The Jillster (Harvard history professor Jill Lepore) offered a ringing rejection of the half-baked nonsense both uttered and "tweeted" by the HA (Horse's A$$) in the Oval Office & in front of his beloved TV cameras. Of course, when the HA proclaimed to one of his Hitler-rally crowds in Houston this past October, he faithfully uttered an untruth in proclaiming himself a mere "nationalist." He lacked the intestinal fortitude to refer to himself as a WHITE nationalist because that is what his dog-whistled "nationalist" reference was intended to convey to his knuckle-dragging listeners. In fact, the HA was not honest enough to call himself a Neo-Nazi. The HA's continuous "rallies" are the present-day equivalent of the Nuremberg Rallies (1923-1939) staged by the National Socialists (Nazis) in Germany that were staged by HA's hero, Adolf Hitler and his minions. In fact, the HA plans to convert the 4th of July observance in Washington, DC into one of his disgusting Neo-Nazi rallies. If this is a (fair & balanced) indictment of the HA's treason (an impeachable offense), so be it.
[x NY Fishwrap]
Don’t Let Nationalists Speak For The Nation
By The Jillster (Jill Lepore)
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Every political campaign involves a choice between elevating political discourse and degrading it. The 2016 election brought a pornographic film star into prime time and made “pussy” front-page news. How it could get any worse in 2020 is difficult to imagine. But the problem isn’t the word “pussy” and the pornification of politics, however demeaning; the problem is the word “nationalism” and the abandonment of liberalism.
“I’m a nationalist, OK?” President Trump said at a rally in Houston last year. “Use that word.”
Please do not use that word. But please do use the word “nation” — the nation of the Gettysburg Address, “a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” — and please do use the word “liberalism,” which is what Lincoln meant by that proposition. [italics supplied for emphasis]
Candidates who swat at Mr. Trump’s tweets like so many black flies will only find themselves eaten alive. But anyone running in 2020 who is willing to ignore the flies has an opportunity to speak with clarity and purpose about what’s at stake: the liberal nation-state itself.
The United States is a nation founded on a deeply moral commitment to human dignity. All of us are equal: We are equal as citizens and we are equal under the law. Notwithstanding the agony and hypocrisy of the nation’s past and the cruelty and pettiness of its present, these truths endure, in the form of liberalism. Liberalism is not a species of partisanship. Liberalism is the belief that people are good and should be free and that people organize governments in order to guarantee that freedom. That guarantee includes protecting a habitable planet.
Nationalism is an abdication of liberalism. It is also the opposite of patriotism. To confuse nationalism with patriotism is to mistake contempt for love and fear for valor.
In the first half of the 20th century, nationalism devastated Europe and destabilized much of the rest of the world. At the end of the Cold War, it appeared to some globalists that nationalism had died, but their error can be witnessed every day in the rule of Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland, and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. Nationalism has shaken Britain. It has all but unhinged the United States.
Denouncing nationalism doesn’t require breaking a rhetorical sweat. The hard work isn’t condemning nationalism; it’s making the case for the liberal nation-state.
This is an argument of political necessity and moral urgency. So far, Democrats haven’t made it. Instead, in much the same way that they gave up the word “liberalism” in the 1980s, they’ve gotten skittish about the word “nation,” as if fearing that to use it means descending into nationalism.
This election’s presidential campaign slogans include Joe Biden’s “Our Best Days Still Lie Ahead,” Pete Buttigieg’s “A Fresh Start for America,” Kamala Harris’s “For the People,” and Andrew Yang’s “Humanity First,” not to mention “Win With Warren” and “Amy for America.” (Julián Castro’s “One Nation. One Destiny.” is the exception.) For sure, it can be dangerous to talk about the nation. But it’s more dangerous to cede the idea of the nation to make-the-nation-great-again nationalists.
What is the liberal case for the nation? Nation-states are people with a common past, half-history, half-myth, who live under the rule of a government in the form of a state. Liberal nation-states are collections of individuals whose rights as citizens are guaranteed by the government. The United States is a liberal, democratic nation held together by the strength of our ideas and by the force of our disagreements.
The enemies of liberalism find this maddening, as Frederick Douglass observed in 1869, denouncing opponents of the 14th Amendment: “A government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming no higher authority for existence, or sanction for its laws, than nature, reason and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family is a standing offense to most of the governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.” Those words are no less true a century and a half on.
Nationalism can’t be defeated by ignorance or malice; it can be defeated only by knowledge and courage. A government founded upon justice requires a cleareyed and unflinching reckoning with its own history, its sorrows and atrocities no less than its glories and its triumphs. “Nations reel and stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things,” W.E.B. DuBois wrote in 1935, taking the measure of the brutality of slavery and the legacy of Jim Crow. “And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth is ascertainable?”
Make the case. In a world made up of nations, there is no more powerful way to fight prejudice, intolerance and injustice than by a devotion to citizenship and equal rights under a nation of laws. A national campaign in 2020 would promise not greatness but benevolence. It would explain national prosperity as inseparable from an unwavering dedication to a sustainable environment the world over. It would call for a steadfast commitment to liberal ideals and to fearless inquiry, an Americanism as tough-minded as it is openhearted. It would hold the past to account, truth dear, and the earth in the balance. ###
[Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University as well as the chair of its History and Literature Program. She has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2005. Her most recent book is These Truths: A History of the United States (2018). See other books by Lepore here. She earned a BA (English) from Tufts University (MA), an MA (American culture) from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and a PhD (American studies) from Yale University (CT).]
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