5/31/2022

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal begins with an op-ed by the Jack Miller Center’s Elliott Drago which argues that the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, can help bring clarity in our modern battles over free speech. He notes that Elon Musk’s tweet, “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy,” brought heavy criticism because of our public disagreements over how private companies protect free speech. Madison’s authorship of what became the First Amendment, and the pushback he and Jefferson gave to the Alien and Sedition Acts, shows that “governments that place boundaries on free speech create societies in which the people can never truly rule,” Drago writes. “Simply put, Madison believed the First Amendment gave Americans free speech as well as making them the voice of self-government.”

In an acceptance speech for the Bradley Prize, Glenn Loury states that the American Dream is alive and well for black Americans. He points to the emergence of a black middle class, the existence of black billionaires, and the overall influence of black culture on American culture. “In fact, when viewed in global comparative perspective,” Loury argues, “we black Americans are rich and powerful with, for example, ten times the per capita income of a typical Nigerian.” He notes that to argue that the American Dream doesn’t apply to black Americans “is to tell a lie to our children about their country – a crippling lie which, when taken as gospel, robs our people of agency and a sense of control over our fate. It’s also a patronizing lie that betrays profound doubt about our ability to face up to the responsibilities and to bear the burdens of our freedom.”

For the Claremont Review of Books, Daniel J. Mahoney reviews the 1619 Project book, finding it to be “occasionally more nuanced than the” original essays but still dominated by “ideological Manichaeism.” In his view, the 1619 Project is a “reckless and willful distortion of the historical record” and “an effort to identify the American story unilaterally with irredeemable racism, systematic oppression, unprecedented violence, and Hitlerian malignity.” He also highlights the many historians and scholars such as James McPherson, Gordon Wood, and Wilfred Reilly who have made penetrating critiques of the “1619 narrative” that America is fundamentally based on white supremacy.