10/16/2023

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal features two pieces from Jack Miller Center faculty partners.

First, at RealClearPolicy, former deputy historian of the U.S. House of Representatives Fred Beuttler argues that the removal of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House is indicative of our weak party system, when “the various branches" are struggling "over which sets the policy agenda.”

Beuttler then recounts the history of the speakership, noting that while the first speakers were merely “neutral presiding officers,” this changed markedly with the election of Henry Clay as speaker in 1811. Clay “became a strong partisan party leader,” Beuttler writes, “appointing allies to chair key committees, participating in debates, enforcing House rules, and setting the legislative agenda.” Joe Cannon, a powerful speaker in the early 20th century, “ruled the House with a firm hand” until a coalition of “Progressive Republicans and Democrats led by George Norris” led a fight against his reign. This resulted in the breakdown of the speaker’s “absolute authority” from that point onward.

At RealClearReligion, Professor Andrew Porwancher discusses the influential Jewish presence during the fight for American independence. Though that presence was “miniscule – no more than a tenth of a percent,” Porwancher writes that most Jews fought for the Patriot cause, spilling “blood in defense of its egalitarian promises” against the British Crown. He notes that the “treatment of Jews” after the Revolution “was a test of whether Americans would realize or reject that animating creed.” “American Jewry had compelling grounds for demanding equal treatment” on religious grounds. In fact, the “only American who appealed to the [Constitutional] Convention to protect religious liberty was a Jew – Jonas Phillips – who had served in the Revolution.” Porwancher concludes by arguing that anyone today who doubts that “Jews have a rightful stake in this republic would do well to remember that the trees rooted in the Revolution’s battlefields draw their nutrients from soil tinged with Jewish blood."