"Our Town" Today

I haven't been to a Broadway show in ages, but last night I finally got to go to see the new production of Thornton Wilder's classic Our Town, which famously portrays the fictional American town of Grover's Corners between 1901 and 1913 through the everyday lives of its ordinary residents. Noted for its unusual format in which the "Stage Manager" regularly addresses the audience and its typically bare stage with few props, Our Town (which was first performed at Princeton's McCarter Theater in 1938) was once described by Edward Albee as "the greatest American play ever written."

I first saw Our Town on TV in the1950s (back when high-quality theatrical productions - like Our Town and Amahl and the Night Visitors were frequent on TV. To me, the beauty of Our Town is its portrayal of ordinary life and inherently meaningful and significant. Although set in rural New Hampshire in the early 20th-century, this gives it a truly universal feel, which likely accounts for its continued appeal.

The new production on Broadway is very well done and faithful to the basic story. It does, however, take some liberties, presumably intended to modernize or make it more relevant. Thus, some of the characters (notably George) wear shorts, which I suspect would not have. happened in 1901. It is precisely the early 20th-century setting that highlights the ordinariness and universality of the story - not giving (some) characters a contemporary look, which (by definition) is not universal. I also felt the musical introduction at the beginning, with its strange medley of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim prayers, really adde nothing to the story and may even detract from it, although I remain open to being convinced otherwise.

Despite these few lapses into relevance, Our Town remains a powerful portrayal of the human condition in its most basic elements and experiences.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Day has long been my favorite secular holiday. It has a little bit of everything and something for everyone. It is a seasonal holiday that perfectly captures autumn's spirit. It is a national, patriotic holiday, which invites us to reflect upon our history as a country and on the condition of our current national community (a not particularly pleasant prospect at present). Most of all, it is an especially wonderful celebration of basic human community, of family and friends gathered around the table of God's and nature's bounty and the results of human labor. Hence the crowded airports and highways all this week, as from one coast to the other Americans  fly or drive or otherwise make their way to whatever counts as "home." In the 2003 film Latter Days, Lila (Jacqueline Bisset) famously welcomes her Thanksgiving Day guests with the words: "I want you to know that wherever we find ourselves in this world, whatever our successes or failures, come this time of year, you will always have a place at my table and a place in my heart."

Sadly, due in part to some health problems earlier in the fall, I will not be traveling anywhere for Thanksgiving this year. I have family members whom I almost never see. The family members whom I do see, I usually see only once or twice each year. So I treasure those opportunities and will very much miss this one.

Some people purport to be especially anxious about Thanksgiving this year, presumably out of fear of political conflicts erupting around the dinner table. Personally I think it should be considered normal for members of the same family to hold differing political positions. What is actually abnormal rather is only speaking with those people once a year and otherwise living in a way which never exposes one to people with different ideas or attitudes or beliefs. As a society, perhaps we need to be paying more attention to solving both those problems.

All that having been said, Thanksgiving remains our uniquely American holiday, which we should all be able to celebrate together as one nation. So, whether we are at home or traveling over the river and through the wood, Happy Thanksgiving to us all!

Overread = Overreach

Newly elected presidents like to claim a mandate. Most of the time they don't really have one - or have only a very limited one. Trump certainly doesn't have one. True, his party controls all three branches of the federal government, which certainly counts for a lot. But he won only a plurality of the popular vote, and the difference between his vote and Harris's vote - while decisive - was very modest. To over-read the result as a real "mandate" (a mistake other past presidents have made), to over-read his "mandate," is the royal road to overreach.

The most famous recent example in this 21st century was George W. Bush in 2005. Reelected in 2004 as a National security president, he over-read the election results as a "mandate" and - in a dramatic display of overreach - interpreted his "mandate" as an opportunity to privatize social security.

I think we can be safely confident that Trump will not try to privatize social security. The changes Trump is most likely to care to implement relate to immigration and tariffs. I would expect a flurry of executive orders in the first few days of the new Administration on these issues. 

It is reasonable to suppose that those who voted for Trump will be generally supportive on these issues. On the other hand, if it is true that a lot of people voted for Trump because of the price of eggs, those voters may not be so happy with the consequences at the check-out counter of mass deportations and tariffs, both of which will likely result in higher prices. And we can even more safely assume that a lot of those voters most certainly did not vote for antivax-induced outbreaks of measles and polio. 

How much of that will happen obviously cannot be predicted in advance. What can be predicted is that the Trump Administration will pursue at least some policies that will likely adversely affect a lot of Americans - among them some of Trump's voters. How adversely, of course, remains to be seen. But the likelihood of overreach is high. And the consequences of overreach, come the midterms, is another familiar feature of American politics.

Studying History

Earlier this week, on the feast of the Presentation of Mary, Pope Francis issued a Letter "On the Renewal of the Study of Church History." While directed primarily at the importance of the study of Church History in priestly formation, the Pope's letter could hardly be more timely, given the widespread decline in the serious study of history almost everywhere and the consequently diminished sense of historical consciousness in our societies.

Countering this, the Pope calls for "the cultivation of a clear sense of the historical dimension that is ours as human beings. No one can truly know their deepest identity, or what they wish to be in the future, without attending to the bonds that link them to preceding generations." The Pope highlights "the urgent need for a greater sense of history at a moment when we see a tendency to dismiss the memory of the past or to invent one suited to the requirements of dominant ideologies. Faced with the cancellation of past history or with clearly biased historical narratives, the work of historians, together with knowledge and dissemination of the their work, can act as a curb on misrepresentations, partisan efforts at revisionism, ad their use to justify wars, persecutions, the production sale and utilization of weapons and any number of evils."

Certainly, our own recent American experience this past decade, with all its ideological excesses and extremes - from "Woke" to MAGA" - with all their accompanying distortions of American and world history have provided abundant confirmation for the Pope's concerns.

The particular focus of the Pope's practical concern is the renewal of the study of Church History in seminaries. I have been away from that setting now for almost 40 years, and so I have no specific sense of what happens in contemporary seminaries or of how well or poorly history is taught. The papal letter suggests that there may be some fundamental inadequacies in historical training, of which he is a better judge than I. He suggests "students are rarely formed in how to read the fundamental texts of ancient Christianity such as the Letter to Diognetus, the Didache or the Acts of the Martyrs. When this happens, students will be ill-equipped to read them and resort instead to ideological filters or theoretical pre-conceptions that do not permit a lively and stimulating understanding."

Likewise, "Church history helps us to see the real Church and to love the Church as she truly exists, and love what she has learnt and continues to learn from her mistakes and failures."

In conclusion, the Pope emphasizes that his concern is with actual and serous study. He notes that "study serves to ask questions, not to be numbed by banality and to seek meaning in life. Moreover, study should enable us to reclaim the right to reject today's many seductive voices that distract us from this search."

Mary in the Temple

Today's feast of The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (in the East, The Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple). is one of the oldest Marian feasts - if also one of the most historically problematic. The event it ostensibly commemorates is found in the apocryphal Protoevangelium of James, according to which Mary's parents (there identified as Joachim and Anne) brought Mary as a child of three to the Temple to thank God for having at last given them a child and to consecrate her to God. More elaborate versions of the legend suggest she may have remained longer in the Temple as preparation for her exalted role as Mother of God.

What actually did happen on this date in 543 was the dedication of a Byzantine church (The New Church of the Theotokos) near the site of the Jerusalem Temple, the anniversary of which became the commemoration of Mary's legendary presentation as a child in the Temple. In the post-Tridentine liturgical reform of 1568, Pope Saint Pius V suppressed the feast, but popular piety won out and it was soon restored by Pope Sixtus V in 1585. In his 1974 encyclical Marialis Cultus, Pope Saint Paul VI mentioned this feast's "lofty and exemplary values." 

Christianity is in important respects an historically-based religion, in that the principal events in salvation history happened in the course of. human history. However, Christianity transcends mere history, and it is good on occasion to celebrate, as we do today, a non-historical event rich in religious symbolism. Mary's imagined presentation in the Temple highlights her life-long commitment (dogmatically elaborated in the doctrine of her Immaculate Conception) to align herself with God's will and God's great plan for the salvation of the human race. Insofar as Mary is also a symbol of the Church, her lifelong commitment challenged each of us, as members of the Church, to imitate her in our own journey through this life.

Photo: Altar of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY.

1000 Days

It is an artificial kind of marker (like decades and centuries), but the Ukraine War is now 1000 days old. It was 1000 days ago that Russia, under its current Orthodox Tsar Vladimir Putin, launched an imperialist aggressive war against its European neighbor Ukraine - the first such imperialist aggressive war on European territory since 1945. Under the leadership of President Joe Biden, the U.S. and NATO originally responded effectively. Since then, however, Trump's reelection, MAGA isolationism, and a general societal fatigue with "forever wars" have imperiled that response and endangered Ukraine's long-term survival prospects.

While Ukraine has never really been "winning" the war, there was a time when it looked at least as if Ukraine were on the offensive. Now that illusion has been dispelled - as may be the illusion that the United States is a reliable ally. In the "second-guessing" game that inevitably follows any major conflict, it may well be that the Biden Administration has been too slow in supplying needed weaponry to Ukraine, often eventually supplying weapons (like the ATACMS) that might have been better supplied, with more effect, earlier. Whatever the reasoning was, a mistake may have been made in the pace of American military aid. 

What the Biden Administration did do very well was to mobilize European support behind the defense of Ukraine. Europeans, having frittered away the post Cold War "peace dividend" and having for far too long relied too much on the U.S. defensive umbrella, were finally fully awakened to the degree of threat posed by Russian imperialism. Russia's neighbors - Sweden, Finland, the Baltic States, Poland) know from their long history what a dangerous enemy Russia inevitably is. So their awakening seems to have been more complete and effective. Of all of this war's ironies, Putin's goal of undermining NATO led instead to Sweden and Finland joining NATO and the (at least short-term) overall strengthening of that indispensable alliance. Whether Europe can continue to stand up against Putin, now that the U.S. can no longer be relied upon, remains to be seen.

"Advice and Consent"

In his famous treatment in The Federalist 76, of the Senate's role of "Advice and Consent" to presidential appointments, Alexander Hamilton observed that those who will have reflected upon the subject, "in relation to the appointment of the President, will, I presume, agree to the position, that there would always be great probability of having the place supplied by a man of abilities, at least respectable. ... The sole and undivided responsibility of one man will naturally beget a livelier sense of duty and a more exact regard to reputation. He will, on this account, feel himself under stronger obligations, and more interested to investigate with care the qualities requisite to the stations to be filled, and to prefer with impartiality the persons who may have the fairest pretensions to them."

Well, so much for that naive assumption!

In defending the requirement for senatorial confirmation of presidential nominations, Hamilton, who fully expected most such appointments to be confirmed, nonetheless recognized the value of a check upon presidential power. "It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration. ... Though it might therefore be allowable to suppose that the Executive might occasionally influence some individuals in the Senate, yet the supposition, that he could in general purchase the integrity of the whole body, would be forced and improbable."

In the more than two centuries which have elapsed since Hamilton and his colleagues persuaded their fellow citizens of the wisdom of our constitutional arrangements, the Senate's "Advice and Consent" function has become one of that body's most highly prized prerogatives and responsibilities.

At least until now!

Confronted with certain cabinet nominations that can be characterized as unqualified and dangerous, the Senate that will convene in January will be tested as seldom in American history. Four Republican Senators would have to vote against a nomination for it to fail to receive the requisite confirmation. In an earlier era, that might be easily imagined. And it might yet happen, but it is easier to imagine the opposite - a Senate majority so compliant to the demands of its party's leader that this precious prerogative may be irresponsibly surrendered.

To obviate even this relatively remote possibility, the Administration has raised the possibility of recess appointments. If the Senate voluntarily adjourns to facilitate that - or if it confirms the nominees the normal way to avoid the humiliation of colluding in recess appointments - either way, yet another valued constitutional check will be abandoned, another bad precedent set, and the Senate's minimal moral legitimacy further eroded.

Recess Appointments, it should be noted, are a constitutional archaism - appropriate and necessary when Congress met for only a few months during the year and could not be quickly reassembled for this purpose. Now that Congress is in session all year long and can reassemble as quickly as jet planes can transport members, there is no longer any good reason for recess appointments, except as a way of getting around senatorial prerogatives. (That may indeed be desirable in some instances, but hard cases make bad law and can set bad precedents.)

That said, there remains the danger, if the Senate were to stand up to the White House and refuse either to confirm or adjourn, that the House might collude with the Administration by adjourning itself, in which case the President could invoke an obscure - and dangerous - constitutional authorization to adjourn Congress himself "to such time as he shall think proper." That would not only give him his recess appointments, but it would also thoroughly demean Congress as a mere accessory within the MAGA cult.

Our Overaged Constitution

For a long time now, the sheer longevity of the U.S. Constitution has often been held up as one of its greatest merits. It is, after all, the oldest written constitution in the world. Moreover, most western (more or less democratic) states have in fact had multiple constitutions during the 135 years that the U.S. Constitution has been in effect. That latter fact should at least invite the question about whether our overaged Constitution is still completely up to the task - or fit for purpose, as the Brits say. Given the fact that the basics of constitutional and democratic governance may be increasingly at risk in the next presidential term, it may be that much more important to distinguish the Constitution's flaws from its acknowledged virtues.

That our Constitution has lasted this long might have surprised its authors. Thomas Jefferson (who was not one of the Framers) famously thought there should be a revolution every generation. The Founders for the most part were not so radical and certainly valorized stability. That said, I suspect they would be surprised that their constitution has lasted so long in such a very different kind of world. 

In fact, of course, the original Constitution recognized its inherent limitations by providing for amendments. The constitutional amendment process is so cumbersome as to be virtually unusable in today's politically polarized context, but the early republic was smaller and more politically healthy and disposed to constitutional change. Thus, the first 15 years saw 12 amendments, including the all-important "Bill of Rights" and a modification of the already dysfunctional constitutional process for electing presidents.

The next series of constitutional amendments were the Reconstruction Amendments (14-15), which, thanks to a bloody Civil War, radically transformed the Constitution from being state-centric and slavery-tolerant to being somewhat more more federally centered, anti-slavery, and somewhat less anti-democratic. The next spurt of constitutional amending came with the early 20th-century Progressive era. So we got the Income Tax (16), popular election of Senators (17), Prohibition (18), Women's Suffrage (19), and then a little later, the "Lame Duck" Amendment (20), and the repeal of Prohibition (21). Prescinding from Prohibition, these all contributed to the increasingly democratic character of a constitutional system that was originally so much less so. These were vital improvements, which defined the 20th century's political progression.

I regard the 22nd Amendment limiting presidential terms as an unfortunate, anti-democratic regression, but a rather modest one. (In the present circumstances, in fact, the 22nd Amendment may be a prerequisite for salvaging constitutional and democratic governance.) The rest of the post-war amendments, moreover, definitely represented further democratic improvements on the original system - electoral votes for D.C. (23), abolition of poll taxes (24), presidential disability and succession (25), and the 18-year old vote (26). That last great spurt of amending activity reflected the post-New Deal, post-war, increasingly egalitarian and democratic society that the U.S. was then becoming. - and from which it has so dramatically regressed.

The fact that we haven't had any meaningful amendments since 1971 is telling. We have become much too divided a country to accomplish anything so consensual as amending the Constitution. But our polarized politics also highlights the dysfunctionally anti-democratic directions our Constitution makes possible.

Luckily, the recent presidential election did not see another repeat of 2000 and 2016 when the winner lost the popular vote. But, of course, that possibility remains. And, even without that outcome, the electoral college continues its massive distortion of our elections and of presidential campaigns. There is some evidence, for example, of different performance by the candidates in so-called battleground states and in so-called safe states. Trump lost states like New York, of course, but he did significantly better there than expected. and he performed better there than in some battleground states, which suggests that the Harris campaign may have had some effect in those places. Imagine an election in which candidates campaigned in all states, and voters in all states knew that their votes actually mattered! We can't predict exactly what our politics would look like, but we can be confident that it would be very different if we elected our presidents the way we elect other officials, i.e., the way a democracy would do.

The Electoral College was never intended to function as it does now. That fact itself further justifies efforts to replace it. The Senate is another story. The Framers' attraction to the classical idea of a "mixed constitution," which itself has much merit, gave us the Senate as a pseudo-aristocratic check on the democratically elected House. Personally, I regard those aspects of the Senate - such as 6-year terms, staggered tenure, and the Senate's role (very much at risk at the moment) in advising and consenting to appointments and treaties - as positive "checks and balances." Less positive, however, is the Senate's historical birth as a federalist compromise to reflect and represent the inordinate importance of the states. To be fair to the founders, none of them could have anticipated the eventual growth of the United States and thus the absurd disparity between, for example, California and Wyoming. There was no comparable disparity at the time of the founding.

Tragically, there is nothing to be done about the Senate. Certainly, viable alternatives could be imagined which would preserve the original sense of the Senate in a more sensible way. For example, we could divide the country into real regions, which make infinitely more sense than artificial states. A Senate structured to represent individual states more differentially but to represent equally the main regions of the U.S. - Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Mountain and Prairie states, Far West, and Southwest - might make sense of the Senate, but of course cannot be accomplished.

(The Senate, of course, could at least reform itself somewhat by abolishing the filibuster, which would be a major democratic advance. That would ironically also be more in line with the original sense of the Constitution, which never envisaged the filibuster. If the Republican Senate sees fit to eliminate the filibuster at some point to achieve some aspect of Trump's agenda, that might be tragic in the short term but it would be a long-term good for the country, for which the filibuster has never been anything but an antidemocratic curse.)

The third pseudo-aristocratic component of our outdated Constitution is the Judiciary, specifically the life-tenure of federal judges and Supreme Court Justices, which was part of the original Constitution, and the usurped power of judicial review, which was not. Obviously, judicial reform is also off the table, given our present inability to amend the Constitution.

So whatever a post-Trump liberal reformist agenda will look like, it will remain constrained by these anti-democratic institutional constitutional barricades. All this is especially relevant right now because the Constitution was so designed in large part to be an instrument against tyranny. Yet now it is those problematic elements in the Constitution that are especially salient in diminishing the Constitution's effective ability to be an instrument against tyranny.

At the Gates

 

“When you see these things happening, know that he is near, at the gates.” 

In every period of human history, but especially in times of rapid change and confusion, people have looked for prophecies and predictions and dubious private revelations to explain what was happening to their formerly familiar world - as if that were what Jesus was talking about! For the same Jesus who told his hearers to be on the lookout and to recognize the signs of his coming, also assured them that “of that day or hour, no one knows.”

 

Even so, Jesus challenges his followers to be on the lookout for signs of his kingdom. 

 

So, we need to ask ourselves what things do we see happening in the world right now?

 

We certainly do seem to be in one of those times of rapid change and confusion. We live in situations that “pose new challenges, which, for us at times are difficult to understand.” In this country, we have just had a very contentious polarizing election, in which both sides employed apocalyptic language, and which, while decisive in its result, still leaves our country very divided and many of our fellow citizens very angry at one another.

 

In the Gospel we just heard, Jesus made his ominous predictions just prior to Passover, in the springtime, when the fig tree sprouts leaves, a sure sign that summer is near. It is, however, in the autumn of the year that the Church annually repeats this message. Autumn is the long-awaited and hoped-for season of harvest, when the year’s work finds fulfillment in our season of thanksgiving. 

Harvest, however, also marks an end. In nature, November vividly anticipates both the eventual end of the natural world and the eventual end of each individual. The Church recaptures for us that natural cyclical mood, as it recalls Christ’s warning words about the end, when the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky. 

 

And so we wait – not just for the end of the world, but for our own individual end, which inevitably gets closer all the time. And it is precisely how we wait that identifies what following Jesus in the world is all about.

 

For following Jesus is not about pinpointing that day or hour. Nor is it about trying to identify in advance which of our neighbors shall live forever and which shall be in everlasting horror and disgrace. On the contrary, following Jesus is all about the how in the now – how we live and what we love in the here and now, what we make of this interval, whether it be long or short, until the end – in other words, the durability and quality of our commitment and our faithfulness to him and to one another for the duration. That’s what matters most over the long haul and will determine who we will be for all eternity. That is the wisdom which shall shine like the splendor of the firmament and lead many to justice.

 

Meanwhile, we are fortified for that long haul by the durability and quality of Jesus Christ’s commitment and faithfulness to his Father, the same Christ who, in the words we just heard from the letter to the Hebrews, took his seat forever at the right hand of God.

Homily for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, November 17, 2024.

Transition

Autumn weather, the welcome annual transition from summer to winter, at last seems to be (albeit belatedly) on its way. Meanwhile, in the political world, we in the United States have long been accustomed to another transition tradition at this season, as one "lame duck" President finishes out his term and prepares to transfer power to his recently elected successor.

For much of the Republic's history, the transition just happened, with greater or lesser degrees of amity and concord. With the 20th-century growth of the federal government, however, a more systematic transition became necessary. Federal law now requires requires the White House and agencies to begin transition planning well before a presidential election and the General Services Administration to provide office space and other core support services to presidents-elect and vice presidents-elect, as well as pre-election space and support to eligible candidates. Famously (or, rather, infamously) that didn't work so well four years ago. We will see how well it works this time.

The more visible - and somewhat ritualistic - aspects of the transition concern the direct, personal interactions of the principals, that is, the President and the President-elect. This usually entails at least one formal meeting of the two at the White House sometime after the election and then the formal, ceremonial meeting and ride together to the Capitol on Inauguration morning. Even that hasn't always gone so well. Witness four years ago when the outgoing President Trump boycotted his successor's inaugural. The last time that had happened was 1869, when President Andrew Johnson refused to attend President-elect Ulysses S Grant's inauguration. (Because of his health condition, in 1921 Woodrow Wilson did not attend Warren Harding's actual swearing-in, but he did do the traditional ride with him to the Capitol beforehand.)

It remains to be seen what January 20 will look like and how much of the traditional ritual will actually occur, but today at least President Biden is doing his part in welcoming President-elect Trump to confer with him at the White House. How well the outgoing and incoming staffs are collaborating may be another question, the answer to which we will learn soon enough.

The legal stipulations for transition-planning and inter-Administration cooperation reflect contemporary concerns about effectively staffing the federal government. What that federal government will actually look like once staffed by MAGA Trump cronies is something else again!

The personal and ceremonial aspects of the transition are more about constitutional and democratic symbolism - the sort of thing Americans used to take great pride in, although perhaps not so much anymore. At the first presidential transition I can really remember - from Eisenhower to Kennedy - one memorable line of commentary was, "Thus passes power, freely won, freely given." That, of course, is at the heart of constitutional, democratic governance. If not lost, that mindset has been irretrievably injured by President Trump's behavior in the 2020-2021 transition. While a return to the traditional rituals would in itself be welcome, much more important will be the long-term impact of our recent political crises on popular beliefs and attitudes about constitutional and democratic governance.

Veterans Day and Our Wider World

When I was in elementary school in the 1950s, November was for us a wonderful month full of school holidays. There were five of them  - All Saints Day (November 1), Election Day, Veterans Day (November 11), Thanksgiving Day, and the Friday after (at a time when most folks went back to work that day). Veterans Day is still a legal holiday (no mail, no banking), but otherwise gets little attention - unlike, say, in Canada, where the Remembrance Day two-minute silence still has real power. In a better world, perhaps, we would make more of Veterans Day. But that is not where we are.

That said, the Veterans Day we do have still has salience. Primarily, it evokes personal, familial, and local appreciations of those who have served our country in uniform, especially in our many wars. That is certainly edifying and important. At a more remote remove, however, Veterans Day has an historical component. It is, after all, the 106th anniversary of the Armistice that ended the First Word War, which (along with the war itself) paved the way not for a century of peace but a prolonged period of wars and civil and global conflicts. 

When the Armistice Day Centenary was celebrated in 1918, Donald Trump was the U.S. President, someone whose understanding of what World War I had been about and whose appreciation of military service and sacrifice were both severely attenuated at best. His presence at the commemorations created some dissonance at the time.

Now Donald Trump is to be President again, and his neo-isolationist outlook offers an alternative perspective to the traditional themes of this holiday.

The first widespread takeaway from the experience of World War I was that the pre-war order (Churchill's "Old World in its sunset" that was "glorious to look upon" ) had failed and could not be put back together again. The question then became what new international order could be created to replace what had self-destructed. The post-war world the winners created proved disastrous (which could and should have been predicted at the time). The gratuitous destruction of the Hapsburg Empire, the calumny of German war guilt, the imposition of reparations, plus the rise of the Soviet Union on Europe's eastern end, all created an international order set up for failure which it did within 20 years.

The victors of World War II won much more decisively, and that perhaps gave them greater freedom to restructure the international order in a way which appeared to them to be more promising. Even the Cold War, which was my first introduction to international relations, unintentionally created a kind of stability. And, while the end of the Cold War was a bountiful benefit for those living in the Soviet Union and in eastern Europe, it in turn created unexpected new problems and new disruptions.

We are now coming to the end of that post-Cold-War era, wondering what exactly is going to take its place. One thing that is clear is that unlike the previous two post-WWII eras, the U.S. will not play the kind of exceptional role it has hitherto played. 

And that is a very somber reflection for this Veterans Day.

Realignment

 

Matthew Sitman (co-host of the Know Your Enemy podcast) has argued that the story of this election is "the story of Western politics over the past fifty years: class dealignment and education polarization, which is to say the continued abandonment of center-left parties for the political right by working-class voters." 

It is hard to argue with that almost obvious assertion, which Sitman amplifies as follows: Trump "told people who to blame for the problems in their life, real or imagined, and promised to fix it all. ... Working class Americans didn’t turn out for Trump because he threatens democracy. They did so because our democracy, such as it is, didn’t seem worth defending. Any arguments about the way forward need to begin with this depressing reality."

Sitman may be expressing a more ideologically jaundiced feeling about American liberal democracy than the average contemporary Democrat would easily identify with, but what may be hard to identiy with may need to be at least considered. An important reality is that, while the Democrats are increasingly vulnerable on issues the majority of voters care about and are, therefore, diminishing, the Republicans have been building a growing, multi-racial, multi-ethnic, working-class, non-college-educated coalition. 

The fact is also that that coalition also includes tech billionaires and other super-rich who stand to benefit from Trump's policies, likely to the detriment of the "working-class" components of the coalition. It remains to be seen whether those components of the emerging Republican coalition will hold the party accountable for its failures or - more likely, based on recent history - whether they will remain loyal, contrary to their immediate economic interests, because of their cultural identity politics.

Cultural identity politics remain the Democrats' Achilles Heel. The infamous ad about Harris supposedly endorsing tax-payer-funded gender surgery for illegal immigrant prisoners may well have been the single most successful Republican ad, one which effectively symbolizes the wider cultural dissonance at the heart of so much of the Democratic party's present problems.

It is not that Democrats don't offer policies which would be beneficial for members of the new multi-racial, multi-ethnic, working-class, non-college-educated coalition. But voters can usually discern what matters most motivate and inspire a candidate. And at present that perception is that an array of counter-cultural (even counter common-sense) identity politics positions may be what most motivate and inspire many elite, college-educated Democrats.

Reckoning for Liberalism

Early this morning after the election, I went across town to a regularly scheduled medical appointment. At that early hour, the New York streets were full of people going to work or school. Everyone seemed to be doing what people probably would have been doing had there not been an election. It was a salutary reminder that life is about more than politics.

That said, today we need to talk about politics. The American people have overwhelmingly elected the most problematic presidential candidate in modern history, with potentially catastrophic consequences for many Americans, for immigrants, and for the world order we have known for decades. The severity of the challenge to democratic institutions and norms that the country will face in the next few months and years will be unprecedented. It will be a dark and difficult time for America. 

Meanwhile, we have just had an election, and it behooves us to analyze its meaning and import. Not only did Trump win in the Electoral College, but he appears also to have won the popular vote. If so, he would be the first Republican to do so in 20 years. He overwhelmingly improved over his past performance in much of the country (apparently getting the largest vote-share of any Republican since 1988). It was a genuinely stunning popular victory, which also confirms what an angry and divided country this is at present.

Undoubtedly, critics will now attack Kamala Harris' campaign. While I think more analysis is called for, my sense is that she ran about as good a campaign as she could. Perhaps, a different candidate might have done better, but I believe the basic lesson of the election is a strong popular rejection of contemporary liberalism and the liberal "establishment." Obviously, the cultural issues the Democrats thought might carry them to victory could not overcome the widespread dissatisfaction with the Biden Administration and especially with its handling of the economy and immigration. While it may be true that the U.S. economy is in fact the envy of the rest of the world, the Democrats' seeming insensitivity to how ordinary Americans actually experience the economy seems to have doomed their efforts to change the subject to cultural concerns.

Whether a different candidate could have done better than Harris is really also a question about Joe Biden's initial insistence on running for a second term. That became unsustainable after the June debate; but it is possible that, if he had announced at the end of 2022 that he would not run again, the subsequent primary process might have produced a better candidate (or even made Harris a better candidate). But it is really hard to see what more Harris could have done, given the strong headwinds she was facing.

There probably will be an argument about whether her "popular front" strategy made the most sense. She apparently premised her campaign on the belief that lots of centrist voters (including many anti-Trump Republicans) would support her. In the end, there do not seem to be many such centrists left! On the other hand, it would seem almost ludicrous to argue that an alternative, more leftist, "progressive" campaign strategy would have wooed many voters away from Trump. Whatever may be said for or against "progressive" politics, the reality is that "progressive" politics tends to read the culture wrong.

"Populism" is ultimately an electoral NO to continued rule by the elite governing political class, which the Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans represent right now. The election results undercut any moderate Republican argument for some sort of recidivist Reaganism. More importantly, however, the election was a great rebuke to contemporary post-cold-war liberalism and especially to its increasingly "woke" expressions, which appear increasingly irrelevant to ordinary people's lives and offensive to their moral values. How the Democrats sort this out in the inevitable internal party struggle that is ahead may determine what, if any, prospects for success the Democratic party may have in the near future.

The Greatest of All Plagues

 

Capitalism solved the problem of production, one of my professors used to say, but it's up to others to solve the problem of distribution. That "problem of distribution" is increasingly the problem of economic inequality, which is incredibly worse now than it was 50 years ago when I was studying political theory. As political scientist David Lay Williams reminds us in this latest - and very traditional - conversation within the history of political theory, whereas 'in 1965, the average CEO earned 21.1 times as much as a typical worker at the same company," by 2021,  the average CEO "earned 351.1 times as much as a typical worker at the same company."

The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought From Plato to Marx (Princeton U. Pr., 2024) is written in the format of a traditional history of political theory, treating the political philosophies of Plato, the NewTestament, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx. The book takes its title from Plato's Laws, 744d, where the Athenian Stranger characterizes civil war as the greatest of all plagues, which he describes as an inevitable outcome of economic inequality. Plato's Laws in fact famously restrict inequality to a 4:1 ratio.

Williams takes us through some of the traditional canon of political theory, focusing on theorists' (beginning with Plato) preoccupation with civic unity and harmony and the obstacles that inordinate accumulations of great wealth have long been recognized as posing for societies. "Perhasp the single most common theme uniting thinkers in this book regarding the problem of inequality is the degree to whcih inequality divides political communities."

His particular bete-noir is sufficientarianism, which is preoccupied with alleviating poverty rather than overcoming inequality. With Adam Smith, the traditional zero-sum view of the economy changed importantly with the new capitalist understanding of economic growth. One consequence of the reality of economic growth has been the sufficientarian preoccupation with poverty to the neglect of inequality. Yet, as Plato's 4:1 ratio reminds us, there are limits to how much inequality a society can appropriately tolerate. Sufficientariansim, according to Williams, "severely constrains the moral imagination as it has been expressed throughout history." It also ignores something well understood by the theorists analyzed in this book, namely "the corrupting effect of inequality on the rich themselves."

This well written retrieval of the tradition of the history of political thought offers a rich treatment of why and how economic inequality contributes to social disunity, political instability, and deep-seated personal and collective moral corruption.

Jaywalking in NYC

 

After 66 years, it is now legal again to jaywalk in New York City! I am (sigh) old enough to remember when crossing the street against the light became illegal in 1958. I remember the TV ads that said, "You now risk a Summons"! In fact, until the change in the law this year, jaywalking carried a fine of up to $250.

From what I have observed, jaywalking is almost universal in New York and in many other places as well. (I remember how shocked I was when I moved to Milwaukee in 1977 to discover that the law against jaywalking was actually enforced there.) It seems to be natural human rebellion against the automobile's claim to own the streets.

The weird term "jaywalking" apparently originated in the early 1900s, transferring to pedestrians who crossed the street contrary to traffic laws an expression "jay-driver" already in use for someone who drove on the wrong side of the road. (The term "jay" at that time apparently had the connotation of someone who didn't know how to behave in a city.) Applied to pedestrians, it validated the 20th-century mistake that the streets - and, therefore, cities - belong to cars, not people.

Of course, caution in crossing the street is always advisable. According to the NYC Department of Transportation, 200 people have died in the last five years while crossing the street against traffic signals. On the other hand, everyone recognizes that it is often quite safe to cross against the light or outside the cross walk. It all depends on the presence or absence of actual traffic.

The often overly congested character of New York City traffic adds to jaywalking's appeal. When traffic seems stuck and barely moving and horns are blowing (more as an expression of frustration and impatience rather than as a practical measure), it is natural to take the opportunity to cross wherever one can. It is part of the dynamic created by congestion that valorizes assertion and pushing ahead wherever possible.

Look both ways - and keep looking - is the only safe way to cross, whether with the light or even now against it.

Dilexit Nos

 

On October 24, Pope Francis issued an Encyclical Letter Dilexit Nos ("On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ"). This was the first encyclical devoted entirely to the Sacred Heart since Pius XII's encyclical Haurietis Aquas, published on May 15, 1956, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus by Pope Pius IX. Given the special relationships between Jesuits and the modern devotion to the Sacred Heart.

Like so many such documents, Dilexit Nos is longer than it needs to be and unlikely to attract casual readers. That said, there are a few points it would be particularly desirable to mention. Francis highlights how what we contemplate and adore in this devotion "is the whole Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, represented by an image that accentuates his heart. That heart of flesh is seen as the privileged sign of the inmost being of the incarnate Son and. his love, the heart of Jesus is 'the natural sign and symbol of his boundless love" (48). The Pope stresses the significance of the image of the heart. "Universal human experience has made the image of the heart something unique" (53). "The venerable image portraying Christ holding out jis loving heart also shows him looking directly at us, inviting us to encounter, dialogue and trust; it shows his strong hands capable of supporting us and his lips that speak personally to each of us" (54).

Devotion to the Sacred Heart highlights the humanity of Christ. "The Fathers of the Church, opposing those who denied or downplayed the true humanity of Christ, insisted on the concrete and tangible reality of the Lord's human affections" (62). "Devotion to Christ's heart is essential for our Christian life to the extent that it expresses our openness in faith and adoration to the mystery of the Lord's divine and human love" (83).

Francis recalls the historical importance of this devotion in the battle against Jansenists, who "looked askance on all that was human, affective and corporeal, and so viewed this devotion as distancing us from pure worship of the Most High God" (86). Moving to today, "we are also seeing a proliferation of varied forms of religiosity that have nothing to do with a personal relationship with the God of love, but are new manifestations of a disembodied spirituality" (87). Francis also adds "that the heart of Christ also frees us from another kind of dualism found in communities and pastors excessively caught up in external activities, structural reforms that have little to do with the Gospel, obsessive reorganization plans, worldly projects, secular ways of thinking and mandatory programmes" (88).

Regarding the history of the devotion, "the Church today rejects nothing of the good that the Holy Spirit has bestowed on us down the centuries, for she knows that it will always be possible to discern a clearer and deeper meaning in certain aspects of that devotion, and to gain new insights over the course of time" (109). Unsurprisingly, the Pope highlights the devotion's resonances within the Society of Jesus. He quotes Pedro Arupe: "From my novitiate on, I have always been convinced that what we call devotion to the Sacred Heart contains a symbolic expression of what is most profound in Ignatian spirituality, and of an extraordinary efficacy - ultra quam speraverint - both for its own perfection and for apostolic fruitfulness" (146).

Finally, the Pope addresses what he calls "the missionary dimension." Accordingly, "our work as Christians for the betterment of society should not obscure it religious inspiration, for that, in the end, would be to seek less for our brothers and sisters than what God desires to give them" (205).

Francis concludes: "Christ's love can give a heart to our world and revive love wherever we think that the ability to love has been definitively lost" (218).

November

In November, in the days to remember the dead
When air smells cold as earth,
St. Malachy, who is very old, gets up,
Parts the thin curtain of trees and dawns upon our land.

So begins a famous poem by the 20th-century American monk Thomas Merton. (Saint Malachy was a 12th-century Cistercian who became Bishop of Saint Patrick's See of Armagh, whose feast is customarily kept of November 3, the day after All Souls Day.)

Once upon a time, November 1 marked the beginning of the old European/Celtic winter. Even if, sadly, the weather isn't quite so cold as it used to be at this point in the year (thanks to the self-inflicted damage of climate change), the November Triduum of Halloween, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day does bring with it an inescapable shift in mood, traditionally reflected in the change of seasons. (In Tennessee last weekend, I did get to see fantastic fall foliage, another seasonal sign that sometimes seems increasingly muted.)

These annual days to remember the dead keep us connected with those who have gone before us, whose number, of course, keeps increasing as we age and come closer to joining them. It is more than merely a matter of nostalgia. Remembering is a fundamentally human activity, all the more to be treasured as we age. Remembering those whose lives once intersected with ours affirms that their lives were real and genuinely mattered. Factor in the faith dimension of the Communion of Saints, which All Saints and All Souls Days are intended to focus on, our remembering those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith celebrates our shared destiny and shared hope.  

Photo: November Memorials to the Departed, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY.