Flagging Optimism

I will say this much about Fareed Zakaria’s latest Washington Post column. I agree with him that it’s hard to be optimistic and I agree that 1973 was a watershed year. That’s just about where our agreement ends.

Our disagreements begin in its second sentence:

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It’s a secular celebration of America, and as an immigrant, I feel I have much to be grateful for.

Thanksgiving is not secular celebration. The very thought is nonsense. To whom would one be grateful? Consider the very first Thanksgiving proclamation in the United States by George Washington:

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor, and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness. Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.

or from Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation of 1863:

n the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.

This must be a trying time for anyone who believes in Whig history, as Mr. Zakaria clearly does:

The American republic is an extraordinary creation, built to accommodate very different people with utterly different ideas and values. It has survived the battles between slave owners and abolitionists, the First Red Scare and McCarthyism, Vietnam and Watergate. All of those struggles were high-stakes affairs, each aroused passions, and each eventually ended, though not without bitterness and disappointment. History, even the history of a powerful and successful country such as the United States, is not a collection of merry tales with happy endings. It’s full of fights, with wins, losses and draws.

But choices have consequences. His quoting of Ezra Klein is telling:

Ezra Klein notes a related transformation: “Almost 70% of American seniors are white and Christian. Only 29% of young adults are white and Christian.”

Most of the immigrants who have come here over the last 55 years have come from cultures that do not believe in a constitutional order or, indeed, the rule of law. Here is what Mr. Zakaria says he values in the United States:

America’s greatest assets — its constitutional republic and its democratic character — seem to be in danger of breakdown.

They’re breaking down because too many of its people don’t believe in them.

He and I disagree about what made 1973 a watershed year:

We have been going down this road for a while. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wrote about “The Imperial Presidency” in 1973. The legislation and culture after Watergate led many to believe that matters were under control.

The War Powers Act by which Congress attempted to cede its power to make war to the president was enacted in 1973. Since then Democratic Congresses have ignored it when the president was a Democrat while Republicans have ignored it when the president was a Republican.

If you want to end the “imperial presidency”, we must expect less from the federal government and Congress must re-assert its powers. We must be a limited government of defined powers.

President Trump’s angry rhetoric doesn’t bother me as much as it does Mr. Zakaria. It reminds me of a line from Woody Allen’s first move, What’s New, Pussycat?: “Every time she sees me she screams because every time she sees me I attack her.” Trump is a counter-puncher. If his opponents don’t like angry rhetoric, perhaps they should stop attacking him.

Cynic as I am about politics, I’m not as concerned about Congress’s loss of its “core oversight capacity” as about its perseveration on finding fault with presidents of the opposing party, evinced in two consecutive administrations.

There are several things that concern me. The first is the incredible partisanship that has been fulminating over the last 25 years and the second is our transition from a guilt culture in which behavior is restrained by internalized guilt to a shame culture in which behavior is restrained by externalized shame as we become post-Christian. Such a culture requires a drastically more intrusive government than the one to which we have become accustomed.