Inside Clean Energy newsletter. He came to ICN in 2018 after a nine-year tenure at The Columbus Dispatch, where he covered the business of energy. Before that, he covered politics and business in Iowa and in New Hampshire. He grew up in Warren County, Iowa, just south of Des Moines, and lives in Columbus, Ohio.

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Ohio Fails to Pass Restrictions on College Teaching About Climate ... - InsideClimate News

But in other important ways, OConnor eschewed a facile ideological template that would lend itself to easy forecasting. For her critics, her approach to the law could seem erratic and unpredictable. For those looking more closely, however, her decisions and her reasoning demonstrated a constant attention to the proper role of the Supreme Court as a nonpartisan arbiter of hot-button issues in American life, to the actual facts about the actual parties, and to the way in which the benchs rulings would be experienced by the American public.

Hers was a humane, pragmatic jurisprudence qualities that are too often lacking in todays Supreme Court. These values were embodied in her approach not just to high-salience issues such as abortion, but also in somewhat less noticed disputes about the Fourth Amendment and the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Its a legacy worth spotlighting.

Inevitably, the decision that will be most recalled today is the plurality opinion OConnor penned along with Justices Anthony Kennedy and David Souter in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In Casey, the Republican-appointed judges decided not to use their sheer force of numbers to overrule Roe v. Wade, and it stands in stark contrast to the work of President Donald Trumps three appointees in Dobbs v. Jacksonville Womens Health.

Casey matters not only because of its effect on reproductive freedoms, but for what it says about how the justices choose either to sustain or undermine the rule of law. OConnor understood how important it was that citizens didnt perceive their rights to turn on the impenetrable uncertainties of who got elected, who died, who resigned, and who could get through the Senate.

OConnor explained why she would not just vote her own politics in the (much maligned) first line of her Casey opinion: Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt. Here, she echoes thinking about the rule of law going back to Aristotle. Simply put, a legal system diminishes liberty by the sheer fact of being unpredictably open to the whims of particular officials. OConnor would later go on to champion the rule of law, but her insight into how the court must behave if legality is to be preserved is most powerfully on display in Casey.

At the same time, OConnor was capable of profound empathy for the actual litigants before the court. Consider a little-noticed case that, in practice, deeply shapes Americans experience with police. Atwater v. City of Lago Vista asked whether a police officer could spitefully take advantage of a minor traffic misdemeanor (failure to wear a seat belt) to arrest a woman, separating her from her minor children. The court said yes, over a vigorous dissent by OConnor.

Atwater is one of those minor cases that, on the ground, is incredibly consequential: It surely matters to many people whether they can be locked up because they fail to use their seat belt. The courts ruling gave police a startling and destabilizing new power over citizens. OConnors eloquent and passionate dissent captured the far-reaching way in which the courts ruling shook the life not just of Gail Atwater but of millions of Americans on the road.

Finally, when it came to the First Amendments Establishment Clause and the separation of church and state, OConnor was no less sensitive to peoples direct experiences with the law. In her view, the government violated religious neutrality by taking sides improperly in the religion-inflected culture wars if an objective observer would perceive a state endorsement of faith.

Here, OConnor took seriously the idea that government favoritism between religions, and between the devout and the secular, can be destabilizing. She understood the potential for people to feel stigmatized and excluded by such religious partisanship. And her approach to the law centered those concerns by literally demanding that judges take the perspective of the citizen facing a seemingly biased state.

The strategy of the Roberts Court, however, has been strikingly different. There is no case during the Roberts Court in which the Establishment Clause has provided the necessary basis for invalidating a government practice. Rejecting claims under the Clause, the Roberts Court has also played fast and loose with facts in ways that would have seemed quite alien to OConnor. The overall effect, a leading scholar of the First Amendment recently wrote, is that the court is disestablishing that part of the First Amendment making it, in effect, a second-class right.

There is, of course, much in OConnors record with which a person on the left or the right will disagree: Thats perhaps the inevitable result of being open to the facts of each new case, and empathetic to the experiences of their litigants. Yet if unpredictability is the cost for such fidelity to law and seriousness about justice, its hard to see why the price is not worth paying.

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What Sandra Day O'Connor Could Teach Today's Supreme Court - POLITICO

There is nothing new under the sun. So goes the adage which conveys the tendency for history to repeat itself.

Its this unstated premise that drives Kliph Nesteroffs latest book, Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars. In it, Nesteroff artfully seeks to demonstrate how current catchphrases like cancel culture and political correctness are just variations of the same generational and ideological divides which have undergirded American society throughout Hollywoods history.

Nesteroff turns his attention to comedians in particular, citing the ways in which they have historically been unique targets of the culture wars.

His arguments are cogent and his histories entertaining how is it possible that vaguely defined spirit of the times is not a quote about wokeness, but instead a denunciation of critiques levied on comedians more than half a century ago?

Still, its worth noting that Nesteroff began his career as a comedian, which perhaps betrays an inherent sympathy for the prophetic martyrs who have frequently been subjected to unjust censorship and criticism throughout the history of showbiz.

___

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

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Book Review: 'Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars' argues history repeats itself - AOL

THE ISSUE

If activist groups from the religious right have their way, Scholastic Book Fairs in Lancaster County and beyond may soon be replaced by a new Texas-based vendor called SkyTree Book Fairs that distributes pro-God, pro-America childrens books, LNP | LancasterOnlines Brett Sholtis reported last Sunday. In the past year, Scholastic has come under fire from some religious conservatives after agreeing to keep books about Black civil rights icons and LGBTQ+ characters in its elementary school collection.

If you want to ban Scholastic Book Fairs from schools, why not also ban recess and classroom parties and everything else that adds joy to childrens school lives?

Attending a Scholastic Book Fair with some crumpled dollar bills and parental instructions not to spend the money on scented erasers and kitten posters has been a treasured rite of American childhood for decades. Generations of children learned to love reading while turning the pages of books they discovered among the diverse offerings at their schools book fair.

Well, sorry, kids you may have to bid farewell to Pete the Cat and Junie B. Jones and Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Instead, meet a gorilla named Bongo, a character in the 2021 book Paws Off My Cannon, by former National Rifle Association spokesperson and conservative TV host Dana Loesch. Emphasizing the importance of the Second Amendment, this book will make perfect reading material for your child as he or she hides in a classroom closet during a lockdown drill.

Then theres Lucas the lion cub, the main character in The Test of Lionhood, in which Lucas sister is poisoned and Lucas has to save the day. The book is meant to teach about the importance of masculinity and, presumably, about the helplessness of girls. Its author, Kevin Sorbo, is an actor who claims he was canceled by Hollywood for his conservative Christian beliefs which seems kind of whiny and weak from a guy who used to play Hercules.

And who needs The Baby-Sitters Club when your child can read The Night The Snow Monster Attacked, a book purportedly about good leadership penned by former U.S. Army Gen. Mike Flynn? Flynn was such an excellent leader that he urged then-President Donald Trump to declare martial law and deploy the military so Trump could get a mulligan on the 2020 presidential election. Never mind the U.S. Constitution, kids Flynn says that can be suspended to steal elections from their rightful winners because, leadership!

And heres the best part: The list price of each of these literary delights is $22.99 each.

Wed like to think that replacing a vast array of affordable books that children actually want to read with $23 books peddling right-wing propaganda will never happen. But never say never, especially when right-wing activists have been so effective in scaring parents about our changing world that once-reasonable politicians like state Sen. Ryan Aument now are pandering to those trumped-up fears.

And, as Sholtis pointed out, while the right-wing extremist group Moms for Liberty largely failed in its mission to help hard-right candidates get elected to school boards in other parts of Pennsylvania, their favored candidates have won control in multiple Lancaster County school districts, including Warwick School District.

Sholtis reported that Rachel Wilson-Snyder, chair of the Lancaster County chapter of Moms for Liberty, recently shared a link to SkyTrees website on the chapters private Facebook group. And Wilson-Snyder exhorted other parents to host a SkyTree book fair at their childrens schools. Bye Scholastic! she quipped.

As Sholtis noted, in places like Warwick School District, where Wilson-Snyder has been a vocal presence at public meetings, replacing Scholastic with SkyTree is a real possibility.

The trick is getting the school districts on board with switching from Scholastic to SkyTree, one member of the local Moms for Liberty Facebook group offered.

SkyTree takes its name from a book written by Kirk Cameron, who played a teenage character in the popular sitcom Growing Pains in the 1980s and early 90s and now is a Christian evangelist. Cameron has voiced virulently anti-LGBTQ+ views, so its perhaps not surprising that he released his second childrens book, Pride Comes Before the Fall, on June 1 the first day of Pride month.

Cameron has been cheerleading SkyTree on conservative media. Its benign name is belied by its agenda.

As Sholtis reported, a close look at SkyTree reveals it is a distribution channel for Brave Books, a publishing house that has faced ridicule and criticism for its bench of authors almost entirely composed of prominent conservative media figures.

On its website, Brave Books contends that its titles will serve as armor in the battle against an enemy that is firing arrows at the hearts and minds of your kids.

It continues: Cultural forces are hard at work attempting to steal the hearts and minds of your most prized possession, your children. This enemy would love nothing more than to leave your family weak, your children confused, and their value system destroyed.

We found these assertions mystifying. Who is the enemy trying to weaken families, confuse children and destroy family values? Scholastic stalwarts like Clifford the Big Red Dog? (Hes red, the color of the Communist Party of China flag, after all.) Pinkalicious, the little girl who ate so many pink cupcakes that her hair and skin turned pink? Is Pinkalicious working with the singer Pink, the pop musician who recently gave away 2,000 challenged books to audience members at her concerts in Florida? Is there something nefarious about Peppa Pig or Pig the Pug or Fly Guy?

Please, parents, let your kids be kids. Let them discover the joys of reading without seeking to indoctrinate them. If you dont want your kids to buy particular books at a school book fair, talk to them and suggest titles youre comfortable with the Scholastic website is very parent-friendly. You can plug in your childs age and grade level to find appropriate books. But dont try to keep books from other parents children. And remember: More often than not, a big red dog is just a big red dog.

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As the culture wars shift to school book fairs, please protect kids' joy ... - LNP | LancasterOnline