According to Harold Kaplan, Americans do not question the effects on the United States of the Reformation and the Enlightenment. He wrote:
“We do not question that the twin roots of American national history were the religious revolution, which broke the Catholic hegemony, and the secular Enlightenment, which finally broke the traditional political structures, monarchical and hierarchical, of Europe…” (p. 14)
((Harold Kaplan, Democratic Humanism and American Literature, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1972, p. 14))
There is no question that those events made the United States possible. But concerns about the Enlightenment are as old as the Enlightenment itself. It’s just that they don’t normally come up in a secular society and from a defender of democracy. When I first started thinking about the social effects of America’s mythology, I questioned the religious basis of the Enlightenment. Now I’m questioning its democratic basis. Was the Enlightenment a democratic movement?
The short answer is, not necessarily. Some of our enlightened forefathers, the federalists, wanted a continuation of Britain’s monarchy with a king-like president. Others wanted to create a new kind of government unlike Britain’s. Unfortunately, the new-government faction lost the debate. The best they could do was add the Bill of Rights to curb federal power. Although we might wish the anti-federalists had succeeded, they were part of the same class as the federalists. One consequence of their class outlook was that they did not see a problem with slavery.
American Politics and the Enlightenment
America’s government is an Enlightenment creation. So it was interesting to discover during the 2016 presidential election that we are not allowed to elect our chosen presidential candidate. After loudly objecting, most of us accepted our limitations, unlike the Trump faction. Trump’s base apparently missed that demonstration of how democracy works. He used our act of good will to promote himself. Now we observe billionaires and Freemasons trying to claw back democracy and Trump’s devotees don’t bat an eye.
The aftermath of the 2020 election has been a Free-masonic temper tantrum, and it’s not going away. Donald Trump acts like an angry man, but he’s not really angry. He’s enjoying himself. His malevolence has no cause and no motive. It is a constant state of being and it makes him very happy. I believe defeating Donald Trump should be a major part of a progressive strategy for as long as necessary.
On a positive note, the Biden Administration is responding to many of our demands. It’s not what we envisioned in 2016–we thought a complete change of direction was needed to address climate change and the shortage of resources. But the truth is, no politician, including Bernie Sanders, can run a campaign on a platform of lower living standards and personal sacrifice, which is what we need. If some mythical self-sacrifice candidate were to win anyway, the markets would remove him in short order. This is the world we live in. Are we able to appreciate the importance of Biden’s approach in our strategic decisions?
Some progressives have put their hopes in third-party candidate, Cornell West. I agree that West is a powerful, encouraging voice. My question has to do with whether we correctly understand this place and time. In 2016 the Democratic establishment put all its energy into defeating the progressive agenda. Then came the never-ending nightmare of Donald Trump and his puppet judiciary. The U.S. judiciary is now a permanent effect of the Trump presidency. What does this tell us? I think it tells us this is not a game of chicken. If Trump somehow succeeds in reclaiming the White House, our leaders will stand by, regretfully, while he destroys us.
It seems to me that electoral politics are an opportunity to influence the country’s direction in the short term. They are not a way to change the world. We take our part in elections so we can continue to plan the future we want.
Class Structure in America
America has always had distinct social classes but no one bothers to explain how this came about. Immigration, of course. Groups immigrating to the colonies included Puritans (religious fundamentalists), Quakers (religious liberals), and Borderers, who wanted personal liberty without interference from society or government. But the largest group of English immigrants to the United States arrived between the years 1642 to 1675, and consisted of 45,000 Cavaliers of King Charles I, and their indentured servants. They had lost their former status in England because they were on the losing side in the English Civil War, but they remained royalist, Anglican and Aristocratic. Some say they wanted to re-create in Virginia the socially stratified agrarian society they had left behind. When their servants began to die, the Cavaliers’ descendants imported African slaves. Cavalier immigrants included ancestors of George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe, John Marshall, and other first families of Virginia.
The descendants of the Cavaliers only stopped supporting the Stuart kings during the reign of Charles II. They turned against the King because he appointed questionable people to offices in Virginia and gave cultivated land to his favorites, among other injustices.
Summary
Was the Enlightenment a democratic movement? Not as much as it could have been. It seems Ben Franklin was not quite honest when he said democracy is ours if we can keep it.
Still, most of us trust what we have been told about our mythology, our history, our tradition, and our heroes. But do these things compel us to honor and obey without complaint as Hilary and the DNC tried to tell us in 2016? No, I don’t think so.