Reconstruction Redux     

By Harry T. Cook 

5/24/13

Harry T. Cook

Memorial Day had its beginnings in the few years following the War Between the States, during which more than 600,000 men and boys lost their lives -- either in prosecuting the North's claim that slavery was not acceptable in America or in defending the South's claim that it was. Originally, the day was meant for their remembrance.

Coming 143 years after the end of that dismal war, the 2008 presidential election represented what at the time appeared to be a significant shift in America's racial attitudes. A man born of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother, hence being half African-American, was elected President of the United States.

It took a unanimous 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision finally to outlaw prohibitions of interracial marriage. Barack Obama was not yet six years old at the time. Only a few years before Obama's birth and for some time after, such popular evangelical preachers as the late Jerry Falwell were regularly inveighing against interracial marriage as a sin against God's plan for humankind.

Yet for many Americans -- black and white -- Obama's inauguration was a moving event. This overprivileged white American, who had labored more than 40 years to pay his dues in the fight for racial equality, was nearly brought to his knees by it. I stood in my living room with tears streaming down my cheeks as the man took the oath of office.

Little did I know then that, within 12 hours of the inauguration ceremony, such figures as Sen. Mitch McConnell and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich would meet over a dinner during which they covenanted to make Obama's first term his last term. It simply didn't set well with them and their kind that a one-term, upstart senator with obvious Negroid features could possibly occupy the White House for four long years.

They can abide Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court in a way they could not abide Thurgood Marshall. The former agrees with them on almost every point, including their disapproval of affirmative action. The latter, were he living, would agree with them on almost nothing.

Within days of the 2009 inauguration, there was set up a web of obstruction meant to waylay the new president on his way to governing. Up popped a thing called "the tea party" with its virulent anti-tax campaign nicely folded into screeching ad hominem rants against the Affordable Care Act that came to be called "Obamacare," always with a sneer. Then came a Klan-like insurrection that turned the U.S. House of Representatives into a snakepit of dissent for dissent's sake -- all aimed at the guy with an African last name and Arabic first and middle names.

What has transpired since early 2009 bears an ugly resemblance to what the history books call "Reconstruction" -- the cruel aftermath of the War Between the States in which the defeated took out their anger and resentment on African Americans who, in the opinion of the defeated, caused the war in the first place and who, being considered by them as to be subhuman anyway, should be punished on general principles.

My own congressman, Sander Levin, summed things up smartly last week during a House committee hearing on the Internal Revenue Service's allegedly illegal probing of the inner workings of anti-government groups and Obama's alleged complicity in it. Levin said: "If this hearing becomes essentially a bootstrap to continue the campaign of 2012, we will be making a very, very serious mistake." Levin clearly saw what was afoot, namely the de-legitimatization of Barack Obama.

Republicans on the committee and elsewhere gathered in their klaverns would disagree. They think it's a brilliant way to punish a president whom they hate not only for his first victory but even more for his second. They obviously believe the Obama presidency to be illegitimate -- and who dare say race is not a factor in their hatred?

And so the punishment goes on and will go on until there is some kind of protest and pushback. New heroes will have to emerge to challenge this latter-day Reconstruction regime and its tendency to political lynchings.

The blackness of the four faces in the White House is an offense to a great many white Americans. It is socially and politically incorrect to admit such a thing openly. Thus the tea parties channel their hate into a war on taxation. The federalists channel their sub rosa racism into greater and greater passion for the Tenth Amendment and smaller government. When a nice white guy finally retakes the White House, their fevers are sure to abate and larger government will look better to them.

The Obama presidency is seen by a certain subset of Americans to be an aberration, even as the defeated Confederates saw the emancipation of slaves to be an aberration in the natural order of things. Though they fly the Confederate flag today as a symbol of their rage, they did lose the war. Undaunted, they went on to mount a revolt that, because of its cruel treatment of African Americans, eventually gave rise to the civil rights movement -- a war of a kind in which lives were lost and human rights trashed.

George Santayana's well-known but often misquoted statement Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it may or may not apply here. If we do remember Reconstruction but allow it to be repeated, we are twice condemned.

re essay of 5/17/13 I Don't Know                      

John W. Unger, Bellaire, MI:

Thank Source-Orderer for your wit and wisdom.

Joel Pugh, Dallas, TX:

When we die? When you die, your estate administrator takes over your Facebook account, and you can keep going virtually for years as long as you stay in contact with your friends. It isn't perfect. It could be hard to make new friends, but as long as the old ones do not de-friend you, one can live for virtually years and years. I will add that this approach helps if one is "spiritual" and not religious.

Cynthia Chase, Laurel, MD:

I don't know either, and I'm glad.

Roger Bythewood, Antioch, IL:

" 'You're screwing with my religion,' said a woman through tears of exasperation." I understand your exasperation with this statement, but, after decades of Baptist upbringing, it is difficult to let go and wrap one's mind around such new concepts. Call it frightening for fear of being rejected from heaven for believing it such ideas. I often wonder why the metaphorical is so difficult to believe. I once denied the existence of paranormal activity until I personally witnessed it. After returning from a deployment I laid down to take a nap. I was awakened by the bed shaking. Only the bed and nothing else in the house. There were many other events that occurred at my house and neighbors' houses. Have you not allowed pure reason to intercede with the possibility of "the unexplained?" I do believe strongly in one of your main thesis i.e. acts mean more than words. You may call this the basis of my religion for I have listened to many sermons (including my Grandfather's) that were given based on a verbatim interpretation of the Bible. And the main theme was "You are damned if you don't!" Few talked about personal interaction with one's fellow man for the good and nothing more. I have not attended a church service in years because of the hollow feeling I had afterward. I am currently reading your book Long Live Salvation By Works.

Diane Tumidajewicz, St. Clair Shores, MI:

Great essay. I was unfamiliar with the quote from Socrates, but now I'll be using it, and often. A dear friend of mine is what I call a "super-Christian" and frequently tells me that "prayer works." While I deeply respect her faith, with such folks I find their approach is almost like rubbing Aladdin's lamp. Keep screwing with religion. You and Bishop Spong are the voices of scholarship and reason so desperately needed. Many thanks!

Anthony W. Orlandella, M.D., Dana Point, CA:

Your comments are matter of fact honest.  That's the way they come out.  You deviate from what one expects to hear from an established tongue of the old Christian school that still speaks in a distinctly conservative manner. It is a merry and complex cycle we are on from the past and you bring a down to earth attitude to a most challenging belief system.  It takes a quality of bravery on your part to do so and to say what you do.  I salute you for your clear profession...or is it confession? When one reflects on Luther's honesty and his simple confession paraphrased:  "This is what I am and believe and I cannot be otherwise" was bold and brave to say the least.   Have we changed our attitude?  At least you will not have to face that type of outrage...I don't think...and pray.

Ken Bixby, Troy, MI:

I was at the meeting you referenced [in your essay]. My overwhelming memory is of the number of people (more than the woman you mentioned) who admitted they had not read the book they came to criticize. They came to "string you up" on the basis of what someone, who had also probably not read the book, told them. It was actually scary that people I knew well were willing to indict you on hearsay only.

Fred Fenton, Concord, CA:

In his great Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, David Hume writes: "All men of sound reason are disgusted with verbal disputes, which abound so much in philosophical and theological inquiries." If theological schools had followed your rule of "excluding articles of faith that did not have a secure basis in the commonsense, Enlightenment understanding of reality" they would have had to close their doors and turn to the practical work of loving enemies, clothing the naked, and walking the extra mile.