8/15/2022

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal begins with the sad announcement of the passing of the eminent American historian, David McCullough. He was the author of treasured biographies of great American heroes such as John Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, the Wright Brothers, and Harry Truman, as well as iconic American landmarks such as the Brooklyn Bridge. Unsurprisingly, his work was extremely popular with American audiences. As the New York Times’s David Lewis writes, “‘Truman’ was on The New York Times’s best-seller list for 43 weeks; ‘John Adams’ was No. 1 in its first week and has since gone through dozens more printings.” McCullough focused on writing books that told the American story in an engaging way that would stick with readers. As McCullough stated in a 2008 interview, “And I’m striving to write a book that might – might – qualify as literature. I don’t want it just to be readable. I don’t want it just to be interesting. I want it to be something that moves the reader. Moves me.”

At the American Civics portal, Charles U. Zug, a fellow with the Jack Miller Center, argues that Justice Samuel Alito’s recent comments responding to international critics of the Dobbs decision were out of step with the office he holds. Since under the Constitution the judicial branch is a non-political branch, it means that judges should “refrain from indulging in the kinds of rhetorical excesses that are commonplace for a member of Congress,” he contends. Instead, these comments unfortunately “signaled his partisan commitments and his inability to consider future constitutional questions in an impartial manner,” Zug writes, which is especially concerning because it fortifies “the growing public suspicion that the Supreme Court does not deserve its privileged position in the American polity.”

In the Spring 2022 issue of the Claremont Review of Books, Lucas Morel explores Abraham Lincoln’s various interactions with black Americans throughout his life. “Ranging from White House staff to black activists and leaders near and far,” Lincoln worked with his fellow countrymen to address “matters such as black employment in the federal government, colonization, enlistment of black troops, and voting rights,” Morel writes. He also shows how Lincoln won over an initial critic, Frederick Douglass, who went on to describe Lincoln as possessing a “human goodness and nobility of character, no better man than he has ever stood or walked upon the continent.”