American Values Under the Microscope

Hardly a day goes by without someone advocating our return to traditional American values. But just what are they? Are they the values of the Declaration of Independence (“All men are created equal”), or the Constitution’s acceptance of slavery coupled to a formula equating Afro-Americans to but two-thirds of a white man? 

Do our historical values include the willingness of a vast segment of our citizenry to go to war to defend their ownership of another human and to treat that person as property without any rights or feelings? That they believed slavery was divinely ordained? And, after they lost the battle to retain bondage as a permitted way of life, do our values include devotion to laws to eternalize the second class citizenry of former slaves and others who came to our shores as free men but whose skin tone was darker than white folks? 

Do our values include the near annihilation of indigenous Americans and their near perpetual subjugation on reservations? 

Do our American values include our historic prejudice against most immigrant groups, from the Irish to the Chinese to the Southern Italian, the Eastern European, the Jewish, the Hispanic? Did you know that while we encouraged Chinese immigration to build the transcontinental railroad and other infrastructure projects, legal immigrants from China could not become naturalized U.S. citizens until 1943?

Were you aware that concurrent with Russian pogroms against Jews in the 1880s, white Americans ransacked Chinatowns across the country and killed their residents? At the same time, Southerners threw out Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan grew and Jim Crow laws became widespread in the states of the Confederacy. 

It seems white Americans, regardless of era, are endlessly mandating and legislating rules and regulations to protect their supremacy even as demographics works against them. To keep their hold on the levers of power, white America—now mostly those who are conservative Republicans—preach fear. 

“Fear is powerful,” former president Barack Obama has said. “Telling people that somebody’s out to get you, or somebody took your job, or somebody has it out for you, or is going to change you, or your community, or your way of life—that’s an old story and it has shown itself to be powerful in societies all around the world. It is a deliberate, systematic effort to tap into that part of our brain that carries fear in it.”

Before you jump to the conclusion that fear-mongering is exclusively a Republican tactic, recall that John F. Kennedy ran on fear of a missile gap versus the Soviet Union; Lyndon Baines Johnson made voters fear a nuclear holocaust if Barry Goldwater became president. It is instructive to note, however, that Richard Nixon’s law and order platform and George H. W. Bush’s Willie Horton election campaign ad played on racial fears.  

To Charles Blow of The New York Times, fear drives conservative thought and action. It is not a fear of loss of physical security. Rather, it is fear of loss of power. 

A little history: Woodrow Wilson is lauded for his leadership on the world stage, for his 14 Points program for peace after the Great War, including the creation of the League of Nations,  which ultimately America did not join (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Points).

But Wilson, a Southerner born and bred, brought to the White House racist beliefs. He removed blacks from civil service jobs. The military was segregated. And, despite his advocacy of democracy with its inherent foundation of free speech, Wilson stifled dissent to his conduct of America’s involvement in the war in Europe. 

With the compliance of a Democratic controlled Congress, Wilson attacked his detractors through the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. The laws made it illegal to “willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of the Government of the United States.” Nearly 1,000 people were convicted of violating the law which the Supreme Court upheld as constitutional (https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/supremecourt/capitalism/sources_document1.html).

Under a president who has declared the press “an enemy of the people,” and a Republican Congress that has abdicated its constitutional responsibility to act as a check and balance to executive excess, imagine the potential for similar authoritarian action, especially after a Republican majority is confirmed on the Supreme Court. 

In his eulogy of Senator John McCain, his long time friend and former Senate colleague Joe Lieberman said our founding values were freedom, human rights, opportunity, democracy and equal justice under the law.

To former vice president Joe Biden our values entail “inclusivity, tolerance, diversity, respect for the rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of the press” (https://nyti.ms/2eZFNZ1). 

Lieberman and Biden’s recitations are values we should strive for but in many instances have failed to achieve, not just in the distant past but in the last 50 years as well. We continue to deny human rights and opportunity to all; voting rights have been restricted; intolerance is endemic; respect for the rule of law has been undermined; freedom of the press has been challenged; diversity is portrayed as anti-American.

Two hundred years ago for many our values included the idea that it was permitted, even biblically sanctioned, that slavery was an acceptable practice. A hundred years ago it was accepted that women were not appropriately competent to be entrusted with the right to vote. Until 1913 with the ratification of the 17th Amendment, the choice of U.S. senators was kept out of the hands of the public at large. Senators were chosen by state legislatures. There are some politicians today, mostly Republicans given their dominance of state legislatures through gerrymandered elections, who would like to go back to that system by rescinding the 17th Amendment. So much for their dedication to democracy!

American values are an evolving concept. Every so often they are assaulted, as they were under McCarthyism. Only through education can we hope to instill in each and every American a knowledge of where we came from and what we have attained and how far we still have to travel to reach the ideals Lieberman and Biden illuminated. 

American Values Are Worth Saving

Misspeaks by politicians are nothing new. From Bill Clinton's finger-pointing avowal, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” to Richard Nixon's jowel-shaking, “I am not a crook,” Americans have been treated to one doozy after another as our ruling class and would-be members try to balance the need to talk a lot with the difficulty of not saying or doing anything controversial.

Does Hillary's “a basket of deplorables” spring to mind? Or do you remember “mucaca” (monkey) from George Allen's run for a U.S. Senate seat from Virginia? How about Howard Dean's exhilarated scream to rally downcast supporters after he lost the Iowa presidential nominating caucus many expected him to win. He never recovered from the over-exuberance. 

To this short, incomplete record of history add Andrew Cuomo's foot-in-the-mouth comment that America has never been great. Never mind if he is right. All that matters in political misspeak is, does it provide an opponent endless opportunity to exploit the comment to stir up his or her base while sowing doubt among the speaker's cohort and potential followers.

The "Make America Great Again" candidate and now president pounced. Rightly so, for in politics nuance does not secure votes. Cuomo stumbled and no amount of backtracking will erase a videotape that will launch a thousand shiploads of negative ads.

There's another reality in current political conversation. No matter what Donald Trump says or does, his base will not falter. Elected Republicans and those wanting such status will not abandon him. Only those retiring or already out to pasture speak out. The former, however, still vote the party line, the party these days being the Party of Trump.

To unseat Trump independents and brainwash-free Republicans will have to put greed aside to save the republic (ignore the economy, patriots). It won’t be easy.

We hear a lot about American values. How Trump and his disciples push ideas and actions—on immigration, bashing dissenters, tax relief, support of autocrats, to name several—that are not reflective of those values, at least the values most often identified with America since the end of the second world war.

But just how complementary or contradictory is Trump to our historic values? Perhaps, our history is different than our values of the last seven decades. Perhaps, Trump is the mirror we cringe at looking into because we would see a long history of slavery, worker exploitation, racism, xenophobia, restrictive immigration, eugenics, repression of dissent during times of war, boundless executive authority, discrimination of the latest wave of immigrants.

Cuomo might well have been thinking of these stains on our heritage when he spoke. But telling the American people the truth is not always the wisest or safest road to the White House.

A year ago, former vice president Joseph Biden talked about American values in an Op-Ed printed in The New York Times.

Under the headline "Reclaiming American Values," Biden phrased them thusly: inclusivity, tolerance, diversity, respect for the rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of the press. If these are the democratic principles we wish to see around the world, America must be the first to model them." https://nyti.ms/2y0xPq9

Let's be honest. America did not always embrace them. Sadly, Trump gets a failing grade for all of them. Even more sad, the Republican Party has abandoned its principles to blindly follow him down the rabbit hole. Saddest of all, nearly half the American public has turned its back on what it should have learned in any basic civics class.

America of Our Past and Future

There are a lot of Independents, and even some disillusioned Democrats, who are hoping Mitt Romney, if elected president, will become the flip-flopper-in-chief, that his rightward leaning on social issues has been just a ploy to get the Republican nomination, that he will revert to the more progressive positions he held as governor of Massachusetts.

How naïve! If Romney, or any Republican, wins the keys to the White House later this year it would be in tandem with a conservative GOP sweep of both houses of Congress. In a twinkling of an eye we’ll again be living in a time when safety nets were relegated to circus tents alone.

Consider, if you will, what “restored American values” will mean to life in the teen years of the 21st century:

At first, there’ll be a wire hangar shortage as back alley practitioners of now banned abortions for any reason will stock up on the tools of their trade. Then, as the free enterprise system always does, “job creators” will open up new factories and production lines to meet the demand.

Of course, sordid locales and hangar-therapy isn’t for everyone. Rich women, read that Republican women, will still be able to undergo abortions either abroad or by licensed American doctors in the privacy of their medical suites. The doctors, after all, are mostly Republicans too, and now that health care no longer would be a universal right, they’ll be free to charge whatever they want, or the patient can afford. Since these women, or their paramours, are rich, well, the sky’s the limit.

In a Republican future, there’ll be no more coddling of the disabled or the infirm. No more Americans with Disabilities Act mandates on how business must run business. No more social security or Medicaid. Or Medicare. If the individual doesn’t have the resources to care for themselves, that’s their problem or their family’s problem. It’s not government’s job to provide a safety net. This country was built on the independent spirit and wherewithal of our citizens, and gosh darn it, we’re going back to those days when you relied on yourself. Don’t expect a handout from your Uncle Sam (unless you really do have a generous brother of your father or mother named Sam).

We’re going to be a religious country, and by that Republicans mean a Christian country. No more of this “happy holidays” malarkey. We all know it’s “Merry Christmas” we’re talking and singing about. Get over it Jews, Muslims, Hindus and atheists. We’re going back to a time when we all knew God blessed America and this country was one nation under God (though we never stated that in the Pledge of Allegiance before 1954). We’re going back to a time when men proudly wore designer white sheets and pointy white hats in public and openly hated anyone who wasn’t Protestant (not sure how Romney and his Mormon friends are going to finesse this one, but, heck, even Newt no longer is Protestant, Rick Santorum, unlike Gingrich, is a lifelong Catholic, and Jon Huntsman’s a fellow Mormon, so Mitt’ll have plenty of “cover” once the Evangelicals start shooting).

Speaking of shooting, the NRA will set up an indoor firing range in the basement of the White House, and, based on previously securing the right to carry even concealed guns into bars, will challenge the prohibition on toting firearms into the halls of Congress. That’ll put a muzzle on any Democratic attempt to restrict the bearing of arms.

Once in control of Congress and the White House, Republicans will do away with pre-school education programs. We won’t need them. Who better to rear our children than their mothers? Moms will do the jobs God intended them to do—cooking and cleaning and getting themselves ready for the moment the man of the house returns home. Marabel Morgan’s 1973 Total Woman concept will finally be the way of the land. Getting rid of women in the workplace will free up lots of jobs for the unemployed. See, Republicans have an easy fix to reducing the unemployment rate.

Also on the home front, we’re going to have to remodel lots of houses and apartments. We’re going to need much larger closets. Closets with no doors. Enough said.

We’re also going back to a time of real entertainment, a time when white singers made hits out of colored singers’ songs (yes, we’re going back to calling Afro-American people “colored). And, listen up Denzel, Will, Samuel L., Cuba, Tyler and all you other colored thespians, there’s just two words we’ll have for you: “Oh, Rochester!” (Young readers might not get that Jack Benny reference, but don’t fret, you’ll catch on in short order). Speaking of short order, as in a stack of pancakes, for you female Black actors, you’ll be competing to be the model of an updated Aunt Jemima portrait.

This country became great in the age of the automobile. Big automobiles. We can trace our decline to the entry of small foreign models in the 1960s (it’s a little like the immigration issue we face today, their taking jobs from Americans who don’t really want to do the dirty work anyway but need a scapegoat to talk about the decline of America). Our downfall began when we tried to make more efficient cars, not caring that we were boxing in our ever-growing torsos into small and smaller spaces. No more. We’re going back to big grilles, oversized bumpers, fins and V-8 engines. We’re going to pave our way to economic freedom. We’re going to drill our way to energy independence. Forget mass transit. That’s for the masses, and we know that just as in America’s past (and present) the elites are the only ones that count.