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AMY GOODMAN: Today, a Democracy Now! special on this, the newly created Juneteenth federal holiday, which marks the end of slavery in the United States. The Juneteenth commemoration dates back to the last days of the Civil War, when Union soldiers landed in Galveston, Texas it was June 19th, 1865 with news that the war had ended, and enslaved people learned they were freed. It was two-and-a-half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

In 2021, President Biden signed legislation to make Juneteenth the first new federal holiday since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The day after Biden signed the legislation, I spoke to the writer and poet Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America. I began by asking him about traveling to Galveston, Texas, and his feelings on Juneeteenth becoming a federal holiday.

CLINT SMITH: As you mentioned, I went to Galveston, Texas. Ive been writing this book for four years, and I went two years ago. And it was marking the 40th anniversary of when Texas had made Juneteenth a state holiday. And it was the Al Edwards Prayer Breakfast. The late Al Edwards Sr. is the state legislator, Black state legislator, who made possible and advocated for the legislation that turned Juneteenth into a holiday, a state holiday in Texas.

And so I went, in part, because I wanted to spend time with people who were the actual descendants of those who had been freed by General Gordon Grangers General Order No. 3. And it was a really remarkable moment, because I was in this place, on this island, on this land, with people for whom Juneteenth was not an abstraction. It was not a performance. It was not merely a symbol. It was part of their tradition. It was part of their lineage. It was an heirloom that had been passed down, that had made their lives possible. And so, I think I gained a more intimate sense of what that holiday meant.

And to sort of broaden, broaden out more generally, you spoke to how it was more than two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and it was an additional two months after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, effectively ending the Civil War. So it wasnt only two years after the Emancipation Proclamation; it was an additional two months after the Civil War was effectively over.

And so, for me, when I think of Juneteenth, part of what I think about is the both/andedness of it, that it is this moment in which we mourn the fact that freedom was kept from hundreds of thousands of enslaved people for years and for months after it had been attained by them, and then, at the same time, celebrating the end of one of the most egregious things that this country has ever done.

And I think what were experiencing right now is a sort of marathon of cognitive dissonance, in the way that is reflective of the Black experience as a whole, because we are in a moment where we have the first new federal holiday in over 40 years and a moment that is important to celebrate, the Juneteenth, and to celebrate the end of slavery and to have it recognized as a national holiday, and at the same time that that is happening, we have a state-sanctioned effort across state legislatures across the country that is attempting to prevent teachers from teaching the very thing that helps young people understand the context from which Juneteenth emerges.

And so, I think that we recognize that, as a symbol, Juneteenth is not that it matters, that it is important, but it is clearly not enough. And I think the fact that Juneteenth has happened is reflective of a shift in our public consciousness, but also of the work that Black Texans and Black people across this country have done for decades to make this moment possible.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you explain more what happened in Galveston in 1865 and, even as you point out, what the Emancipation Proclamation actually did two-and-a-half years before?

CLINT SMITH: Right. So, the Emancipation Proclamation is often a widely misunderstood document. So, it did not, sort of wholesale, free the enslaved people throughout the Union. It did not free enslaved people in the Union. In fact, there were several border states that were part of the Union that continued to keep their enslaved laborers, states like Kentucky, states like Delaware, states like Missouri. And what it did was it was a military edict that was attempting to free enslaved people in Confederate territory. But the only way that that edict would be enforced is if Union soldiers went and took that territory.

And so, part of what many enslavers realized and realized correctly was that Texas would be one of the last frontiers that Union soldiers would be able to come in and force the Emancipation Proclamation if they ever made it there in the first place, because this was two years prior to the end of the Civil War. And so, you had enslavers from Virginia and from North Carolina and from all of these states in the upper South who brought their enslaved laborers and relocated to Texas, in ways that increased the population of enslaved people in Texas by the tens of thousands.

And so, when Gordon Granger comes to Texas, he is making clear and letting people know that the Emancipation Proclamation had been enacted, in ways that because of the topography of Texas and because of how spread out and rural and far apart from different ecosystems of information many people were, a lot of enslaved people didnt know that the Emancipation Proclamation had happened. And some didnt even know that General Lee had surrendered at Appomattox two months prior. And so, part of what this is doing is making clear to the 250,000 enslaved people in Texas that they had actually been granted freedom two-and-a-half years prior and that the war that this was all fought over had ended two months before.

AMY GOODMAN: During the ceremony making Juneteenth a federal holiday, President Biden got down on his knee to greet Opal Lee, the 94-year-old activist known as the Grandmother of Juneteenth. This is Biden speaking about Lee.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: As a child growing up in Texas, she and her family would celebrate Juneteenth. On Juneteenth 1939, when she was 12 years old, a white mob torched her family home. But such hate never stopped her, any more than it stopped the vast majority of you Im looking at from this podium. Over the course of decades, she has made it her mission to see that this day came. It was almost a singular mission. She has walked for miles and miles, literally and figuratively, to bring attention to Juneteenth, to make this day possible.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is Opal Lee speaking at Harvard School of Public Health.

OPAL LEE: I dont want people to think Juneteenth is just one day. There is too much educational components. We have too much to do. I even advocate that we do Juneteenth, that we celebrate freedom from the 19th of June to the Fourth of July, because we werent free on the Fourth of July, 1776. That would be celebrating freedom do you understand? if we were able to do that.

AMY GOODMAN: And that is Opal Lee, considered the Grandmother of Juneteenth. And, Clint, one of the things you do in your book is you introduce us to grassroots activists. This doesnt come from the top; this comes from years of organizing, as you point out, in Galveston itself and with people like not that theres anyone like Opal Lee.

CLINT SMITH: Yeah, no, absolutely. Part of what this book is doing, it is an attempt to uplift the stories of people who dont often get the attention that they deserve in how they shape the historical record. So, that means the public historians who work at these historical sites and plantations. That means the museum curators. That means the activists and the organizers, people like Take Em Down NOLA in New Orleans, who pushed the City Council and the mayor to make possible the fact that in 2017 these statues would come down, several Confederate statues in my hometown, in New Orleans.

And part of when I think about someone like Miss Opal Lee, part of what I think about is our proximity to this period of history, right? Slavery existed for 250 years in this country, and its only not existed for 150. And, you know, the way that I was taught about slavery, growing up, in elementary school, we were made to feel as if it was something that happened in the Jurassic age, that it was the flint stone, the dinosaurs and slavery, almost as if they all happened at the same time. But the woman who opened the National Museum of African American History and Culture alongside the Obama family in 2016 was the daughter of an enslaved person not the granddaughter or the great-granddaughter or the great-great-granddaughter. The daughter of an enslaved person is who opened this museum of the Smithsonian in 2016. And so, clearly, for so many people, there are people who are alive today who were raised by, who knew, who were in community with, who loved people who were born into intergenerational chattel bondage. And so, this history that we tell ourselves was a long time ago wasnt, in fact, that long ago at all.

And part of what so many activists and grassroots public historians and organizers across this country recognize is that if we dont fully understand and account for this history, that actually wasnt that long ago, that in the scope of human history was only just yesterday, then we wont fully understand our contemporary landscape of inequality today. We wont understand how slavery shaped the political, economic and social infrastructure of this country. And when you have a more acute understanding of how slavery shaped the infrastructure of this country, then youre able to more effectively look around you and see how the reason one community looks one way and another community looks another way is not because of the people in those communities, but is because of what has been done to those communities, generation after generation after generation. And I think that that is central to the sort of public pedagogy that so many of these activists and organizers who have been attempting to make Juneteenth a holiday and bring attention to it as an entry point to think more wholly and honestly about the legacy of slavery have been doing.

AMY GOODMAN: During an interview on CNN, Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out the 14 Republican congressmembers all white men who voted against making Juneteenth a federal holiday.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: This is pretty consistent with, I think, the Republican base, and its whether its trying to fight against teaching basic history around racism and the role of racism in U.S. history to you know, theres a direct through line from that to denying Juneteenth, the day that is widely recognized and celebrated as a symbolic kind of day to represent the end of slavery in the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: If you could respond to that, Clint Smith, and also the fact that on the same day, yesterday, the Senate minority leader said they would not be supporting the For the People Act?

CLINT SMITH: Yeah, I mean, I think

AMY GOODMAN: The Voting Rights Act.

CLINT SMITH: Absolutely. I think, very clearly, the critical race theory the idea of it is being used as a bogeyman, and it is being misrepresented and distorted by people who dont even know what critical race theory is, right? So we should be clear that the thing that people are calling critical race theory is just that is the language that they are using to talk about the idea of teaching any sort of history that rejects the idea that America is a singularly exceptional place, and that we should not account for the history of harm that has been enacted to create opportunities and intergenerational wealth for millions of people, that has come at the direct expense of millions and millions of other people across generations.

And so, part of what is happening in these state legislatures across the country with regard to the effort to push back against teaching of history 1619 Project, critical race theory and the like is a recognition that we have developed in this country a more sophisticated understanding, a more sophisticated framework, a more sophisticated public lexicon, with which to understand how slavery how racism was not just an interpersonal phenomenon, it was a historic one, it was a structural one, it was a systemic one.

AMY GOODMAN: I want you to talk more about your book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America. Can you talk about the journey you took you were just mentioning where you grew up, in Louisiana, the map of the streets of Louisiana and why you feel it is so critical not only to look at the South, but your chapter on New York is something that people will be many will be shocked by, the level of when people talk about the South and slavery, that New York, of course, had enslaved people?

CLINT SMITH: It did. It was really important for me to include a chapter on New York City, and a place in the North, more broadly, in part because, you know, while the majority of places I visit are in the South, because the South is where slavery was saturated and where it was most intimately tied the social and economic infrastructure of that society, it most certainly also existed in the North.

What a lot of people dont know is that New York City, for an extended period of time, was the second-largest slave port in the country, after Charleston, South Carolina; that in 1860, on the brink of the Civil War, when South Carolina was about to secede from the Union after the election of Abraham Lincoln, that New York Citys mayor, Fernando Wood, proposed that New York City should also secede from the Union alongside the Southern states, because New Yorks financial and political infrastructure were so deeply entangled and tied to the slavocracy of the South; also that the Statue of Liberty was originally conceived by douard de Laboulaye, a French abolitionist, who conceived of the idea of the Statue of Liberty and giving it to the United States as a gift, that it was originally conceived as an idea to celebrate the end of the Civil War and to celebrate abolition.

But over time, that meaning has been even through the conception of the statue, right? The original conception of the statue actually had Lady Liberty breaking shackles, like a pair of broken shackles on her wrists, to symbolize the end of slavery. And over time, it became very clear that that would not have the sort of wide stream or, wide mainstream support of people across the country, obviously this having been just not too long after the end of the Civil War, so there were still a lot of fresh wounds. And so they shifted the meaning of the statue to be more about sort of inclusivity, more about the American experience, the American project, the American promise, the promise of democracy, and sort of obfuscated the original meaning, to the point where even the design changed. And so they replaced the shackles with a tablet and the torch, and then put the shackles very subtly sort of underneath her robe. And you can but the only way you can see them, these broken chains, these broken links, are from a helicopter or from an airplane.

And in many ways, I think that that is a microcosm for how we hide the story of slavery across this country, that these chain links are hidden, out of sight, out of view of most people, under the robe of Lady Liberty, and how the story of slavery across this country is very as we see now, very intentionally trying to be hidden and kept from so many people, so that we have a fundamentally inconsistent understanding of the way that slavery shaped our contemporary society today.

AMY GOODMAN: Clint, before we end, you are an author, youre a writer, youre a teacher, and you are a poet. Can you share a poem with us?

CLINT SMITH: Id be happy to. And so, when youre a poet writing nonfiction, that very much animates the way that I approach the text. And so, this is part of the this is an adaptation or an except from the end of one of my chapters, that originally began as a poem that I wrote when I was trying to think about some of these issues that I brought up.

[reading] Growing up, the iconography of the Confederacy was an ever-present fixture of my daily life. Every day on the way to school, I passed a statue of P.G.T. Beauregard riding on horseback, his Confederate uniform slung over his shoulder and his military cap pulled far down over his eyes. As a child, I did not know who P.G.T. Beauregard was. I did not know he was the man who ordered the first attack that opened the Civil War. I did not know he was one of the architects who designed the Confederate battle flag. I did not know he led an army predicated on maintaining the institution of slavery. What I knew is that he looked like so many of the other statues that ornamented the edges of this city, these copper garlands of a past that saw truth as something that should be buried underground and silenced by the soil.

After the war, the sons and daughters of the Confederacy reshaped the contours of treason into something they could name as honorable. We called it the Lost Cause. And it crept its way into textbooks that attempted to cover up a crime that was still unfolding; that told us that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man, guilty of nothing but fighting for the state and the people that he loved; that the Southern flag was about heritage and remembering those slain fighting to preserve their way of life. But, see, the thing about the Lost Cause is that its only lost if youre not actually looking. The thing about heritage is that its a word that also means Im ignoring what we did to you.

I was taught the Civil War wasnt about slavery, but I was never taught how the declarations of Confederate secession had the promise of human bondage carved into its stone. I was taught the war was about economics, but I was never taught that in 1860 the 4 million enslaved Black people were worth more than every bank, factory and railroad combined. I was taught that the Civil War was about states rights, but I was never taught how the Fugitive Slave Act could care less about a border and spelled Georgia and Massachusetts the exact same way.

Its easy to look at a flag and call it heritage when you dont see the Black bodies buried behind it. Its easy to look at a statue and call it history when you ignore the laws written in its wake.

I come from a city abounding with statues of white men on pedestals and Black children playing beneath them, where we played trumpets and trombones to drown out the Dixie song thats still whistled in the wind. In New Orleans, there are over 100 schools, roads and buildings named for Confederates and slaveholders. Every day, Black children walk into buildings named after people who never wanted them to be there. Every time I would return home, I would drive on streets named for those who would have wanted me in chains.

Go straight for two miles on Robert E. Lee, take a left on Jefferson Davis, make the first right on Claiborne. Translation: Go straight for two miles on the general who slaughtered hundreds of Black soldiers who were trying to surrender, take a left on the president of the Confederacy who made the torture of Black bodies the cornerstone of his new nation, make the first right on the man who permitted the heads of rebelling slaves to be put on stakes and spread across the city in order to prevent the others from getting any ideas.

What name is there for this sort of violence? What do you call it when the road you walk on is named for those who imagined you under a noose? What do you call it when the roof over your head is named after people who would have wanted the bricks to crush you?

AMY GOODMAN: Clint Smith, author of the book How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, speaking on Democracy Now! in 2021, the day after Juneteenth became a federal holiday.

Coming up, the pioneering musical artist Rhiannon Giddens. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her opera Omar, about Omar ibn Said, a Muslim scholar in Africa sold into slavery in the 1800s.

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Juneteenth: Historian Clint Smith on Reckoning with Legacy of U.S. Slavery - Democracy Now!

There is a huge gap in Colorado between campaign rhetoric on political issues and what voters in the state say they want candidates to talk about: democracy and good government.

Many voters worry that democracy is vanishing and public institutions are threatened. Candidates rarely touch on this topic in their pitch to voters. But they should.

Colorados primary elections are Tuesday, when voters will determine which candidates go on to represent their party on the ballot in the November general election. If the victors next week want to address a top concern of constituents throughout the state, they will add to their stump speech an explanation of how they would reinforce democracy and improve the health of government functions.

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Colorado Newsline and more than 30 other news organizations in the state have undertaken an unprecedented effort this year to gauge whats most important to voters. The project, called Voter Voices 2024, centers on a survey we distributed across the state, and respondents told us what candidates should focus on as they compete for votes. Voters had the opportunity to respond in their own words, and they also selected from a list the three issues that are most important to them. (The survey will be open throughout the 2024 election season. Click here to fill it out.)

The results were striking. Among those who identified themselves as liberal or moderate, most, by far, said democracy and good government were their top issues. Other major concerns included the economy/cost of living, immigration, the environment, abortion and health care.

Conservatives generally put democracy and good government in third place ahead of 10 other issues on the list.

Part of the goal of the project was to enable journalists to challenge candidates when their rhetoric doesnt match the priorities of the people they mean to represent.

One respondent to the Newsline survey said they want candidates to talk about how they will protect the federal and state constitutions from wannabe dictators. Another hopes candidates will describe their understanding of the relationships between our American Democracy, our national economy and our international partnerships. One said simply: Democracy and our way of life is on the ballot.

Many respondents complained about a related matter: the vitriolic tone of contemporary politics and the erosion of bipartisanship. Newsline reporter Sara Wilson recently conducted Q&As with primary candidates for statehouse seats. In one question, she mentioned that voters told us theyre concerned about democracy and good government, and she asked, Do you find any common ground with members of the opposite party, and how important is bipartisanship in your political philosophy?

Almost every candidate was quick to answer that they value working across the aisle to get things done. But some candidates, both Democrats and Republicans, said there are limits to their willingness to work with the other side. And some do not seem to be interested in bipartisanship at all.

I do not find a lot of common ground with Democrats, Terri Goon, a Republican running in House District 11, said, while Tim Hernndez, an incumbent Democrat whos running in House District 4, said, Good governance is contextual, and in our current context, it means that rather than asking if we should work with a super-minority on the other side of the aisle we should be asking why we are not passing bills that supermajorities of our Democratic constituents are asking us to.

And when Wilson asked candidates to name their top three priorities, exactly one Rep. Elisabeth Epps, a Democrat running for reelection in House District 8 specifically included good governance, citing such values as transparency and compliance with open meetings law. Its her No. 1 priority, she said.

Neglect of an issue that voters told us is important is apparent elsewhere, on campaign websites, during debates and across other avenues of candidate communication. We might not have recognized this disparity without the Voter Voices project. But now we do.

Part of the goal of the project was to enable journalists to challenge candidates when their rhetoric doesnt match the priorities of the people they mean to represent. As winners emerge after the polls close Tuesday and general election candidates begin retooling their campaigns for the months ahead, they should consider their response to the question, What will you do to protect democracy and ensure the health of government?

Well be asking.

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Candidates are almost completely neglecting a top issue for Colorado voters Colorado Newsline - Colorado Newsline

Over the past two decades, the project of European integration has been moderately failing forward. Many issues have accompanied this process and their sum calls for a reinvention of European democracy.

Two decades have passed since the European Unions Big Bang enlargement into Central and Eastern Europe. This anniversary prompts a reflection on the EUs evolution and where the European project stands today. The analysis below is based on the three main processes that have shaped the EU since 2004: widening and deepening, the impact of crises, and the emergence of new political divides.

June 22, 2024 - Ferenc Lacz - Hot TopicsIssue 4 2024Magazine

Illustration by Andrzej Zarba

The first process involves examining the East-West divide and the trends towards convergence. Let me first outline some fundamental aspects of East-West relations within the EU. In terms of demographics, the newer member states account for approximately one-fifth of the EUs population. While some eastern EU countries have made notable progress since 2004, their overall economic contribution still falls significantly below their population share. At the same time, these states wield significant political power within the EU due to the nation-state distribution principle on this basis, almost every second vote or seat now belongs to this group of states. Yet, the citizens of the eastern EU states are still underrepresented in European transnational elite circles.

Easternization

Two conclusions can be made based on these basic observations. First, the Big Bang enlargement has created an imbalance in the EU. Second, it has led governments of eastern EU countries to prioritize intergovernmental cooperation over supranational integration. These shifts have prompted the Easternization of the EU, with both positive and negative outcomes.

Easternization has affected various aspects of EU affairs in the early 21st century, including allocation of funds, immigration numbers, as well as different attitudes toward Russias increasingly radical and violent dictatorship. Perhaps most notably, this has also occurred regarding the debates surrounding democracy and illiberalism.

While EU funds have boosted Eastern European economies, they have not erased disparities within the Union. The EUs enlargement towards the East, driven by economic motives rather than social concerns, has perpetuated core-periphery inequalities. Additionally, the brain drain from Eastern Europe has reinforced conservatism in local societies.

The specific manner of the EUs Easternization can thus help explain why the growing threat of democratic backsliding has often assumed an Eastern European complexion. This threat has been widely linked to the rise of illiberal state-building projects in Hungary and Poland. Many right-wing populists in Western Europe admire the combination of sociocultural conservatism and ethnonational radicalism of Hungarys Fidesz party and the former Law and Justice government in Poland. If Europe continues to Easternize in this manner, it will undoubtedly challenge integration; in such a scenario, EU enlargement would ultimately come at the expense of deeper integration.

Despite recent positive developments in Poland, it is still necessary to address the challenges of illiberalism today. Much of the concern stems from how the European Union has been reshaped and had its reputation tarnished by the series of crises that have unfolded since around 2008. As shown by Luuk van Middelaar in his insider account Alarums & Excursions, in this post-post-historical phase the EUs legalistic-consensual order what the author calls the politics of rules has been increasingly replaced by the politics of events. The cascading crises of these years the financial and economic crisis; the declining quality of democracy and respect for the rule of law; the tragedies connected with refugees and migration; the shambles around Brexit; the global pandemic; Russias ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine (the last two had only begun when the Dutch scholar had completed his manuscript); not to mention worsening environmental degradation often required shift responses and have logically prioritized the intergovernmental aspects of EU decision-making. These crises have also presented opportunities for European integration, some of which European elites have managed to capitalize on.

Failing forward

Failing forward in European integration to employ the suggestive phrase by Eric Jones, R. Daniel Kelemen and Sophie Meunier has been no small feat amidst a significantly worsened global environment. The EUs shortcomings have been notable but not catastrophic in comparison. While highlighting the Unions resilience is important, especially to debunk the narratives of the EUs decline and imminent collapse, it is equally crucial to probe further into how effectively the EU has functioned as a tool for crisis management.

Despite advancements in integration, the EU has failed to counter the fallout from these repeated crises and has not meaningfully reversed internal trends of socio-economic and increasingly political divergence. The measures the EU has implemented to address the crises, deepen integration and promote democracy have to be assessed as modest, primarily because the internal challenges have been mounting amidst a drastically worsening external environment. In this light, the EU has been failing forward only moderately, all too moderately.

What makes the story of the EUs moderate and relative successes more dramatic is that the Union can no longer claim to comply with its discourse of legitimation. EU crisis responses have contradicted its cherished self-image of a union of liberal democracies based on the rule of law and respect for human rights that has developed new forms of multi-layered governance to reach beneficial compromises. In 2024, the European Union can no longer be viewed as a union of liberal democratic states based on the rule of law, as made evident by the concentration of power under the Orbn regime in Hungary. Secondly, the prolonged negative effects of the eurozone crisis on Greece show how the member states failed to develop new forms of multilayered governance to reach beneficial compromises. Thirdly, the unexpected and admittedly also poorly conceived Brexit process testifies to the failure of the EU states to pool elements of their sovereignty in a directional process. Lastly, the avoidable mass tragedies along the Schengen borders speak volumes about the EUs solidarity and respect for human rights.

It is hardly surprising then that recent years have further politicized European integration, prompting urgent questions about the exercise of political power within the Union and its legitimacy. It is true that a rather stagnant centre, preoccupied with crisis management at the expense of greater strategic foresight, has continued to dominate in EU politics over the past two decades. At the same time, the Union has entered a new phase in which the main political cleavage pits the liberal and conservative defenders of the status quo against their right-wing populist challengers. This division, in turn, marginalizes more ambitious reform agendas whether progressive or otherwise within the Unions complex architecture.

What makes the current situation all the more concerning is that constructive and far-sighted reforms have become less likely just as the sharp decline of the centre-right in key member states (not only in the United Kingdom around the time of Brexit or in the notorious case of Hungary but also, and possibly even more consequentially, in countries like France or Italy) casts doubt on future adherence to liberal democratic norms and support for European integration. Moderately conservative, liberal-leaning and predominantly centrist forces, such as Christian democrat parties, played a significant role in shaping mainstream liberal democratic politics in Western Europe after the Second World War. The apparent decline in influence of these centrist right-wing forces at a time when the European political landscape is becoming more polarized between liberal and right-wing populist agendas deserves far more attention than it has received thus far.

Living up to the democratic promise?

This leads me to some more general considerations regarding democracy and European integration. As Kiran Klaus Patel has explained in his insightful Project Europe: A History, the new international organizations formed after 1945 which eventually paved the way for the European Union entered a crowded field. Their agendas were influenced by what other international organizations were not already addressing. The mandates of the European Communities, organizations with economic priorities and a legalistic DNA, were rather narrow and technical during those early decades. Norms, values or democracy were not really in their focus. Viewed through such a historically informed lens, European integration proceeded further as the European Communities succeeded in broadening their mandate and assuming responsibilities in unexpected new domains such as democracy an area where any assertion of European competence is likely to be contentious given the EUs perceived democratic deficit.

As Patel shows, it was only in the context of enlargement to the post-authoritarian states of southern Europe that membership in the EC was more explicitly linked to a liberal democratic regime. Predictably, Greece entering the EC possessed exceptional symbolic weight in this regard. When it comes to the post-communist parts of Europe after 1989, that direct link and claim to expertise were, of course, asserted widely and vocally.

Having made ambitious claims to being an effective supporter and even a guarantor of democracy a democratic union par excellence and having at least one country whose membership directly questions such assertions today, can the EU live up to the promise it once made, now that it has to confront illiberalism in its very midst? The ongoing illiberal challenge indeed raises pragmatic and theoretical questions. Pragmatically speaking, does the EU have appropriate instruments and sufficient willingness to employ them to defend and promote democracy in its member states? On a more theoretical note, can it truly succeed or are its attempts bound to be self-contradictory and maybe even self-defeating?

These moot questions ought to make us reconsider the fraught relationship between liberal democracy and nationalism that is at the heart of the current political polarization within the union. Nationalists these days are often illiberal or downright anti-democratic, whereas liberal democrats are often rather negatively disposed towards the nation-state, even though it has been the main frame for democratic rule in modern and contemporary Europe, not to mention the construction of welfare states. If the Big Bang enlargement has made the EU less balanced and fostered negative trends of convergence, this recent and ongoing parting of ways between nationalists and liberal democrats for which post-communist Eastern Europe may be qualified as a ground zero has greatly exacerbated the crisis of democracy across Europe.

How to survive

The Ukrainian peoples valiant self-defence against Russias brutal war of aggression can provide an instructive example in this regard and perhaps also a source of inspiration for all of Europe. After all, Ukrainians are currently fighting a war of national independence against their imperial neighbour and are thereby also defending their significant, if incomplete liberal and democratic achievements against an autocratic aggressor. It is impossible to disentangle the liberal democratic and national elements of Ukraines struggle for survival.

The recombination of these two elements is precisely what the European Union and its member states may need the most these days and can most hopefully still achieve without cataclysms. We urgently need nationalists to accept the liberal democratic framework, while liberal democrats ought to simultaneously recognize the democratic potential of the nation-state without giving up on more ambitious plans of a more united, democratic Europe.

What I have argued above is that the EU has been moderately failing forward in the two decades since 2004. However, it is concerning how Easternization has gone hand in hand with negative forms of convergence. We ought to realize how much the poly-crisis has contradicted the blocs cherished self-image, and consider how far nationalists and liberal democrats have parted ways.

Having arrived at this critical juncture two decades after the Big Bang enlargement, even moderate attempts to fail forward are likely to sharpen antagonisms in the near future. More positively put: the European project will need to foster positive forms of convergence (and not only between East and West within the EU), develop a more apt and convincing discourse of self-legitimation, and create a new, stable balance between national and liberal democratic commitments.

Only if the EU succeeds at those urgent tasks can European democracy have a reasonable chance in our lifetime.

Ferenc Lacz is an assistant professor with tenure in European history at Maastricht University. He currently acts as the Istvn Dek Visiting Assistant Professor at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. He is the author or co-editor of thirteen books, including Magyarorszg globlis trtnete (A Global History of Hungary) in two volumes.

East-West divide, EU enlargement, EU integration, European Union

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Give European democracy a chance. An enlarged Europe turns twenty - New Eastern Europe

BRIT HAPPENS: Rep. McKenzie blew lots of hot air, but his resolution tuckered out like a silent fart.

The legislative special session, which finished up business yesterday, primarily focused on yet another round of tax cuts, along with wrapping up the Game and Fish Commission budget kerfuffle. But legislators love to grandstand, so we also got a couple of meaningless House resolutions attacking a pair of popular ballot initiatives.

The resolutions encouraged voters not to back the measures. One would reverse the states abortion ban. The other would require private schools receiving public funding to be held to the same standards as public schools, and would also require the state provide additional education services.

It was a strange gambit do legislators really think people want to be told how to vote by a bunch of politicians soaking up per diem cash at the Capitol?

If anything, it seemed wildly counterproductive as a political strategy. In the House committee meeting on Tuesday, citizens lined up to defend the ballot measures, and Democratic lawmakers got a chance to do the same on the House floor on Wednesday. It amounted to free publicity for the two campaigns just as theyre in the homestretch of their efforts to collect signatures. To make the ballot this November, 90,704 registered Arkansas voters must sign each respective petition by July 5.

Rep. Deborah Ferguson (D-West Memphis) made this very point on the House floor, noting that she was pleased the measure to expand abortion rights was getting some extra airtime: Im glad the resolution was brought, because I want the public to be aware that canvassers are gathering signatures now to pass the amendment.

The resolution absolutely fired up our volunteers, who were outraged that the Legislature would try to interfere in their constitutionally protected right to engage in direct democracy, said Rebecca Bobrow, director of strategy for Arkansans for Limited Government, the group backing the abortion rights amendment. Our volunteers were also thrilled to see that the Legislature seems to be very nervous that were going to qualify for the ballot hard not to notice they framed the resolution as a directive to vote no rather than a directive not to sign. Were hopeful that the conversation around these silly resolutions inspires more people to come out and sign the petition during our super signing events across the state this weekend.

The anti-abortion resolution passed easily in the House on Wednesday, but surprisingly, the amendment attacking the education ballot initiative was pulled and never voted on.

Rumors were swirling about why this might be, so I called Rep. Brit McKenzie (R-Rogers), the resolutions sponsor, that afternoon. He told me he wanted to gather his thoughts and was on the road, and that hed get back to me with a written statement by email.

That sounded good to me! But he never emailed. Perhaps thats just as well, as the quotes that he offered other outlets were such incoherent gobbledygook that I could only stare at them in wonder.

Heres how the D-G struggled through making sense of what McKenzie said:

McKenzie said his goal was to spark a public debate about the amendment, but he withdrew the resolution to avoid drawing attention away from the group leading the campaign against the amendment.

I dont want to distract from that with, you know, media headlines that either have a bias or dont, McKenzie said. I think its important for those leaders in the grassroots and those leaders in the policy spaces to command every little bit of attention they can between now and the end of the ballot (petition) cycle.

So. He wanted to draw attention but didnt want to draw attention to it? Or something?

I dont think Im fluent in whatever language McKenzie is speaking, but my interpretation here is that he belatedly realized the obvious issue that his resolution had backfired. I think thats the simplest theory. Other ideas floating around the Capitol:Perhaps there were some Republicans squishy on LEARNS who did not want to go on record opposing the amendment; maybe Attorney General Tim Griffin didnt love that the resolution said the ballot title was misleading given the fact that hed certified it as being sufficiently clear; maybe there was some legal issue with the inevitable lawsuits. But thats all just speculation.

Asked by the Arkansas Advocate, House Speaker Matthew Sheppard said, I dont think that should be interpreted as a weakness in the majority of the Houses support for the LEARNS Act. I think its just a combination of factors.

At least Sheppard elected to respond with nothing as opposed to incoherent nonsense.

We were happy to have the opportunity to tell the straight truth about what the Educational Rights Amendment does and why its so important, and the resolution gave the media another opportunity to tell that story, saidBill Kopsky, treasurer for the For AR Kids ballot committee, the group backing the amendment.

The facts are that the AR Educational Rights Amendment is a simple proposal that requires any school receiving public financing to follow the same standards and to create an opportunity for every Arkansas student to have access to the most powerful education tools we know about, Kopsky said. Access to quality special education, early childhood education, afterschool and summer programs and support for kids in poverty to achieve an adequate education should be rights for all Arkansas students.

Kopsky said his group was glad that McKenzie withdrew his amendment. There were several assertions in the resolution that were demonstrably false, he said. We think Arkansas voters are smart enough to know how they want to vote without politicians telling them.The claim that he filed the resolution to create public debate is laughable weve offered to debate the opposition to the Arkansas Educational Rights Amendment numerous times since the campaign started and theyve refused. Weve also held dozens of town halls to answer questions from voters and they have not appeared at a single one to ask a question.

As for the anti-abortion resolution that actually passed, Bobrow said it revealed the Legislatures callous attitude toward both reproductive rights and direct democracy. The extremists in the Arkansas Legislature, once again, have proved that they are uncaring, untruthful, and undemocratic, she said. The resolution is a clear attempt by lawmakers to weaponize private, intimate healthcare decisions that should be left between patients and their doctors. It misleads the public about the contents of the Arkansas Abortion Amendment and interferes in Arkansass constitutionally protected democratic process. The sponsors of this resolution know that the Arkansas Abortion Amendment will pass. They have decided that lying to the public is their best chance at stopping it. Reasonable Arkansans can see through this politicking.

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Ham-fisted House resolutions attacking direct democracy efforts may have backfired - Arkansas Times

Axios published a scoop Wednesday about the misgivings a certain presidential candidates advisers are having about his strategy. Even for those close to the center of power, the story alleged, there is a hesitance to raise skepticism or doubt about the current path, for fear of being viewed as disloyal.

I know what youre thinking, reading that. But youre wrong.

The candidate in question isnt the man whose party now operates as a cult in which personal loyalty to him is the supreme virtue. The candidate described by Axios is Joe Biden, whose inner circle remains intent on making Jan. 6, political violence, democracy and Donald Trumps character central themes of their campaign.

The main advocate for that approach internally is Biden crony Mike Donilon. Turning the election into a referendum on the soul of the nation worked in 2020, Donilon has reportedly reasoned, so why wouldnt it work again? Elsewhere hes compared the relevance of January 6 in this campaign to the importance of 9/11 in the 2004 campaign, believing that Democrats lost that year because they failed to grasp what the race was about. Hes determined not to make the same mistake again.

Per Axios, Donilon is apparently also prone to saying that Joe Biden is a great president, and great presidents get reelected, an opinion not shared by the vast majority of American voters. No wonder his colleagues on Team Joe worry that he doesnt have his finger on the pulse of the electorate.

Were now almost three weeks removed from Donald Trumps criminal conviction in Manhattan, plenty of time for the public to process the verdict and to have it influence their presidential vote. According to the national polling, it hasnt: Trump has gone from leading by 0.9 points on May 30, the day he was found guilty, to leading by 0.8 points now. In the battleground states that will decide the election, hes actually gained two-tenths of a point on Biden over that same stretch in the RealClearPolitics average.

If the sudden prospect of electing the first president who is a convicted felon hasnt put Americans off Trump, why would Joe Biden, Mike Donilon, or anyone else think that reminding them of his coup plot and the insurrection it led to will do so?

On the other hand, how can one run against Donald Trump and not make his authoritarian ambitions the centerpiece of the campaign? Hes not shy about expressing those ambitions; should he win in November, the next four years will in fact be defined by his attempts to subvert the constitutional order. The rights hostility to Western liberalism is the elephant in the room of this election. How can the president resist making a spectacle of it?

I think his and Donilons strategy of making the race about democracy is simultaneously weak and quite possibly the strongest one available to them.

If you dont think protecting democracy should be Team Bidens central argument, what should it be?

Certainly, well hear from the White House before November about Americas stupendous job growth since 2021 and the stimulus supplied by Biden initiatives like the infrastructure bill. And if the campaign is smart, itll deploy sympathetic economists like Larry Summers to explain why Trumps protectionist agenda is a prescription for the mother of all stagflations.

But the reason Summers opinion carries special weight is because he predicted three years ago that Democrats passing another round of COVID relief would result in inflationand was roundly ignored by his party. Thats Bidens economic problem in a nutshell: Why should any voter trust him more than Trump when the cost of living soared under his administration but did not under Trumps?

By wide margins, poll after poll shows that Americans trust the Republican to handle the economy more than they do the incumbent. Inflation has darkened public perceptions of the economys health so starkly that the White House ended up quietly dropping the term Bidenomics last year, fearing that it would become a byword for soaring prices rather than for rising employment and GDP.

Im skeptical that Democrats can talk voters into greater economic optimism in the next four months after dismally failing to do so over the past three years. Perhaps they could if Bidens opponent were unknown and untested, but Trump is a former president with an economic record of his own. Good luck getting voters to believe his program will be more inflationary than Bidens when theyve already lived through both and seen otherwise.

Economic comparisons arent going to win Biden the election, so what should he focus on instead?

Immigration policy? Please. The less said about that, the better.

Ukraine? Hes been solid on the war, but Americans dont let foreign policy dictate their votes unless U.S. troops are in the field.

Abortion? Democrats will get some mileage out of the backlash to Roes demise on Election Day but I doubt that the issue is potent enough to drive presidential preferences, especially with Trump straining to moderate on it. Pro-choice Republicans may have little difficulty reconciling support for abortion rights on their state ballot initiatives with support for a second Trump presidency.

If none of those issues can provide Biden with a trump card (no pun intended) in the election, whats left except trying to make it a referendum on democracy and January 6?

Remember, this race will be decided by the vast number of double haters who hold unfavorable opinions of both candidates. Among the presidents own supporters, more than half say theyre voting for him mainly to oppose Trump; just 27 percent say theyre voting for him because they like him. The winner in November will have prevailed not by persuading Americans to like him more than the other guy but by persuading them to hate him a little bit less.

The Donilon strategy recognizes that. Sure, Joe Biden gave us inflation, a border crisis, and an era of high international tensions, it concedesbut he didnt plot a coup, or rile up a mob to attack Congress, or commit any crimes, or make retribution a higher priority for his second term than serving the American people.

The least unfit candidate will win. January 6 is Democrats strongest argument that Grandpa Joe, for all his flaws, remains less unfit than Trump.

Theres another case for the Donilon strategy. Namely, its worked before. And I dont just mean in 2020.

Five days before the 2022 midterms Biden delivered a speech warning Americans that, with so many Trump-backed post-liberal populist Republicans running for major offices, democracy is on the ballot. He called on voters to ask themselves this question when considering a candidate: Will that person accept the legitimate will of the American people and the people voting in his district or her district? Will that person accept the outcome of the election, win or lose?

Some pundits called the address head-scratching in light of polling that showed the economy, not democracy, dominating when voters were asked what the most important issue in the election was. Yet five days later Republicans ended up underperforming badly in a midterm in which the out-party typically cleans up. One Trump-endorsed MAGA acolyte after another fell short in key races, holding the GOP to modest gains in the House and helping Democrats gain a seat in the Senate.

The polling shows that democracy ended up a top issue of concern for voters in 2022, Biden advisers reminded Axios this week. For swing voters, fear of what a Trumpy Congress might do to undermine American elections may have been decisive.

Go figure, then, that Donilon might see merit in revisiting the subject now that the coup-plotter-in-chief himself is on the ballot. In fact, protecting democracy appears to carry special weight with the huge bloc of senior citizens whom Democrats are courting this year, with more than a third in one recent poll listing it as the most urgent issue facing the country. Seniors are famous for turning out at a high rate in elections; if Biden convinces them that this race is a choice between American politics as they remember it and American politics as Trump would like it to be, they just might drag the president over the finish line.

Really, you cant go wrong attacking Trump for being unfit for office. Across eight years and three presidential cycles, never once has he reached as high as 48 percent in the head-to-head polling average at RealClearPoliticsand thats despite having had the advantage of running against two freakishly unpopular Democrats in Hillary Clinton and 2024 Joe Biden. A durable majority of Americans refuses to support a figure as loathsome as Trump even when his opponents are objectively terrible.

So January 6 really might be the strongest hand the president has to play. Which is different from saying that its a strong hand.

Even if we agree that Democratic chatter about the soul of the nation was a key ingredient in their victories in 2020 and 2022, theres reason to fear itll matter less this year.

The 2020 comparison is frankly inapt because Biden had no presidential record to speak of at the time. The choice before voters was between a safe, familiar generic Democrat and a madman who had failed to contain a pandemic. Since then, that generic Democrat has saddled them with inflation not seen since the early 1980s and migrant crossings at the border not seen since ever. Hes four years older too, and appears confused at times in his public appearances at an unnervingly regular rate.

Intangibles like the soul of the nation are good arguments for ousting an already unpopular president, as Trump was four years ago. Theyre not as stirring as reasons to keep an unpopular president, especially when that presidents term has generated real kitchen-table pain.

The 2022 comparison is also troubled. Typically, if a president is unpopular, his party will lose big in midterm elections. That happened in 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018but not in 2022 for Biden, and Democrats have argued over why ever since. Maybe the democracy talk really did save them. Or maybe, as the White House prefers to believe, the public likes the president more than his job approval numbers would indicate.

My theory is different. I think Bidens age and infirmity have, ironically, insulated Democrats down ballot from his unpopularity to an unusual degree because many voters view the country as functionally leaderless right now. When the White House fails on policy, its easy for voters to assume that its due to Biden being elderly and incompetent, no longer fully in control of events. When they do that, theyre not blaming his ideology; the problem as they see it is specific to him, and so younger Democrats dont share the usual blame for his failures.

That may explain how weve ended up with Biden reliably trailing in presidential polling while Democratic candidates reliably lead in key Senate races.

But it also poses a problem for the White House. If Im right that voters arent holding Bidens failures against other members of his party, hand-wringing about the soul of the nation might be enough to rescue Democrats in a midterm. When Biden himself is on the ballot, though, and the full weight of his apparent infirmity is pressing on voters, it might plausibly not be enough.

I wonder, frankly, if returning yet again to the well of protecting democracy will be treated by weary Americans as evidence that a very old president has run out of ideas and lacks any affirmative argument for his own reelection. Hes had two years to fix inflation and hasnt; hes had three years to do something about the border and hasnt. All he can think to do to convince them to prefer him to Trump, it might seem, is to jump up and down and shout January 6!

To me, thats more than enough reason never to trust Trump with power again. But to those who havent yet been moved by it despite having heard about it every day since January 7, 2021, it will probably be unpersuasive. The insurrection is completely priced in to Trumps political stock.

To find a demographic that hasnt formed a firm opinion about it one way or another, youd have to look to very young voters. And if you do, you might be disappointed: As we saw recently, young Americans might not view coup plots as electorally disqualifying. In the country theyve grown up in, coup attempts are standard operating procedure.

In the 2016 and 2020 cycles, Trump never made it as high as even 46 percent in head-to-head polling with Clinton and Biden. This year, post-impeachments, post-indictments, and post-insurrection, hes come within a whisker at times of 48 percent. Reflect on that and tell me how much political juice is left in reminding Americans what a disgrace he is.

Maybe just enough. Ultimately, the best argument for the Donilon strategy is shame.

The insurrection is priced into Trumps stock, as Ive said. Everyones heard about it ad nauseam. Warning Americans that democracy is on the ballot wont educate anyone about anything.

But insofar as the matter is front and center this fall, it might shame a meaningful few into reconsidering their vote.

Most Trump supporters are unreachable, but millions will go into the booth in November intending to vote for him yet nagged by their intuition that doing so would be grossly irresponsible. Traditional conservatives, Nikki Haley Republicans, centrists who bear Biden a grudge over inflation or some other policy failurethey know that absolving Trump for January 6 by reelecting him would be an indefensible betrayal of Americas civic tradition.

They know it, but knowing it and letting themselves be persuaded by it are two different things. The mind has a remarkable ability to rationalize and compartmentalize indefensible behavior, especially when its otherwise preoccupied. Between now and November 5, Trump is going to fire off an armorys worth of demagogic nonsense to preoccupy the American mind.

Given Bidens record, Im not sure theres a more effective response available to Democrats than to rhetorically look voters who are leaning toward Trump in the eye and say, You know whats at stake. Youre not really going to do this, are you?

For me, the great virtue of the Donilon strategy is that itll leave America with no excuses if Trump wins. An election framed around the economy or immigration that ends in Republican victory will let denialists about the countrys decline insist that things would have been different if only Biden had taken a different approach. He should have emphasized the coup attempt and January 6, theyll say. Surely Americans wouldnt have reelected Trump if the election had been about that.

Im not sure of that at all, personally. Id like to test the proposition. And if Trump is returned to power, Id find comfort in knowing that we maximized our collective shame by approaching the race as a referendum on the constitutional orderand chose the other option. If we do this, lets be clear-eyed about it. No excuses. Trump 2024: Maximum Shame.

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Gambling on Democracy - The Dispatch