Partisanship in an Ethical Democracy
Board chairman Gordon Haist introduced the speaker, Raymond H. Dominick III, retired history professor from the University of North Carolina and Ohio State University. Raymond has written extensively and taught OLLI classes about history and the environment.
Raymond’s first objective was to remind the audience of various periods of deep polarization in the four hundred years of American history. The situations and periods he listed included the following:
Europeans invaded North American and instigated 300 years of warfare against American Indians, resulting in the ethnic cleansing of the Indian population of 5-6 million to 250,000.
African slaves began arriving in 1619, and slavery continued for subsequent generations until the end of the Civil War in 1865.
Each of the 13 colonies was founded differently, their governments in many cases closely connected to conflicting religions, Anglicanism in Virginia and Puritanism in Massachusetts as examples. At one point, both Virginia and Kentucky legislatures passed resolutions saying the states could veto they did not like.
Approximately as many colonists opposed the American Revolution as supported it.
In 1810 five states threatened to secede.
About 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War.
After the Civil War, Southerners refused to accept biracial government.
During that period, the Ku Klux Klan murdered 1,000 blacks in Texas in the first two years of Reconstruction and whites lynched 6,500 blacks, the last lynching occurring in the 1940s.
The civil rights movement to correct racial inequality was not civil.
The women’s movement to correct social inequality was not peaceful.
The “sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll” of the 1960s expressed a rigid generational divide that brought on urban riots.
For a few years the two major political parties were both “big tent” organizations, each having its own group of liberals and its own group of conservatives.
Today, however, Democrats and Republicans are vastly different. Republicans typically like Cracker Barrel restaurant, live in rural areas, express loyalty to churches, read the Wall Street Journal, proudly insist on gun rights, want prayers in public places and want abortion banned. Democrats typically like Whole Foods, live in urban areas, are indifferent to church, read the New York Times, want guns restricted, want prayers kept out of public places and believe abortion should be legal.
“It’s very hard to change people’s minds” about such issues, he said. “As a constitutional democracy, we live with a system designed to prevent majority opinions from overwhelming minority opinions.” The result is that voters in California have 1/38th the power of voters in Wisconsin.
Colin Moseley moderated comments and questions from the audience. Below are some of the remarks:
There are flaws in our democracy brought on by the system of the Electoral College, the gerrymandering and the Senate filibuster, which means 60 votes out of 100 votes are required to enact controversial legislation.
Polarization is currently intensified. The notion that the Internet would cause everybody to behave nicely has not panned out.
It’s important that the constitution protects against abuse of the majority. “I did not feel threatened in the 1960s. I feel current times are more threatening.”
The phrase “inalienable rights” in the Declaration of Independence did not apply to blacks or women in the 18th century. Movements toward those rights brought on tension, threats and in some cases violence.
The notion that the 1960s were non-threatening does not apply to the African Americans who were trying to gain the simple right to vote. Many were injured and jailed. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in that movement.
It is hard to understand the other side. We are more polarized than ever, and social media and TV news are responsible for so many ignoramuses.
Americans have similar values but believe there are different ways to deliver those values. Social media plays up anger between Americans. We must return to the art of listening to one another.
Referring to Cicero’s quotation, “The good of the people is the highest law,” Gordon Haist raised the question: “Who are ‘the people’ ?“
Raymond Dominick then pointed out the answer to the question of “the people” depends on who is doing the asking. Nationalism, he said, is an ideology advocating for a community based on shared language, culture and history. It explains in part the many European wars over the centuries: the Ottoman Empire versus the Austrian Empire and World War I as examples. Extreme nationalism leads to fascism, he said. Few groups have ever been more patriotic – and more violent - than the Ku Klux Klan, which opposed the blacks, the Irish, the Italians and the Jews.
The discussion session had to be terminated by 3:30, but could have gone on much longer. Our special thanks to our speaker Raymond Dominick III, for his magnificent and well organized presentation. Also thanks to Colin Moseley and Gordon Haist for Moderating the discussion and to Fran Bollin for her always excellent summaries.