The U.S.A.: A Secular Federal Republic (Not a Nation)

The classics scholar William Arrowsmith said that the major ancient Greek tragedies dealt with the meaning of key terms politically-involved Athenians "contested," argued over.

We in the U.S. also have profound disagreements over basic terms. Case in point: America as a "Christian nation" (or a "White Christian nation") vs. the U.S. as a "secular Federal Republic" and not in a meaningful sense a nation at all.

We have no established church (synagog, mosque, or whatever), and Amendment One in our Bill of Rights forbids "an establishment of religion"; and, in a significant omission, "God" isn't mentioned in our Constitution. As a matter of official state policy, we're a secular establishment (which has been quite good for the various religions in American society: they're stronger than in most places with established religion).

And we're not a nation: one "ethnos" — people — with one origin and culture, and a history beginning "back in the mists of time" or even in an origin myth, all united by "blood and soil."

We're a hodgepodge; if you want a fancy image, a mosaic, the one I prefer, that thoroughly American dish, chop suey: one thing, sort of, but in complex ways. Collin Woodard counts "Eleven Regional Cultures of North America," and there are good historical reasons for that kind of regional analysis. For one thing, we're not only still kind of fighting the U.S. Civil War, but also the English struggles of the 17th century that separated out Puritans from less radical Christians.

Plus other ways that we're sliced and diced and divide ourselves up, which on balance is a good thing — *IF*

Our diversity is a good thing if, but only if, most Americans can see ourselves as «One Republic (if we can keep it)», with citizens unified by some agreement on basic terms, plus consciousness of what it's important for us to argue about and dedication to rules of civil contention and competition

PEDANTRY TIME: "Our Democracy" and Other Mischievous Myths

The US is not a democracy; at least aspirationally, we're a liberal federal republic with a "mixt constitution".

The "mixed" part includes a large dollar of monarchy with a president who's chief of state and head of government (or head of state and chief of government, and screw it, I'm not going to look *that* up again). The Senate was initially designed to represent the States and to be the aristocratic element, and for good and for ill it's kept a lot of the aristocratic bits.

And we common ruck got the House of Representatives and elections.

From the Bill of Rights on, we've had the liberalism of limited government with a People with "unalienable" rights, and eventually and most of the time a judiciary that aren't "lions under the throne" working for the king, but an independent branch of government having final say — in theory — on the meaning of the Constitution and laws. (Check out Andy Jackson and the Indians on the "in theory" part.)

This is all important, because "democracy" has some literal meanings and history as well as the warm-and-fuzzies of a complimentary term. It's a bit part, but the nominal hero of Aristophanes's THE CONGRESSWOMEN gets to summarize a whole lot about Athenian democracy when he identifies himself as "I'm Athenian, male, of age, and free." I.e., he's a native and not a resident alien, a girl or woman, a boy, or a slave. He's part of the _demos_ which was only a relatively small part of the population of democratic Athens.

A lot of the history of the "liberal" part of "liberal (republican) democracy" is expanding that "demos" in "democracy."

The US formula for a long time was "free, White, and 21," with "male" and often "Christian" going unstated: that was the effective demos. We may be heading back to that idea, which will not be good for republican institutions and liberal protection of people who's ancestors weren't free in the USA, are not White — and who's White and who's not has been complex historically — and maybe young and on their way to inheriting messes their elders created ("Posterity don't vote").

And "male" can also get complicated: "Real men" and all that.

I'm a member of the Democratic Party and fond of democracy, but I swore allegiance to the Constitution and a Republic in which institutions and norms are supposed to keep any part of government from growing tyrannical, including a self-defined Demos that comes to see itself as a Nation and "The People" (who count) and an arrogant, exceptional, downright Chosen People at that.

Old Enough to Be Given a Gun & Sent Off to War, Old Enough to Buy a Gun

Op-Ed in The New York Times: 

Justice "John Paul Stevens: Repeal the Second Amendment" 

— and raise the age for purchasing guns to 21.

I'll repeat (and keep repeating) my objection to raising the age for gun purchase to 18, as part of my objection to all rules outside of Constitutionally-mandated ages for public office that undermine 18 as the age of majority.

For mass shootings in the US generally, the shooters have been almost always 20-49-year-old White males. Youngsters are an issue only with mass shootings in schools, which are just under a quarter of mass shootings in the US, which in turn are only a small portion of gun deaths.

A campaign for eventual repeal of the 2nd Amendment is a good idea if, but only if, it helps and does not hurt immediate efforts to ban civilian possession of semi-automatic weapons outside of shooting ranges — plus restrictions on ammunition-magazine sizes, bump stocks, conversion kits to make semi-automatic weapons automatic, large-quantity purchases of guns and ammo, etc.

Meanwhile, we need to reinforce vigorously 18 as the age of majority with full rights and responsibilities, working against trends toward arrested development. We also need a lot of research and other efforts to make adulthood in the US suck less.

Yet again, no, The Kids Are Not Alright (sic), but in terms of social pathology they're usually doing better than their elders. To repeat Mike Males's points, except when they're doing better, older US teens are a normal adult US population. And for the US population generally — especially older White males — we need to work on the epidemics of alienation, loneliness, anger, rage, and despair.

Guilt and "Agency": Stormy Daniels, Donald Trump, and Deserving

I was struck by and somewhat upset by Stormy Daniels's in the 60 MINUTES interview saying she felt she "deserved" having sex with Donald Trump even though she didn't want to. I hope she's come to realize that that feeling of "having it coming" (as an FB contributor pointed out) is itself a kind of victimization.

I hope also that Daniels's comment renews a discussion.

Three background stories I can add to such a discussion:

(1) Years ago, the National Organization for Women (NOW) chapter in Butler County OH met with a rape counsellor, and we went through an exercise on how one should counsel a woman who'd been raped, including a woman who felt she somehow had invited the rape or "deserved" it. Some of the participants quite correctly denied that our hypothetical "she" had done anything wrong and deserved rape but repeated variations on "There was nothing you could have done"; "There's nothing you can do to prevent a rape like that" — and it got pointed out that it's a bad idea to substitute for guilt a sense of helplessness. (The rape counsellor counseled us to say "It *wasn't* your fault" and then say less and listen more.)

(2) Even longer ago, a rehab person told my father that he couldn't help having had a stroke, but "Invalidism is a separate disease"; she insisted strongly that he *could* choose not to become an invalid.

(3) A member of a local Jewish congregation is a survivor of the Nazi death camps. One occasion when she was being introduced as a survivor and that was dwelt on, she said that she had lived a long life and had done many things and was not *merely* a death-camp survivor.

There are horrific exceptions — some prisoners, e.g., children in abusive families — but much the time people can't avoid being hurt, but we can avoid becoming victims. It is a delicate issue, but in various senses of "we" we need to help people who've been harmed to heal and to not "get over it" but use the experience in ways that they can feel and be empowered.

We (in those various senses) need to help people lose a sense of guilt while retaining and strengthening a sense of agency. We need to help people — where it's possible — to recognize they've had a literal or figurative stoke but not become an invalid; to understand they've been hurt but to be a survivor, among other things, and not, at their core, a victim.

Unplanned Pregnancies, Sexually-Transmitted Diseases, and Effective Sex-Ed (Mostly Male Division)

Opening of a recent news story from the US Midwest: 

"The former head of Ohio’s sexual abstinence programs 

played a role in the Trump administration’s decision to end

a federal grant program to fight teen pregnancy [...]."

My comment on a key aspect of effective "sex-ed" for reducing unplanned pregnancies and VD/STDs, and more generally: 
One of the more useful moves that will reduce unintended pregnancies is the law in LA requiring male porn performers to wear condoms while performing on camera. America needs a well-crafted and mildly Machiavellian "Wrap That Willy!" campaign getting across the message that Real Men control their reproduction and protect their health, and that young, virile, Real Men use condoms and hold their erections (as opposed to their literally limp-dick elders).
The issue here is indeed morality and values and whether we value taboos and decorum over preventing unwanted pregnancies and definitely unwanted diseases — and reducing the number of abortions. (Mature men additionally value the health and desires of their sexual partners, but that's another ad/propaganda campaign.)I am serious here. When AIDS was a pressing issue I challenged some S.W. Ohio newspaper editors with the question that if they could save ten lives a year they'd run stories with headlines like, "Butt-Fucking Is Risky: Wrap That Willy." Linguistic and other taboos vs. lives. They said, of course, that they'd obey the taboo and not run such headlines or stories — but I'd made them think about it and feel bad, and I said both were my objectives with the thought experiment.

"None Dare Call it Treason" Again (a View from the Left)

Running through my mind is a bit attributed on "BrainyQuote" to John Harington, but now part of folklore and popular across the political spectrum, if especially on the Right. I give a verse version:

"'Treason doth never prosper!'" Hmmm ... 
"What is the reason? ...
"For if treason prosper,
None dare call it treason."

Treason against the United States consists "only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort," which is clearest in times of war, declared by the Congress — which we are not in. Still, Lyndon Johnson had a point in accusing Richard Nixon of treason for his dealing with the Vietnamese to continue what we call the Vietnam War — and the same for Joe Biden's exclamation for the Russian Affair if it turns out to be a soft coup.

Anyway, in the larger "Russian Affair," we may be looking at "conspiracy against the United States" in an everyday-English meaning of people's working together in ways that undermined a crucial democratic aspect — elections — of the "mixt constitution" of the American Republic. You can't get a clever saying out of that or a bumper sticker or a chant, but it would be a deep betrayal.

The Right to Be Let Alone

In 1972, Student Life officials at Miami University (Oxford, OH) applied the University rule against solicitation in the dorms against political campaigns. For sound political reasons, neither the McGovern nor Nixon campaigns intended to canvass the MUO dorms, but we joined together to assert what I explicitly called our right to annoy people to spread our message — propaganda in a neutral sense — and solicit votes.

The two campaigns and our First Amendment rights prevailed, which was and remains a good thing.

Since then, the means of communication have multiplied, and simultaneously we've moved toward the hyper-capitalism and rule by hucksters satirized in Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth's great comic dystopia, The Space Merchants (1952/53). So nowadays we must balance a generalized First Amendment right to propagandize, sell to, and annoy against a generalized (Fourth Amendment) right that can be usefully overstated with Justice William O. Douglas's line, “The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom."

As lawyers can now chime in, it will be a complicated balancing act.