Paradise by Dante

I'm on a perpetual quest to give myself a Classical Education. Obviously one of the required texts is The Divine Comedy. I have already read Inferno and Purgatory, so it was time for Paradise by Dante. I especially love that it was translated by the great thinker, Anthony Esolen.

Esolen begins with a must-read introductory essay which explores Dante's purpose for the whole Comedy: Who gets into Heaven. Dante has again and again surprised the reader with the inhabitants of Hell and who is working through Purgatory. He will surprise us again with the residents of Paradise. In order for this book to be a fitting companion of the others, it must address the issues of justice raised by Inferno and mercy raised in Purgatory to a beautiful conclusion. Therefore Dante uses as his examples stories in which mercy and justice work together. In the end, Dante believes that all God does, He does out of perfect love. To ask why does God love us so much is the wrong question. Love just loves.

When confronted with the age-old question of who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell, Esolen, using Dante's reasoning, responds,"God in his dangerous love has created something infinitely more lovely: a world peopled by beings free to love or to hate. A man's free choice to walk smugly by the beggar on the bridge may have no consequence to speak of, or eternal consequences. It is a world into which, to save a race gone awry, the Author himself has entered in a particular way at a particular place, to atone for men's sins and to reveal particular things about the world and its Father, ultimately to return to that world and restore its lost innocence. God did not create a philosophy. He created, as Dante saw, a comedy." (p. xxxvii) God will not be duty-bound to save anyone. He will love with a wild untamable love and we are to love Him back, as best we know how. Only then are we fit for Paradise and eternal bliss.

By the time we get to Paradise, Dante's guide Virgil has returned to Limbo. He is not allowed to see Heaven. Dante's true love Beatrice joins him and will guide him the rest of the way. She has been praying for him this entire time and is the reason he is on this journey to begin with. She wants to get answers to his questions and to help him finally find his hope in God. In his real life, Dante has been banished from the city of his birth, Florence, and the injustice of it all has been an enormous issue for him.

Here is a summary, given by Esolen, at the beginning of each canto, followed in some cases by commentary and quotations from the text:

CANTO ONE 

Dante and Beatrice are at the threshold of Heaven. She explains to him that it is the nature of the human soul to rise. 

CANTO TWO 

Rising to the first sphere, the moon, Dante asks Beatrice about the markings, and learns that they are due to the diversity of gifts with which God has endowed all creatures. 

CANTO THREE 

Dante and Beatrice enter the first circle of Heaven, the circle of the moon. Here, among the souls of those who neglected their vows, Dante encounters Piccarda, who explains to him the diversity of blessedness among the saints. 

Dante describes the nature of Paradise:

"For it is of the essence of this bliss 

to hold one's dwelling in the divine Will,  

who makes our single wills the same, and His,

So that, although we swell from sill to sill

throughout this kingdom, that is as we please,

as it delights the King in whose desire

We find our own. In His will is our peace:" (p. 29)

CANTO FOUR 

Beatrice explains to Dante the true location of the blessed, and then, distinquishing absolute from conditional will, asserts the sanctity and inviolability of holy vows. 

Dante wrestles with who deserves to be in which level of Paradise, when the breaking of their vows was forced:

"You argue, 'If my good intent endures,

how can another's violence diminish 

the measure of my merited reward?'" (p. 35)

Beatrice replies that there is our will and our will, that is although we may be seemingly forced to sin, God knows the heart and can determine what our actual will was.

As Dante begins to understand what he is being told, he rejoices,

"I see our intellects cannot be filled

unless the one Truth floods them with its light,

beyond which nothing true can find a place.

Like a beast in its den, we rest in it

when we have reached it, as we can indeed—

if not, our longings would be all in vain." (p. 41)

CANTO FIVE 

Beatrice explains to Dante the irrevocability of sacred vows. They enter the second sphere and meet spirits, represented by Mercury, who paid too much attention to worldly honor when on earth. 

Beatrice continues to explain why sacrificing your will to God through holy vows is the most precious gift you can give and cannot be easily or carelessly revoked.

"You'll see, then, from this line of argument,

the high value of vows if they're so made

that God consents as soon as you consent.

For when both God and man have sealed the pact

they slay this treasure in a sacrifice,

and do so, as I say, by a free act."

She then urges Dante to,

"Open your mind to what I now make plain,

hold it within, for there's no knowledge when

you understand a thing you don't retain." (p. 47)

True words to inform a teacher's heart!

CANTO SIX 

Justinian describes the history of the eagle of Rome, its most glorious victory the avengement of the death of Christ. After decrying the corruption of both Guelphs and Ghibellines, he points out the soul of the honorable courtier Romeo. 

In the commentary, Esolen says, "The eagle was the symbol of Roman rule... Dante believed that monarchy was ordained by God as the most natural and fitting form of government for mankind, and the most analogous to God's own rule and the most consonant with human freedom." (p. 412)

CANTO SEVEN
Beatrice explains the necessity of Christ's atoning sacrifice and the justice of God's vengeance against the Jews who put Christ to death. 

CANTO EIGHT 

Dante and Beatrice rise to the third sphere, Venus, where they meet souls who were too ardent in their attachment to fleshly love. Here Dante speaks with Charles Martel of Anjou, who discusses the cause of degeneracy among noble families and the evils wrought by confusion of vocations. 

CANTO NINE 

Still in the third sphere, Dante speaks with Cunizza da Romano, who proph esies woe for her homeland, and with the bishop and troubadour Folquet; he shows to Dante the brightest soul in the sphere of Venus, that of Rahab. 

CANTO TEN 

Dante and Beatrice have risen to the fourth circle, the sun, the dwelling of the wise. Dante is addressed by Thomas Aquinas, who names for him the eleven other spirits in the heavenly garland. 

CANTO ELEVEN 

Thomas Aquinas recounts for Dante the life of Francis of Assisi, and concludes by decrying the corruption of the Dominicans of the present day. 

CANTO TWELVE 

Out of a second garland of spirits another soul speaks: it is the soul of Bonaventure, who describes the life of Dominic and concludes by decrying the corruption of the Franciscans of the present day. 

CANTO THIRTEEN 

Thomas Aquinas explains what Scripture means and what he meant in describing Solomon as the wisest man who ever lived. He concludes by condemning the rashness of human judgment. 

CANTO FOURTEEN 

King Solomon answers Dante's last question to the wise, a question about the resurrection of the body. Then Dante and Beatrice ascend to Mars, the fifth sphere, the place for the warriors for Christ. 

Dante is bothered because the saints in Paradise are simply lights. He wonders about their bodies and why they don't have them. He finally realizes that they currently enjoy the beauty and harmony of the "bodies" they have but that they will be reunited with their physical bodies at the end of time and will experience even more beauty and harmony. Overwhelmed with the joy and love as the saints dance and sing around him, Dante exclaims,

"As dancers dancing in a merry reel,

will raise their voices in a rush of glee,

all of their gestures lighter in the heel,

So, to that most devout and ready plea,

the holy circlings showed me a new joy

in their revolving and their wondrous song.

Whoever on earth laments that we must die

to live above in Heaven, does not see

the sweet refreshment of the eternal rain." (p. 145)

CANTO FIFTEEN 

Dante speaks with his ancestor Cacciaguida, who describes the courtly virtues of the Florentines of old. 

CANTO SIXTEEN 

Cacciaguida discourses on the rise and fall of noble Florentine families. 

CANTO SEVENTEEN 

Cacciaguida foretells Dante's exile from Florence, revealing the patronage he will enjoy from Cangrande della Scala. When Dante suggests that his poetry may give scandal to many on earth, Cacciaguida recommends absolute honesty, for the poet's mission depends upon it. 

Esolen adds in the commentary, "Whether Dante rejoiced in his exile is not clear, but it is certain that no single event in his life has gained for him such glory. Indeed, were it not for the unjust banishment from his . native land, and the seizing of his goods by a political enemy, and the foolish pride of those men banished with him—were it not, in short, for the hard look a human evil that Dante was forced to take—we might not have the Comedy. But He who can bring good out of evil can bring good out of Florence." (p. 447)

CANTO EIGHTEEN 

Cacciaguida names for Dante the flames of other warriors of God. Then Dante and Beatrice ascend to Jupiter, the sixth sphere, where Dante sees stars form the constellation of the Eagle of justice. 

CANTO NINETEEN 

The Eagle addresses Dante's unspoken question on the fate of the virtuous pagans, insisting upon the inscrutability of divine providence and decrying the wickedness of rulers in Christendom in Dante's day. 

As Esolen is claiming, an integral purpose of the Comedy is to explore who will be rewarded or punished, how, and why. At this point in Paradise, the eagle tells Dante,

"Never unto this reign

climbs any man without belief in Christ,

before nor since they nailed Him to the wood.

But here, behold: many now cry,'Christ, Christ!'

who'll be less near to Him on Judgment Day

than will the one who never know of Christ." (p. 207)

In the commentary, Esolen goes on an extensive explanation well worth repeating at length here,

"It is the great doubt of a good and unsentimentally honest Christian man, and it is the last great doubt that Dante's character will express. If faith is necessary for salvation, what happens to those virtuous men and women who did not know about Christ? If they had no opportunity to hear the word of God preached, how can they be punished for their lack of faith? 

It appears to me that there are three ways to answer this question, and that Dante tentatively, and with great humility, approaches the third. The first way is that of Calvin, recalling that Augustine had called the virtues of the great republican Romans “splendid vices,” or as Milton put it, “close ambition varnished o'er with zeal” (Paradise Lost 2.485). This is to grant only a specious virtue to the pagan (and Augustine himself was more generous than that; cf. City of God 5.11-14), to attribute selfish or at best quite impure motives to all those without the faith...Strictly speaking, we need not worry about the virtuous pagans, since there are no virtuous pagans, or if there are virtuous pagans, their virtue is merely human and not in itself pleasing to God: “All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Is. 64:6). But that is to universalize and absolutize what Isaiah says, taking it out of context; and it is an assertion flatly contradicted by the evidence of our senses and by the plain meaning of the word “virtue.” Dante clearly did not accept it, as the presence in Limbo of the virtuous pagans shows. 

The second way is that of modern man, who, if he is not busy denying the very possibility of salvation, is busy comfortably assuring himself that everyone (or at least everyone not below his own modest level of virtue) will be saved. Everyone will be saved, by that kind and loving God he keeps in an old chest of drawers along with a watch fob and a couple of silver dollars...As long as we love one another (and by “love” we mean not the theological virtue nor even a good hearty pagan eros but the ability to get along passably well with the more likable of our fellows…), we will be saved. Therefore all the virtuous pagans will be saved, including the virtuous pagans who are ourselves. 

The third possibility is that indeed some of the virtuous pagans may be saved, not by their own merits but by faith; while Calvin argued that the virtuous pagans only appeared virtuous, a holder of this third possibility would leave open the hope that some of the truly virtuous pagans only appeared pagan. When Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one cometh to the Father but by me” (John 14:6), he may well be interpreted as saying, “All those who come to the Father do so by my work, my merits, my virtue infused into their hearts.” What form this faith might take was left unclear by the Church Fathers. Augustine, for instance, said that the Hebrews who kept the faith believed in Christ to come, along with all those other individuals, perhaps far away, to whom this faith was mysteriously revealed (City of God 3.1). Aquinas attempted to specify what faith was sufficient for so mysterious a baptism. The testimony of reason assures a man that God exists and is a providential God; the testimony of the senses and of his conscience assures him that he is a sinner, unworthy of approaching a God most holy; by reason he therefore concludes that he needs a mediator, an intercessor, to approach God on his behalf (cf. Summa theol. 2.2.2.7). Elsewhere Aquinas states that at the dawn of the age of discretion, every human being faces a fundamental decision for good or for evil—for good, that is, enabled by the grace of God. If the person at that moment throws himself upon the mercy of God, he receives baptism, what is called the “baptism of desire," and on the day of doom will be judged accordingly. If, however, he does not do so, he rejects the assistance of faith and will inevitably fall into mortal sin... Who is saved and who is not rests hidden in the secrets of divine providence, but that there might be Christians whom Christians do not recognize as such is suggested by Christ himself: “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also must I bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd” (John 10:16). 

...The reader should note that Dante approaches the third way but rejects, in part, Aquinas's analysis. For Dante has clearly maintained that there are many who are both unbaptized and virtuous, at least according to the four natural virtues of fortitude, prudence, temperance, and justice. Aquinas's analysis would clearly depopulate Dante's Limbo of all but, perhaps, the unbaptized infants. On the other hand, Dante does save three pagans... 

I used to believe that all three cases were exceptional—like punctures of grace [erupting] into an otherwise universal rejection of the unbaptized. Yet grace itself is exceptional, in that it is an unmerited and absolutely free gift of God. There is no predicting the acts of providence, and thus no predicting the gift of grace… [J]ust as an awareness of providence should prevent us from judging God's sentences too hastily, so too it should prevent us from forgetting that we cannot know God's pardons, either. And finally we might remember the words of the eagle's Book of Wisdom: “For God made not death, neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the living. (Wis. 1:13)” (p. 452-454)

CANTO TWENTY 

The Eagle names the most exalted spirits in its sphere. These include, as amazing instances of the unknowability of God's plan, the pagans Trajan and Ripheus. 

Describing God's love in the most beautiful language, Dante proclaims,

"The kingdom of Heaven suffers violence

     from living hope and burning charity

that overcome the will of the divine,

Not as a man will overcome a man—

     the divine wins because it would be won,

and won, it wins with its benignity." (p. 219)

"O predestination, how remote

your root is from those sights that cannot see

the fullness of the primal cause! And you

Mortals, withhold your judgment; even we

who see the face of God do not yet know

the number chosen from eternity—" (p. 221)

CANTO TWENTY-ONE 

Dante and Beatrice rise to Saturn, the seventh sphere, the sphere of the contemplatives, who scale a ladder to and from the heaven of heavens. Peter Damian descends to greet Dante and speak of the degeneracy of the monastic orders. 

CANTO TWENTY-TWO 

Still in the sphere of Saturn, Dante speaks with Saint Benedict, who decries the corruption of the Benedictines. Then Dante and Beatrice ascend to the eighth sphere, that of the fixed stars. 

CANTO TWENTY-THREE 

Dante witnesses the triumph of Christ and the blessing of the souls in Heaven, irradiated by His light. After the coronation of Mary, Christ and the Blessed Mother return to the Empyrean. 

Canto TWENTY-FOUR  Saint Peter examines Dante on faith. 

CANTO TWENTY-FIVE 

Saint James examines Dante on hope. After the appearance of Saint John, Dante is struck blind. 

CANTO TWENTY-SIX 

Saint John examines Dante on love. When Dante answers appropriately, he finds himself before the spirit of Adam, who answers four of Dante's questions regarding his life in Eden. 

CANTO TWENTY-SEVEN 

Saint Peter denounces the corruption of the papacy and the Church. After he instructs Dante to tell what he has heard, the poet and Beatrice rise to the ninth sphere, the Primum Mobile. 

Dante begins this chapter with such a beautiful description of the joy he feels in Paradise,

"'To Father and to Son and Holy Ghost,'

sang all the heavens, 'glory!'—filling me

with drunken joy; it seemed what I beheld

Was laughter of the universe the glee

of laugher whose inebriating swell

enters by what you hear and what you see.

O joy! O Happiness ineffable!

O riches safe, no worry of desire!

O life of love and peace, perfect and full!" (p. 287)

CANTO TWENTY-EIGHT
Dante is granted a distant vision of the cosmos:a single brilliant point of light surrounded by the nine heavenly spheres, whence comes the song of the angelic hosts, whose hierarchies Beatrice enumerates. 

CANTO TWENTY-NINE 

Beatrice reveals to Dante various truths about the angels: their creation, their powers, their number, and the fall of the rebels. She rebukes errant philosophers on earth who pretend to know more than they do about heavenly things. 

In the commentary, Esolen states, "God saw that it was good. Dante answers the question “Why did God create?" by referring us back to the first chapter of Genesis. In polytheistic systems the world is always created to fulfill the motive of some god or other, or as an after effect of some conflict in the immortal regions. Genesis gives no motive, implying that there was none, none that we would call a motive anyway, since God is not moved, not troubled, as there is nothing prior to God. If we wished, we could say, instead of “God created,” “God loved,” and leave it at that—for perfect love is its own motive." (p. 478)

This beautifully comes through in the words of Beatrice as she explains to Dante the reason that God created anything at all, including the angels,

"Not (for it cannot be) that He should gain

good for Himself, but that resplendence of

His light should utter, 'I exist,' beyond

All time in His eternity, beyond

confining space, according to His will

into new loves burst the Eternal Love.

Before he did not lie adrowse and still—

neither 'before' nor 'after' can precede

the hovering of God above these waters." (p. 309)

I believe that it is here that we err so often in our theology when we speak of God doing something "before" or "after." It is all an eternal "now" for Him.

CANTO THIRTY 

Dante and Beatrice rise to the Empyrean, the tenth circle. Here all Heaven is revealed as a river of light, and as a celestial rose. 

CANTO THIRTY-ONE 

Beatrice takes her place again in the celestial rose, and Dante is now led by the mystic Bernard of Clairvaux. 

CANTO THIRTY-TWO Bernard names for Dante the various souls in tiers along the petals of the rose. He ends by urging Dante to pray with him for the intercession of Mary, that Dante may be able to see the highest Good. 

CANTO THIRTY-THREE

Saint Bernard entreats the intercession of the Virgin Mary that Dante may behold the beatific vision. The great journey and the poem ends with the vision of the three great mysteries: the Creation, the Trinity, and the Incarnation of Christ. 

In the final canto, we finally reach God, Himself. Esolen beautifully summarizes, "I am the Bread of Life. God creates what is not God. That is a mystery of love. This creator God is Himself a Trinity of Persons. That is a mystery of love. The Second Person united Himself with human flesh to redeem mankind. That is a mystery of love. He rose from the dead and sits at the right hand of the Father, both God and man. That is a mystery of love. The final Christian mystery, implicit in the whole of Paradise, is that this Christ is with us still, abiding within the faithful, making them like unto Himself, giving them His very flesh in the Eucharist, as once he gave it on the Cross. This is the love that moves the sun and the other stars." (p. 488)

Like Inferno and Purgatory, Paradise has "levels." Here they are:

The Spheres of Heaven
     First Sphere (The Moon: The Inconstant)
     Second Sphere (Mercury: The Ambitious)
     Third Sphere (Venus: The Lovers)
     Fourth Sphere (The Sun: The Wise)
     Fifth Sphere (Mars: The Warriors of the Faith)
     Sixth Sphere (Jupiter: The Just Rulers)
     Seventh Sphere (Saturn: The Contemplatives)
     Eighth Sphere (The Fixed Stars: Faith, Hope, and Love)
     Ninth Sphere (The Primum Mobile: The Angels)
The Empyrean (a region beyond physical existence which is the abode of God)

A History of the American People by Paul Johnson

My favorite historian is Paul Johnson, and my favorite historical subject is America, so combined in A History of the American People by Paul Johnson, it is a thing of beauty!

Although a Brit, Johnson exudes love and support for America and all it stands for. In fact, his dedication reads, "This book is dedicated to the people of America—strong, outspoken, intense in their convictions, sometimes wrong-headed but always generous and brave with a passion for justice no nation has ever matched."

Johnson focuses on personalities and the associated events more than the "forces" and "trajectories" favored today. Also, he does none of the Zinn-style of telling history from the point of view of the disenfranchised or outcasts. Rather, he tells the story of those who actually made history and he is not afraid to pass judgment on them. This is one thing I love about his style. He freely acknowledges that these are flesh-and-blood humans with good and bad qualities, exercising their free will and making decisions that impacted history. Nothing is fore-ordained. People, not forces, shape history. And their legacy is fair game for fair judgment.

He does not begin his history with where many begin, pre-history and the Native Americans. He starts with the men we know who ventured to a New World to make something great. Christopher Columbus shows up on page one. It is not that the history of Native people is unimportant, but it simply plays little role in the foundations of America. And America's story is the one he's telling.

He begins by detailing Spanish exploration and then goes into the failure of Roanoke. Interestingly, and another reason to love Johnson as a historian, he gives as one reason for the failure the fact that it was an entirely secular effort with no religious dimension. Johnson, a devout Catholic, does not shy away from the role of religion in forming America. The theme will resurrect time and again. Yet his is not a jingoist story of America as a Christian nation, but simply one that has been informed and shaped by Protestantism. In telling the story of the Pilgrims, he details the desire for religions freedom and liberty. Yet, believing as they did that Catholicism shackles liberty, they defined liberty as the liberty to practice their form of religion. From the beginning we had a tension surrounding the definition of liberty, while making clear that it was a central American value.

The tension with liberty continued in the introduction of African slavery into the Carolinas and the treatment of Native Americans. England took little notice of either issue, leaving the colonies to develop their own systems and regulations as regards to both. Although the royal colonies had governors sent from England, the mother country was far more concerned with trade. By and large, the colonies were on their own. As such, they quickly developed different norms and customs, making each colony distinctly different from the others. But the Great Awakening came along, uniting the colonists in religious fervor and helping to create a distinct American.

The French and Indian War took the foundation laid by the Great Awakening and sparked a consciousness that would lead to Revolution. The victory by Britain produced a great empire and simultaneously saw a rise in incompetent and arrogant leadership. "It is now time to see the origins and progress of the breakdown between Britain and America through the eyes of a man who was involved in all its stages and did his considerable best to prevent it—Benjamin Franklin." (p. 134) This is where Paul Johnson shines. He uses real people and their lives to highlight historical events. In fact, I would argue that the close study of a few individuals would be enough to inform the average American of almost all the American history he needs to know. Johnson then shifts to a study of Thomas Jefferson as "the archetypal figure of the Entire Enlightenment." (p. 143) He's similar to Franklin in many ways, but a representative of a different class of people who would impact the American project. It was this man who would give us, "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." as the fledgling colony declared its independence from Great Britain. The next individual that requires careful study is obviously George Washington. From the time hostilities broke out until his death, he will be the central figure in the formation of a new and distinct America.

After winning the war, the question became how to govern this sui generis entity? "There is no question that the Declaration of Independence was, to those who signed it, a religious as well as a secular act, and that the Revolutionary War had the approbation of divine providence. They had won it with God's blessing and, afterwards, they drew up their framework of government with God's blessing, just as in the 17th century the colonists had drawn their Compacts and Charters and Orders and Instruments, with God peering over their shoulders." (p. 204) Yet the Constitution makes little mention of God. Johnson attributes this to a happy coincident of history. "As it happens, by a historical accident, it was actually drawn up at the high tide of 18th-century secularism, which was as yet unpolluted by the fanatical atheism and the bloody excesses of its culminating storm, the French Revolution." (p. 205) For a brief period of time, it was possible for a very religious people to form a government that neither mandated nor proscribed religion. Because of this, America has never had a religious war and continues to be have a healthy religious flourishing to this day. Johnson, a devout Catholic, is the rare historian who does not treat religious belief as an interesting artifact of a backward people. He believes in his subjects sincerity and understands it. This kind of understanding allows Johnson to make a brilliant defense of the original intent of the First Amendment. "This guarantee [of religious freedom] has been widely, almost willfully, misunderstood in recent years, and interpreted as meaning that the federal government is forbidden by the Constitution to countenance or subsidize even indirectly the practice of religion. That would have astonished and angered the Founding Fathers." (p. 209) Although wisely not incorporating a national church, the Founders understood that a self-governing nation was appropriate only for a religious and moral people.

Now America has to get on to the hard task of actually governing. Early presidents Washington, Adams, and Jefferson set the tone and structure of how the new nation would proceed. Alexander Hamilton, a most forward-thinking economic mind, would place the nations fractured economy on solid footing. In addition, the longest-serving Supreme Court justice, John Marshall, would outline the contours of the new judiciary. It is nothing short of a miracle that the men needed to guide the experiment were all on the scene at the same time. The fact that they had heated disagreements about the ends and means was even more beneficial as we needed all of them together to form a balance.

By the time we get to Andrew Jackson, America is more mature and ready to be unleashed from the elites that have guided her. He enters like a force of nature and forever alters the character and trajectory of America. A study of his life would again tell us so much of what we need to know about life in the early republic. He was born in 1767 and so was literally born into a revolutionary time. By the time he entered politics, he was a self-made man, able to take advantage of the freedoms offered in America. Unlike his predecessors, he was from the West and the first military hero since Washington. He ushered in unprecedented democracy and expansion, representing a young nation chomping at the bit to make something of itself. "Jackson thought the people were instinctively right and moral, and Big Government, of the kind he could see growing up in Washington, fundamentally wrong and immoral. His task, as he saw it, was to liberate and empower this huge moral popular force by appealing to it over the heads of the entrenched oligarchy, the corrupt ruling elite." (p. 329

A credit to its success is that America came to be described, by Benjamin Franklin, as a "happy mediocrity." Johnson says, "The fact that, unless we investigate closely, we hear so little about the mass of the population is itself a historical point of great importance, because it testifies by its eloquent silence to the success of the republican experiment." (p. 283) In the first half of the 19th century Americans got about the business pursuing happiness. Freedom was literally paying off. "Not only were American wage-rates high, but you kept your earnings to spend on your family. Then there were other blessings. no conscription. No political police. No censorship. No legalized class distinction. Most employers ate at the same table as their hands. No one (except slaves) called anyone 'Master.'" (p. 289) Prosperity allowed these early Americans to consider universal education. Horace Mann "opened the first 'normal' school in the United States at Lexington in 1839, and thence reorganized the entire primary and secondary education system of the state, with longer terms, a more scientific and 'modern' pedagogy, higher salaries and better teachers, decent, clean, and properly heated schoolhouses, and al the element of a first-class public school system." (p. 302) Although government-run education became problematic at the turn of the next century, a country that could afford to educate all its citizens was an unheard of luxury.

Into this growing, prosperous nation the issue of slavery remained to be tackled. The contradictions of freedom demanded an answer to the question of human chattel. The Founders recognized the inherit hypocrisy and predicted a war would result. Adams stated that "its result must be the extirpation of slavery from this whole continent and, calamitous and devastating as this course of events must be, so Glorious would be the final issue that, as God should judge me, I dare not say it is not be desired." (p. 319) But that predicted war would be delayed by compromise time and again until it finally broke in 1860, which allowed the nation to solidify the gains made by the Revolution and fight a war for freedom for all from a place of solid strength.

This strength came from Americans' belief in the greatness of their destiny. As one essay put it in 1838,

"The far-reaching, the boundless future will be the era of American greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles: to establish on earth the noblest temple ever dedicated to the worship of the Most High-the Sacred and the True. Its floor shall be a hemisphere—its roof the firmament of the star-studded heavens—and its congregation the Union of many Republics, comprising hundreds of happy millions, calling and owning no man master, but governed by God's natural and moral law of equality, the law of brotherhood-of ‘peace and goodwill among men’." (p. 371)

Yet as de Tocqueville would note, slavery was a chain holding back those who practiced it. "'On both sides [of the Ohio River] the soil is equally fertile, the situation just as favorable.' But Kentucky, because of slavery, is inhabited 'by a people without energy, without ardor, without a spirit of enterprise.' He was led, he said, again and again to the same conclusion: leaving aside the slave states, 'the American people, taking them all in all, are not only the most enlightened in the world, but (something I place well above that advantage), they are the people whose practical, political education is the most advanced.'" (p. 391) Into this setting arrives Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1853, making the moral case for the abolitionist position. Not only did it help spark the Civil War, it probably kept Britain from coming to the aid of the South.

Of that event, Johnson states, "The civil war, in which are included the causes and consequences, constitutes the central event in American history. It is also America's most characteristic event which brings out all that the United States is, and is not. It made America a nation, which it was not before. For America, as we have seen, was not prescriptive, its people forged together by a forgotten process in the darkness of prehistory, emerging from it already a nation by the time it could record its own doings. It was, rather, an artificial state or series of states, bound together by negotiated agreements and compacts, charters and covenants. It was made by bits of parchment, bred by lawyers. The early Americans, insofar as they had a nationality, were English (or more properly British) with an English national identity and culture." (p. 423) America became America because of the Civil War.

I believe an interesting case can be made comparing slavery at this time to abortion today. Both sides are locked into their beliefs with little movement, yet I don't believe it will end in war. But as Abraham Lincoln said, the nation cannot stand divided. It will become all one thing or all another. Today we see what I believe is the pro-abortion's last, desperate gasp, just as slavery proponents became much more shrill and vociferous as they saw their strangle hold on other humans slipping from their grasp. "The aggressive message of the South was: slavery must be extended because it makes economic sense for America. But beneath this aggressive tone was the deep insecurity of Southerners who had no real moral answer to the North's case and knew in their hearts that the days of slavery were numbered." (p. 432)

Enter Abraham Lincoln. Here again, Johnson turns to an individual to tell the story of a nation. "It was because slavery made him miserable, and because he thought it was destroying the nation, not least the South, that Lincoln reentered politics and helped to create the new Republican Party, primarily to prevent slavery's extension. Looking back with the hindsight of history, we tend to assume that slavery was a lost cause from the start and the destruction of the old South inevitable. But to a man of Lincoln's generation, the South appeared to have won all the political battles, and all the legal ones." (p. 441) But Lincoln had powerfully put himself in the camp of liberalism and nationalism, two very strong forces in the mid-19th century. His Emancipation Proclamation sealed the legitimacy of the North's cause.

As a believer, once again, Johnson does not shy from the spiritual component of American history. "As against all these raucous certainties, there were the doubts, the puzzlings, and the agonizing efforts of Abraham Lincoln to rationalize God's purposes. To anyone who reads his letters and speeches, and the records of his private conversations, it is hard not to believe that, whatever his religious state of mind before the war again, he acquired faith of a kind before it ended. His evident and total sincerity shines through all his words as the war took its terrible toll. He certainly felt the spirit of guidance. 'I am satisfied,' he wrote, “that when the Almighty wants me to do or not to do a particular thing, he finds a way of letting me know it.' He thus waited, as the Cabinet papers show, for providential guidance at certain critical points of the war. He never claimed to be the personal agent of God's will, as everybody else seemed to be doing. But he wrote: “If it were not for my firm belief in an overriding providence it would be difficult for me, in the midst of such complications of affairs, to keep my reason in its seat. But I am confident that the Almighty has his plans and will work them out; and ... they will be the wisest and the best for us.' When asked if God was on the side of the North, he replied: 'I am not at all concerned about that, for I know the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's side. As he put it, 'I am not bound to win but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have.'" (p. 471)

Once the war was over, America had a decision to make—how should the South be treated as it was brought back into the Union. One school of thought was that of the Radical Republicans, hatred and punishment. Second was the moderate Republicans who sought to bring the states back into the Union slowly, while working to guarantee Constitutional rights to the citizens of the South, Black and White alike. The third option, that of the new president Andrew Johnson, was clemency, pardon, and rapid normalization of relations. Of course the worst of all worlds happened. The South believed they were owed clemency but the Radical Republicans imposed a harsh Reconstruction. The moderates continued to push for Constitutional protections in the face of a racist president and a recalcitrant South.

Johnson sums up the heartbreaking results, "The South, its whites virtually united in hatred of their governments, hit back by force. The years 1866–71 saw the birth of the Ku Klux Klan, a secret society of vigilantes, who wore white robes to conceal their identities, and who rode by night to do justice. They were dressed to terrify the black community, and did so; and where terror failed they used the whip and the noose. And they murdered carpetbaggers too. They also organized race-riots and racial lynchings. They were particularly active at election-time in the autumn, so that each contest was marked by violence and often by murder. Before the Civil War, Southern whites had despised the blacks and occasionally feared them; now they learned to hate them, and the hate was reciprocated. A different kind of society came into being, based on racial hatred. The Republican governors used state power in defense of blacks, scalawags, and carpetbaggers, and when state power proved inadequate, appealed to Congress and the White House. So Congress conducted inquiries and held hearings, and occasionally the White House sent troops. But the blacks and their white allies proved incapable of defending themselves, either by political cunning or by force."(p. 506) Reconstruction proved a failure, setting up the United States and specifically the South for a century of racial tensions.

Meanwhile, the North was anxious to put the war behind it and rush forward. As Americans moved into the frontiers, the conflicts with the Natives became more pronounced. Johnson summarizes, "The Indians were not murderous savages, who ought either to be detribalized and assimilated completely (as scores of thousands indeed were), or exterminated, or penned up in remote reservations—this being the view of the vast majority of 19th-century American whites. Nor were they sophisticated-primitive innocents, living in utopian and preservationist communities, brutally disturbed by cruel and heedless invaders of European extraction, that being the view of 20th-century romantic historians of Indian history. The more they, and the white settlers who displaced them, are studied in detail, and without prejudice on either side, the smaller the differences between them appear. Both Indians and whites were living in the same, often harsh country, and trying their best to master it, in different ways." (p. 518) Johnson believes the issues that led to the biggest conflicts were the Indians extreme fragmentation and general belief in the tribe's superiority to all other peoples, and their attitude toward settled farming, which was viewed as effeminate. While many Native Americans assimilated and lived successfully in white America, those that did not, were hamstrung by these two characteristics. Once again, the solution, Reservations, like Reconstruction, simply preserved and extenuated a bad situation.

Yet despite the violence on the Frontier, the American economy expanded rapidly. While England had been first out of the gate with industrialization, America was determined to surpass the mother country. "Americans were conscious, in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s, that they were proud inhabitants of the world's wealthiest country, enjoying living standards unprecedented in the history of humanity. All around them they could see the thriving machinery and infrastructure of this wealth-creating process, and it was inevitable that the men who presided over this pul sating, throbbing, enriching system should inspire confidence and invite emulation." (p. 550) With a new class of "political mediocrities" Americans turned to the real movers and shakers, the men of extreme wealth, the entrepreneur class. Men like Andrew Carnegie, who rose to riches with a steel empire and gave half his wealth away, and money men like J.P. Morgan, who demanded absolute adherence to good character, found a place in the American's imaginations as archetypal heroes. Others like Thomas Edison and Louis Comfort Tiffany created beautiful and useful things as part of America's creator class. Culturally and economically, America was finally growing up and showing the world the way forward. Sadly, Johnson states, "That the United States, lifted up by an extraordinary combination of self-created wealth and native talent, became a great cultural nation in the second half of the 19th century is a fact which the world, and even Americans themselves, have been slow to grasp." (p. 585)

The extreme wealth and cultural progress was not without its detractors. Ironically calling themselves Progressives, this group sought to retard the growth and, well, progress of the American people. Horrified by the growing gap between the rich and the poor and convinced that government action was needed to level society out, socialism began to become attractive. Despite the fact the almost-monopolies of Standard Oil and U.S. Steel were creating cheaper and better products, do-gooders and muckrakers sought to break them up for the simple sin of being big. While becoming unimaginably wealthy themselves, the capitalists were bringing wealth and leisure possibilities to ordinary Americans. But the size of the companies and the extreme wealth generated were enough to attract those who wanted control for themselves.

Johnson summarizes the Progressives excellently, "The anti-bigness emotion, so characteristic of the decades between the Civil War and World War One--and becoming stronger with each—is worth looking at because it was unAmerican. It is necessary to distinguish between Populists, who aimed deliberately at the farming vote and agricultural prejudices, and Progressives, who tended to be highly educated intellectuals aiming at an urban audience… It has been argued that Progressivism was the hostile reaction of the educated middle class to the overwhelming power of Big Business, whose wealth and scale and lure elbowed them out of the political-economic picture entirely, or so they feared. Since the days of the Founding Fathers, the educated elite had guided, if they had not exactly run, the United States, and they felt their influence was being eroded by the sheer quantity of money now sloshing around in the bowels of America's great ship of state… careful [prosopographical] analysis shows that the great majority were solidly middle class, university graduates of old British stock... By 1900, however, a number of new political fashions had come together to constitute a broad-based educated left-gas-and-water (or municipal) socialism, which was worldwide, trust-busting, conservationism (anti-urban sprawl, pro-wilderness), health fanaticism, the notion of educated purposeful elites as ‘guardians of the people, which was shared by a wide range of elitists, from Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Benito Mussolini, and literary and artistic bohemianism.'" (p. 609)

Despite the attacks on the national success, America continued to grow. By the time of avowed Progressive Woodrow Wilson's presidency, however, it was time for America to take the international stage. "Americans enjoyed a laissez-faire society which was by no means unrestrained but whose limitations to their economic freedom were imposed by their belief in a God-ordained moral code rather than a government one devised by man. The rise of rural Populism, the development of muckraking, the appearance in the big cities of middle class Progressivism, and, not least, the romantic reformism and altruistic nationalism of Theodore Roosevelt-all these were premonitory symptoms of change. And under Wilson the changes actually began to take place, hastened and accelerated by America's fortuitous involvement in a catastrophic world war which destroyed Old Europe forever." (p. 627)

This new maturity ushered America into the familiar territory of modern day. It was time, in the Progressive's opinion, for America to grow up and fulfill the utopian promise the reformers believed they had be given. "Gradually, the progressive intelligentsia, and the bulk of the Democratic Party, began to see a strong federal government, with wide powers of intervention, as the defender of the ordinary man and woman against the excesses of corporate power. The notion of the Public Sector (good; needs to be expanded) as opposed to the Private Sector (potentially bad; needs to be invigilated and regulated) began to take possession of the minds of the do-gooders. For this purpose, it was necessary for the state to expand its revenues. Therefore a persona income tax, especially if it possessed progressive characteristics, and therefore was income-redistributive as well as revenue-raising, was a desirable institution." (p. 636)

From the ability to impose their political will, the Progressives moved to the desire to impose on the morality of Americans with the ill-fated Prohibition amendment. Johnson provides a great analysis, "The imposition of Prohibition, and its failure, illustrates perfectly a number of important principles in American history. First, it shows the widespread belief in America that utopia can be achieved in the here and-now and the millennium secured in this world, as well as the next. Second, it indicates a related belief that ‘Americanization' can be achieved by compulsion and law. Third, it draws attention to a weakness in American public opinion and policy—a tendency to will the end without willing the means ('freeing the blacks was another instance).... Fourth, the utopianism inherent in Prohibition came up against the utopianism inherent in the rooted and active American principle that freedom of enterprise must be totally unrestricted." (p. 680) Lack of effective enforcement led to the failure of the effort to clean up America and it was quickly repealed.

The 20s brought Harding and his "return to normalcy." It also landed Calvin Coolidge in the presidency. "Like his predecessor Harding, only more systematically and of set purpose and belief, Coolidge was a minimalist politician. He thought the essence of the republic was not so much democracy itself as the rule of law, and that the prime function of government was to uphold and enforce it." (p. 713) He was an incredible administrator, fighting budget deficits with a vengeance. Together with Harding, they let the market crash in 1921 with no government intervention. Had his method been followed in 1929, some argue the Great Depression may have been nothing more than another roll of the business cycle. His minimalism allowed America to prosper in a way that was "real, widespread, though not ubiquitous, and unprecedented." (p. 718) Coolidge chose not to run again, even though he knew the country could have used his steady guiding hand during the market correction he saw coming. Being president simply taxed him too much and he was not up for another term.

And the market did correct. Herbert Hoover reversed course dramatically from Coolidge and pulled every government lever he could. FDR doubled down on these policies. Johnson makes a good case that while all reasons the Great Depression became "great" are complicated, it seems clear that FDR's interventionist policies probable lengthened what should have been a much shorter recession. "The 1929 crash revealed... the naivety and ignorance of bankers, businessmen, Wall Street experts, and academic economists, high and low; it showed they did not understand the system they had been so confidently manipulating. They had tried to substitute their own well-meaning policies for what Adam Smith called the 'invisible hand' of the market and they had wrought disaster." (p. 734) Roosevelt's policies were erratic and followed no clear, discernible ideology, injecting fatal uncertainty into an already tenuous situation.

But then came World War II. FDR was in his element as a war-time president. Although he had railed against business before the war, he begged for their assistance once war was upon us. Johnson believes, "America won the war essentially by harnessing capitalist methods to the unlimited production of firepower and mechanical manpower." (p. 781) America had literally been preparing her whole life for this moment. And in this moment, she shone.  The apotheosis of her power became the atomic bomb. Johnson convincingly shows how this weapon of mass destruction was the only thing that would actually make the world safe for democracy. Truman, a simple man of simple convictions, made the decision to drop them on Japan with a clear conscience, knowing it was the best way forward. This plunged the United States into the role of international policeman as we took up the mantle of keeping the forces of evil at bay. This Truman Doctrine, combined with the Marshall Plan, caused America to be looked at as the world's savior as well as making it an object of hate. No one likes to be a dependent, but America continues to provide and protect, knowing it is ultimately best for the world.

As America entered the peaceful and prosperous 1950s, Eisenhower took the helm. He seems to have deliberately downplayed his own genius for the benefit of the country. "George Kennan came closer to the truth when he wrote that on foreign affairs Eisenhower was a man of keen political intelligence and penetration ... When he spoke of such matters seriously and in a protected official circle, insights of a high order flashed out time after time through the curious military gobbledygook in which he was accustomed to expressing and concealing his thoughts. At public press conferences Eisenhower used his gobbledygook to avoid giving answers which plain English could not conceal, and often pleaded ignorance for the same reason. He was Machiavellian enough to pretend to misunderstand his own translator when dealing with persistent foreigners. Transcripts of his secret conferences show the lucidity and power of his thoughts. His editing of drafts by speechwriters and of statements by Dulles reveal an excellent command of English which he could exercise when he chose. Churchill was one of the few men who appreciated him at his worth, and it could be said that they were the two greatest statesmen of the mid-20th century.” (p. 829)

Johnson spends considerable time on Nixon and Kennedy. It was clear that the media had a favorite and they would use their influence to control the narrative. Nixon was to be the bad guy and Kennedy the messianic figure. Johnson show clear disgust with the unfairness, describing Nixon in glowing terms and reserving some of his harshest criticisms for Kennedy. "By all historical standards, Nixon should have been an American media hero. He was a natural candidate for laurels in the grand old tradition of self-help, of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. He came from nowhere. His family background was respectable but obscure. He worked his way through an unfashionable college. He had no money except what he earned by his own efforts. He had, to begin with, no influential friends or connections. His life was dominated by a passionate desire to serve in public office, sometimes masquerading as brutal ambition, and by his patriotism and love of country, which knew no bounds. He was an autodidact and voracious reader, always trying to better himself, intellectually as well as professionally. He combined this earnest cultural endeavor with solid campaigning and administrative skills, which brought him early and continuing success, and with a modest private life which was morally impeccable." (p. 847)

Of Kennedy, Johnson says, "Jack never had his father's insatiable relish for money, power, and corruption. Most of his life he simply did old Joe's bidding. As he put it, ruefully: 'I guess Dad has decided he's going to be the ventriloquist, so that leaves me the role of dummy." In one important respect, Jack rejected the family tradition. Money did not interest him and he never troubled to learn anything about it. It was not that he was extravagant. Quite the contrary, he was mean...But, if he was not interested in making money, in most other respects he happily accepted the family philosophy, especially its central tenet: that the laws of God and the republic, admirable in themselves, did not apply to Kennedys, at any rate male ones. Like his father, he dealt with gangsters, when he felt so inclined. From the start he was taught by his father that bluff, freely laced with money—or outright mendacity if need be-could remove all difficulties." (p. 849) Johnson goes after Kennedy on every level, referring to his drug addiction, womanizing, poor political decision, outright lying, and marriage of convenience to Jackie. He even bursts the bubble on JFK's most notable success, the Cuban Missile Crisis. Johnson is not entirely sure that Kennedy did not make a bad situation worse.

Upon Kennedy's death and beatification, Lyndon Johnson found himself unexpectedly president. Although he had coveted the job his whole life, getting it under these circumstances seems to have affected him. The corrupt, racist threw himself into preserving the Kennedy legacy with a series of social programs designed to end poverty and bring about the utopian ideals so desired by the original Progressives. While greatly expanding government outlays in what would eventually prove to be a colossal waste of money, he also expanded America's role in Vietnam. This ultimately led to his inability to run again and win his second elected term. 

His unpopularity opened the door for Nixon's reappearance. Unfortunately, the hatred of the press meant that all Nixon's mistakes and errors in judgment would be magnified. Even spying on rival campaigns, which was apparently de rigueur , would be turned into a Constitutional crisis, referred today as Watergate.

Ford took over, pardoned Nixon, but was left with a very hostile Congress. This led to what is actually a bigger crisis than a 2-bit bungled spying campaign, the fall of Vietnam. Although America had won the war, after Nixon's resignation, "Ford was obliged to look on helplessly while such freedom as a decade of effort by America had secured for the peoples of Indochina was removed step by step. As US military aid to South Vietnam tailed off from 1973, the balance of armed power shifted decisively to the Communist regime in the North. By the end of the year the North had achieved a two to-one superiority and, in defiance of all the accords carefully worked out by Nixon and Kissinger, launched a general invasion. Bound hand and foot by Congress, Ford felt powerless to act and simply made verbal protests. In January 1975 the whole of central Vietnam had to be evacu ated and a million terrified refugees fled towards Saigon. In an appeal to Congress, Ford warned: ‘American unwillingness to provide adequate assistance to allies fighting for their lives could seriously affect our credibility throughout the world as an ally.' Congress did nothing. At his news conference on March 26 Ford again pleaded with Congress, warning of a massive shift in the foreign policies of many countries and a fundamental threat ... to the security of the United States. Congress paid no attention. Four weeks later, on April 21, the Vietnamese government abdicated. Marine helicopters lifted American officials, and a few Vietnamese allies, from the rooftop of the US embassy in Saigon, an image of flight and humiliation etched on the memories of countless Americans who watched it on TV. It was indeed the most shameful defeat in the whole of American history. The democratic world looked on in dismay at this abrupt collapse of American power, which had looked so formidable only two years before." (p. 908)

It took the presidency of Ronald Reagan to restore America's faith in itself. He presided over a genuine economic expansion and a peaceful foreign landscape. Although the media had developed a taste for blood and so Washington became a constant source of scandal and rumor-mongering. Most good and decent people seem to be scared off from such an environment which meant that America got Bill Clinton at the top. Scandal followed him in all he touched, whether it was financial dealing, womanizing, or shady behavior in governance. 

Finishing his history in 1997, Johnson concludes, "It is appropriate to end this history of the American people on a note of success, because the story of America is essentially one of difficulties being overcome by intelligence and skill, by faith and strength of purpose, by courage and persistence. America today, with its 260 million people, its splendid cities, its vast wealth, and its unrivaled power, is a human achievement without parallel. That achievement—the transformation of a mostly uninhabited wilderness into the supreme national artifact of history-did not come about without heroic sacrifice and great sufferings stoically endured, many costly failures, huge disappointments, defeats, and tragedies. There have indeed been many setbacks in 400 years of American history. As we have seen, many unresolved problems, some of daunting size, remain. But the Americans are, above all, a problem-solving people. They do not believe that anything in this world is beyond human capacity to soar to and dominate. They will not give up. Full of essential goodwill to each other and to all, confident in their inherent decency and their democratic skills, they will attack again and again the ills in their society, until they are overcome or at least substantially redressed. So the ship of state sails on, and mankind still continues to watch its progress, with wonder and amazement and sometimes apprehension, as it moves into the unknown waters of the 21st century and the third millennium. The great American republican experiment is still the cynosure of the world's eyes. It is still the first, best hope for the human race. Looking back on its past, and forward to its future, the auguries are that it will not disappoint an expectant humanity." (p. 976)

My favorite historian has written on my favorite historical topic, the history of America. He has covered us fairly, "warts and all", and he evokes a genuine love of an extraordinary place.

Unfreedom of the Press by Mark Levin

I really enjoy Mark Levin's books because of the thorough research and insightful conclusions. Unfreedom of the Press, however, was a disappointment. While he does an admirable job with the history and evolution of the press in America, the book was too topical for my taste. It will be outdated by the end of Trump's presidency. I wish he would have stuck to themes and big ideas instead.

I was happy to see that he doesn't point to some idealized objective and impartial time of press perfection. In fact, he makes it clear that the media have always had their thumbs on the scales. The difference is that it was more overt. He points approvingly to the Revolutionary "printers, pamphleteers, and newspaper publishers [who] were truly brave souls—they were patriots, pioneers, and entrepreneurs, both leaders of and reflective of the colonists and their commitment to liberty and revolution. They risked everything to advance and defend an independent nation and civil society based on the ancient truths and observations of Aristotle and later Cicero, among others; the Enlightenment principles and reasoning of John Locke and Montesquieu, among others; and specifically, the moral underpinnings of natural law and natural rights, the unalienable rights of the individual, liberty, equal justice, property rights, freedom of speech, and yes, freedom of the press—in sum, this is the essence of the Declaration of Independence, the formal proclamation of the united colonies and America's founding." (58-59) The press had a definite bias, but it leaned towards the defining and pushing of quintessential American values.

After the Revolution, both the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans tries to steer America on the best path and the press broke down into two factions, each party with its own mouthpieces. This very political press was arguably worse in its attacks and disinformation than what we see today, but it loudly proclaimed its loyalties. Because of the danger of a French-style revolution invading America's shores, John Adams began to severely limit what could be said, jailing opponents in the press. While we rightly see this as a large infringement on freedom of the press, the fragility of the new nation and the rabid attacks in the press caused Adams to see the need for the Sedition Act. This is the beginning of Levin's multiple examples to prove Trump a lightweight when it comes to suppressing freedom of the press. He continues with tales of suppression involving Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR. He also uses this section to point out myriad examples of the current media's vitriolic treatment of Trump.

Today, the press calls itself objective and unbiased, yet believes it has a duty to interpret the news, making sense of events for the consumer. As such, they create what Levin calls "pseudo-events." With the 24/7 news cycle, small or non-stories are endlessly repeated. The reporters themselves become part of the story. Through the non-stop saturation the media color American's views of what is happening. Also, they choose what to flood the public with and what to leave out. Levin points to the NYT's and others' shameful non-reporting of the Holocaust at the time it was clearly happening and the continued lack of reporting factually on Israel. Finally he details the particularly rabid reporting on Trump and the Russian collusion narrative. All-in-all, Levin is not impressed with the medias ability to present the facts in an objective and unbiased manner.

In the Epilogue, Levin restates his argument: The press was a patriotic shaper of America in the Revolutionary period. The era of Progressivism led to a press concerned with objectivity, not so much in the thinking, but objective in the methodology, a level of professionalism. Modern media has moved beyond even this pretext of unattainable objectivity to activist journalism concerned with advancing a particular narrative to further a pre-determined set of goals. This has led to egregious breaches of trust and some all-out fallacies and serious omissions in pursuit of a higher good. Rather than clean up their act and re-gain the trust of Americans, modern journalists pound their chests and demand respect as members of the "free press." This has become apparent in repeated statements decrying Trumps anti-press statements as the dangerous rantings of a demagogue. But as Levin showed, Trump is doing nothing egregious compared to many previous presidents, and it is in fact the press that is showing an unprecedented predilection to attack the president with false and misleading stories.

He concludes with, "The abandonment of objective truth and, worse, the rejection of the principles and values of America's early press and revolutionaries, is not new for the Times. It long predates the Trump presidency And it has led the Times and other media outlets into a very bleak and dark place, destructive of the press as a crucial institution for a free people. If newsrooms and journalists do not act forthwith and with urgency to "fundamentally transform" their approach to journalism, which, sadly, is highly unlikely, their credibility will continue to erode and may well reach a point soon where it is irreparably damaged with a large portion of the citizenry—rightly so. The media will not only marginalize themselves, but they will continue to be the greatest threat to freedom of the press today—not President Trump or his administration, but the current practitioners of what used to be journalism." (226)


References:
John Adams: Richard Buel, Jr. "Freedom of the Press in Revolutionary America: The Evolution of Libertainanism, 1760-1820," in The Press & the American Revolution, (Bailyn and Hench 1980) p. 61
Abraham Lincoln: Harold Holzer, Lincoln and the Power of the Press (2014) p. 335-336
Woodrow Wilson: Christopher B. Daly, "How Woodrow Wilson's Propaganda Machine Changed American Journalism," The Conversation (website), April 27, 2017
FDR: David Beito, "FDR's War Against the Press," Reason (website), April 5, 2017; The New Deal Witch Hunt," National Review (website), July 30, 2013
Andrew Mellon: David Burnham, A law Unto Itself (1989) p. 229

On Speaking Well by Peggy Noonan

A friend lent me his copy of On Speaking Well by Peggy Noonan because of our shared love for the author and rhetoric.

It was a fun, easy read, full of anecdotes and helpful little tidbits for the speech writer.

She begins by saying that before you write a speech, you must first ask yourself, "What does this speech have to do? Every speech has a job a reason for being." Get a handle on the task at hand before writing a word.

Next, make it "speakable." Say the speech out loud. Too often, something beautiful on the page is too long and convoluted for a speech.

Couch big ideas in simple words. Great speaker are not great because their words flow. It's because they have great things to say, things about which they are passionate, things they love.

This means the most important part of a speech is its logic. Flowery words sound lovely, but are forgettable if there is no there there. It is beautiful language in service to a great idea that makes for memorable rhetoric.

This is a wonderful little resource for the rhetoric teacher who wants her students to speak well.

The Day the World Came to Town by Jim DeFede

A fellow teacher, who knows of my love of reading, loaned me The Day the World Came to Town by Jim DeFede. It's a great story of hope and generosity focused on those left stranded by 9/11.

Once the US closed its airspace, thousands of planes had to land at the closest airports or return home. Because of its past as a military airport during WW2, the tiny town of Gander Newfoundland hosted 38 planes from all over the world.

The town mustered every citizen who poured out to help the stranded passengers in whatever way they could. Churches and Lions Clubs packed meeting rooms and pews with sleeping bags, towels, toiletries, and volunteers to offer succor to the travelers.

Meanwhile, town and tourists alike had to process the horror of the Twin Towers going down and new world created by the terrorist attacks.

During the 4-5 days the passengers spent in the small town, the generosity and heightened emotions led to quick and lasting bonds.

Jim DeFede does an excellent job of honing in on individuals and their stories. He highlights military officials, cops, CEOs, philanthropists, adoptive parents, and most touching, the parents of a missing NY firefighter. All feel helpless and hopeless, but the town rallies to do all they can to comfort and provide for the stranded sojourners.

He wraps the book up with an epilogue telling the rest of the story. The body of the missing firefighter is found. A romance continues. Families return to some semblance of normalcy.

It's a good and easy read, definitely worth the time.