Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Come on, man.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

White supremacy is terrorism.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

A consequence of cucumbers

You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / ‘Independence Day’ Open Thread: The Counterarguments

‘Independence Day’ Open Thread: The Counterarguments

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… We want to make the world better by our lights, and to do that we need a stronger democracy. Patriotism in the right spirit fosters the civic trust and solidarity that democracy needs.

Patriotism shouldn’t be an excuse for glossing over failures and crimes — just the opposite. It adds responsibilities, even sorrows, to our lives. But it also fosters affection and, yes, pride.

The patriotism we need is the patriotism of July 5, which used to be a rallying day for abolitionists, particularly in New York State. Before the Civil War, July 5 was a rejoinder to the hypocrisy of Independence Day, which trumpeted liberty in a country full of race slavery. It was also, for many abolitionists, a day to continue the founding work of Emancipation, to build on and extend a flawed but radical inheritance…

In a country where “Emancipation is a proclamation and not a fact,” Johnson warned, if inequality was not addressed, America would “have failed as a people and as a nation.” The country could “gain the whole world and lose his own soul,” he said, paraphrasing the Book of Mark. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., too, called the principles of the American founding “a promissory note” that had come due, and urged the country to “rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.”

This version of patriotism links criticism of our country’s failings with a commitment to changing them. It cleaves to principles of freedom and equality because they are right, and also because they are ours, they are us. It addresses America’s worst aspects, not as enemies to be eliminated (as in our many domestic “wars” on this or that) but as we would approach a friend or family member who had lost their way. In this spirit, even the harshest reproach, the most relentless list of wrongs, comes with a commitment to repair and heal, to build a more just and decent country. It also entails a practical faith: As long as change might be possible, we owe it to one another to try.

… For all their blind spots, the Founders created a mechanism whereby the original imperfections of the Constitution could be fixed over time. Two mechanisms, actually.

First, the constitutional amendment process. This enabled a “new birth of freedom” after the Civil War, with amendments to abolish slavery and grant civil rights to African Americans, and again after World War I, with an amendment giving women the vote.

Second, the Founders created a Supreme Court that had the ultimate power to interpret — or reinterpret — the often-opaque articles of the Constitution. This allowed the court of the 1930s, after initial resistance, to ratify the creation of a rudimentary welfare state, and the court of the 1950s and 1960s to strike down school segregation and expand rights of privacy that are now under attack.

The United States of America would not have survived this long if we had not done so much to modify the original Constitution and the way it was interpreted in the republic’s early days. In particular, we have greatly scaled back the pernicious doctrine of “state’s rights” that too often has been a cover for the supremacy of a few powerful white men. As urged by future vice president Hubert Humphrey at the 1948 Democratic convention, we finally marched in the 1960s “out of the shadow of states’ rights” and “into the bright sunshine of human rights.” Unfortunately, we are now walking back into the darkness. Because of a benighted Supreme Court, 40 million women are about to lose their reproductive freedom.

Most of the Founders knew better than to try to shackle their progeny to their own worldview. Thomas Jefferson rejected the tendency to “look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched.” He argued “that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.”…

…[T]here are other steps we can take, even without amending the Constitution, to make our political system more democratic and representative. We should, for example, expand the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court. They reached their present size in 1912 and 1869, respectively, when the country was far smaller. (The U.S. population has tripled in the past century.) We should also end the Senate filibuster, whose use has dramatically expanded in recent years, creating a de facto supermajority requirement that gives a small minority of the population a veto over all legislation.

Instead of acrimoniously and endlessly debating whether the Founders were good or bad, let’s focus on improving the system they created so that it better serves Americans in the 21st century. As Jefferson knew, “institutions must advance” along with society.

Reader Interactions

118Comments

  5. 5.

    Betty Cracker

    Chicago Sun-Times story about the Highland Park shooting:

    Adrienne Drell, a former Sun-Times reporter, said she was sitting on a curb along Central Avenue watching the parade when she saw members of the Highland Park High School marching band start to run…

    “It was a quiet, peaceful, lovely morning, people were enjoying the parade,” Drell said. “Within seconds, to have that peacefulness suddenly ripped apart, it’s scary. You can’t go anywhere, you can’t find peace. I think we are falling apart.”

    Some witnesses say a gunman was shooting from a roof with an assault rifle and that kids were among the casualties.

  6. 6.

    Delk

    Highland Park was the setting for a lot of the John Hughes films. Also the birthplace of Grace Slick.

  7. 7.

    Raoul Paste

    Who is this guy, and what has he done with Max Boot?   I bet his social circle has changed

  11. 11.

    Felanius Kootea

    I am completely and utterly shaken. My teenaged niece and nephew were at the parade in Highland Park where there was a mass shooting this morning. They are physically unhurt but just devastated. The man was picking people off from a rooftop like with the Las Vegas mass shooting and they haven’t caught him yet.

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    Since I’m feeling cynical at the moment, here’s Ambrose Bierce:

    Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.

  14. 14.

    Betty Cracker

    CBS Chicago reporter Chris Tye on Twitter:

    OFFICIALS IN HIGHLAND PARK:

    *Six now deceased. 24 people transported to hospital.
    *Suspect still not found.
    *Looking for white male, 18-20 yo, long black hair, small build wearing a white or blue T-shirt.

  17. 17.

    Ella in New Mexico

    Maybe it’s the energy and sleep toll of 5 weeks of a hacking cough spasm every two hours post COVID-19, maybe it’s that we’re spending today trying to fix 3 years of tax errors, maybe it’s because Boot is right but that what he’s asking for is damn near impossible in any reasonable near future but I simply can’t muster up any enthusiasm to celebrate the 4th this years.

    I agree with the woman in the story above: We are falling apart.

  18. 18.

    raven

    News caster “police report it was a rifle”. Eyewitness who saw people die.” no no no, it was no rifle it was  an automatic weapon”.

  19. 19.

    dmsilev

    How about a feel-good story? There are apparently so many grifters preying on the GOP donor pool that they’re starting to turn on each other because the well is running dry. Specifically,

    Trump cracks down on deceptive fundraising by others using his name

    While being known for his own false and misleading emails, Trump faces armies of unaffiliated fundraisers who ape his message and sometimes threaten Republicans in Trump’s name

    Are you turning your back on Pres. Trump?” one Brnovich fundraising ad asked last year. “Renew your 2022 membership before it is too late.”

    Such appeals pushed the actual team of advisers around Trump to a breaking point in June, after Trump endorsed Brnovich’s rival, Blake Masters, for the Senate seat in Arizona. In a cease-and-desist letter obtained by The Washington Post, an attorney for Save America, Trump’s political action committee, threatened legal action if Brnovich did not stop using Trump’s image and name in misleading ways.

    “It is one of the massive conundrums for the Republican Party today. How do you fundraise without a Trump message?” said one of the party’s digital fundraising consultants. “The reason people do these things is because they work.”

    The problem has become more acute in recent months as small-dollar donations to Republican Party efforts have fallen, a trend strategists blame on donors having less disposable income because of inflation and on their fatigue with the relentless fundraising appeals. Receipts from small-dollar donors at the Republican National Committee have fallen significantly in recent months, people familiar with the matter said.

  22. 22.

    phdesmond

    the Guardian reports  police abuse of verbs:

    Police told people: “Everybody disburse, please.  It is not safe to be here.”

    //

  28. 28.

    CaseyL

    The Right has succeeded in making this country ungovernable by making its democratic processes unworkable.

    Stochastic terrorism in frequent mass shootings, theocratic laws creating multiple tiers of citizenship and personhood, panopticon surveillance – the hot civil war is here, it is now, and our institutions refuse to deal with it as the treason it is.

    (We have a Patriot Act.  The Biden Administration should use it.  A lot.)

  36. 36.

    Ruviana

    I spent all morning waiting for something like this to happen.  So I was saddened but not at all surprised.

  38. 38.

    trollhattan

    @Betty Cracker:

    Fuuuuuuuuuck. Another sore winner? And I was here only to evoke historian Donald Trump on Frederick Douglass.

    I hate this timeline.

    We had a nightclub spree shooting last night, second in two months. This time, only one fatality.

  39. 39.

    trollhattan

    Something positive. A few may have seen the Proud Boys’ (or whoever the fuck) attempted door crash of a Woodland, CA gay bar the other day. They tried, only to be pushed away and pepper-sprayed for their efforts. The police chief seems like a solid guy and his followup video is unambiguous as to whose side he is on. FBI is now involved. Hopefully not paywalled.

    https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article263118143.html

  40. 40.

    Mnemosyne

    I grew up in Highland Park the first 10 years of my life, so this is really fucking surreal.

    It’s a heavily Jewish town, so don’t be surprised if there turns out to be an anti-Semitic motive.

  43. 43.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @debbie:

    Ah. So effectively an under-bridge-dwelling would-be goat-eater then? Even if known to comment from time to time?

  50. 50.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @raven:

    The Maxwell Street Market was a great place to go for all manner of stuff before they “developed” the area. Lots of immigrants gathered there–Jewish immigrants back in the day, largely Hispanic now. It still exists, after a fashion, but no longer the freewheeling marketplace it used to be.

    History of Maxwell Street Market.

  53. 53.

    Bex

    Don’t think Ravinia had a show scheduled for tonight.  I’ve seen some great performers there over the years.

  54. 54.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @raven:

    Heh. You’re right.

    Moving nonetheless somewhat back on topic, the creative energy of Maxwell Street, with Eastern European immigrants and Blacks from the Great Migration and now Hispanics, is one of the best things about this country.

  55. 55.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @raven: Thank goodness we have a “well regulated militia” to prevent this sort of thing from happening.

  57. 57.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Winston: I would say something, but my response would probably get an email from Cole asking to tone it down.  Because vermin like you deserve no quarter.

  59. 59.

    Mike in NC

    What are the odds that Republicans will try to lower the age to buy assault rifles to 16?

  61. 61.

    Raoul Paste

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    I thought the same thing.  If he’s under 21 by federal law he couldn’t get a handgun.  But an A.R. 15, no problem.

    I know we need to wait for the full story to come out, but God, this needs to end

  62. 62.

    Scott

    At every BLM march, every Pride march, every rights rally, every gun safety march, every single protest should have an abundance of flags and other patriotic symbols.  Don’t let the bastards control the narratives.  The Suffragettes march with patriotic gear.  So can we all.

  63. 63.

    Winston

    Well, for all you delusional gun law banners. How’s that working out for you? Did you just want to  ban guns for yourselves? So I was first poster and wished everyone a happy day and was harshed immediately. Yeah, guns are the problem. But when the gunners come for you, you better have one to respond. Or don’t you think about that?

  71. 71.

    trollhattan

    Welly, welly, welly. Shot [metaphorical] fired?

    Gov. Gavin Newsom, fueling speculation that he’s interested in the White House, unveiled an ad Sunday that will air in Florida, pitting him squarely against former President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis. Newsom, who is expected to win re-election to a second term as governor in November, urges viewers to “join us in California, where we still believe in freedom.”

    The ad is scheduled to run Monday. Newsom has been aggressively promoting California’s strong support for abortion rights, gun regulation and environmental protection in recent days, as Supreme Court rulings have weakened laws in all three areas. The ad, running on Fox News stations in Florida and posted on Twitter Sunday by Newsom’s campaign, tries to draw a sharp contrast with the conservative DeSantis, who is said to be weighing a presidential run of his own in 2024.

    “It’s Independence Day, so let’s talk about what’s going on in America. Freedom, it’s under attack in your state. Republican leaders, they’re banning books, making it harder to vote, restricting speech in classrooms, even criminalizing women and doctors,” Newsom says in the 30-second spot. “I urge all of you living in Florida to join the fight, or join us in California, where we still believe in freedom — freedom of speech, freedom to choose, freedom from hate and the freedom to love.” As he touts California, there are images of an American flag, beaches and Newsom himself.
    https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/election/presidential-election/article263142373.html#storylink=cpy

  72. 72.

    Mnemosyne

    @raven:

    I think another was pronounced dead after the initial reports.

    Boy, the family reunion dinner in HP with my Trump-loving cousin is going to be LIT this year!

  73. 73.

    JoyceH

    Republicans: Wrong on guns, wrong on abortion, wrong on voting, wrong on everything. (Too long for a bumper sticker?)

  75. 75.

    JoyceH

    @trollhattan:

    Gov. Gavin Newsom, fueling speculation that he’s interested in the White House,

    He said, and I would like to believe him, that he’s just getting the word out to set an example to the rest of the party. So more power to him.

    And frankly very clever. He can afford it – apparently he ran the ad once on FOX for $100K, and I suspect he gained millions worth of free media, including back in California, with the stunt.

  77. 77.

    trollhattan

    @JoyceH: I like your take. He’ll proceed with caution re. the WH because he’s not a feral Democrat and will defer to Biden. In the meantime we can treat Florida and Texas in the same fashion as they tried here (remember Rih Perry trolling California bidnez?). Only we don’t need to lie.

    If Joe declines term 2 then I expect he’ll jump in.

  80. 80.

    JoyceH

    Today I realized I’m going to have to reschedule my teeth cleaning, because it conflicts with the upcoming J6 hearing.

    Priorities.

  82. 82.

    Alison Rose

    @trollhattan: I love the ad, and in general am very happy with Newsom as governor, especially in comparison to a shitstick like DeSantis. As for the constant presidential rumors around Newsom, for one thing, he’s running for re-election and I don’t see him cutting out of his second term early to try to primary a Dem on the national level. But even if this is looking ahead to 2028………..I’m just not sure he ought to try. Would he easily win in blue states? Yes. He’s got the right politics, he’s outspoken, he fits what a lot of people subconsciously view as a presidential look (tall, good looking, and you know….white, sigh). But to win the White House you have to be able to pull in swing states, and I just don’t know if he could. He’ll be painted as the leftiest lefty ever, so far left he’s practically falling off the edge of the flat Earth, he’s gonna make all your kids do drag and take away every gun and truck and hamburger and force every person with a uterus to get pregnant so he can then mandate abortions, etc etc. It’s obviously all ridiculous bullshit, but since when has that been a deterrent for the GOP attack machine?

    I think perhaps if he starts as a Veep to someone else, maybe that would help? But then who knows what this fucking country will look like in another six years.

  83. 83.

    Feathers

    @trollhattan: All the blue state candidates need to be doing this. I think it’s even more effective than attack ads by local candidates. It shows what is being lost through all this foolishness. Of course it’s actually evil that has wrapped itself in foolishness, but it really does need to be called out for what it is and how it hurts everyone.

  86. 86.

    Mnemosyne

    @Winston:

    Well, we’re laughing at you, so I guess it’s only fair. Poor, pathetic, frightened child, to need to take a gun to Chipotle and Home Depot with you.

    Oh no, that squirrel looked at you funny! Prepare to defend yourself!

  87. 87.

    JoyceH

    @zhena gogolia: Tentative schedule is the 12th and the 14th. That’s a Tuesday and Thursday. The Thursday is the day my cleaner comes, and I don’t want to reschedule that, her schedule is tight enough as it is, so I’ll hole up in the library and learn how to watch a live stream.

  89. 89.

    zhena gogolia

    @JoyceH: It’s simple — come to BJ, where WaterGirl will have the Jan 6 committee’s livestream on the front page. Just click on it.

  90. 90.

    dnfree

    I couldn’t put this in the respite thread, from Highland Park Illinois, a fairly affluent north suburb of Chicago.  Most neighboring suburbs have canceled their parades.
    Six people were killed and at least 24 people have been hospitalized after a rooftop shooter opened fire at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade this morning.
    Police are actively seeking a shooter who fired on paradegoers from the roof of a downtown Highland Park building Monday morning, shortly after the Independence Day parade began.

    ETA I see you’re on it.  This may be the end of holiday parades. Who’d want to risk it with their children?  I sure hope no fetuses were harmed.

  91. 91.

    Scout211

    @Alison Rose :

    Agree with you. It’s no secret he has higher office plans in his future, but as we discussed here yesterday about this ad, he is showing that he can be a national leader for the Democratic Party by chipping away at that Politico-manufactured perfect DeSantis veneer. This needs to be done often and early. Remember how quickly the right started chipping away at Hillary’s good reputation as a SOS? The Dems need to start a campaign of criticism directed at all the front-runners for the GOP.

    I don’t know when he will try his move up but I am leaning toward Diane Feinsteins’s seat that he has an eye on.  But who knows.

  93. 93.

    PST

    @Winston:
    All I’m saying is banning guns.. It’s too late. The right wing has all the guns and they are laughing at you.

    I disagree. Most of the killing is by young men who, in many cases, are using newly purchased weapons. Some of them have white supremacist political motives; others don’t. Either way, making guns more difficult to acquire will help. Mass shootings get the publicity, but most of the day-to-day killing is done by young men shooting people they know or shooting innocent by standers while trying to shoot people they know.

  94. 94.

    Alison Rose

    @Scout211: If she ever fucking leaves it, that is. I have a feeling her “retirement” will be, shall we say, determined by God.

    But I’d love to see Newsom in the Senate, that’s for sure!

  103. 103.

    Another Scott

    Whoops – @PST:

    @Winston:

    All I’m saying is banning guns.. It’s too late.

    It’s never too late.

    Things change.

    By the end of the 1890s cities were drowning in horse crap.

    Before December 1903 nobody flew in an airplane. Before 1940 there was no “expressway” (PA Turnpike). Etc. Lots of things about “modern” life are fairly recent and things are changing every day.

    I’m willing to bet that 500 years from now Americans won’t be dragging around AR-15s to political rallies. Probably not in 200 years. Even probably not 100 years.

    We can change the future if we do the work. It won’t happen overnight, but politics is always slow.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  104. 104.

    trollhattan

    @Another Scott: Australia did it. If we copied the Aussies we could begin paring down the vast number of firearms. It will take generations but the continual adding to the count ain’t helping.

  105. 105.

    Miss Bianca

    @dnfree:

    This may be the end of holiday parades. Who’d want to risk it with their children?

    Except in my town, where the Open Carry zealots are not only welcome, but encouraged, to come and march. True, as a counterbalance we do have the Open Carry Guitar brigade, who usually outnumber the gunhumpers and sing “This Land is Your Land” and other great patriotic song hits, but still. I personally am making a point to never be near one of these events again as long as the gunhumpers are a presence. ‘Tis a shame, but so it be.

  106. 106.

    Mnemosyne

    @Raoul Paste: 

    Max Boot was one of the guys who heard Trumpers chanting “Jews will not replace us” and went Holy shit, what the fuck have I allied myself with?

    So far, he, Bill Kristol, and Jennifer Rubin seem to be sticking to that “holy shit” moment and staying far away from the Trumpublicans.

  107. 107.

    Felanius Kootea

    Thanks to everyone who expressed support – I’ve been offline. This really hit too close to home. It’s the first time I’ve heard my brother-in-law and sister-in-law  express a desire to leave the US.

  109. 109.

    Mnemosyne

    @Another Scott:

    Kristol will probably fall hard for the next non-Trump Republican daddy who promises to make him feel important. He’s like Andy Sullivan that way.

    I think Rubin is going to stick with us, though, especially after the Roe v Wade decision. I’d rather have her, anyway.

  112. 112.

    sab

    I like Connie Schultz a lot, but I wish she would stop linking to paywall press who does journalsm badly. “What are you at a eminent journalism school teaching our kids? ” NYT is excellent in some obscure subjects, and also some less obscure subjects, but their political coverage has been amateurish, cronyist and just generally bad for more than half a century. Why are we deferring to them.? Yes they offer jobs. No they are not necessarily the jobs you should take. At least let your students know this.

  115. 115.

    Cmorenc

    I am only still alive at 70 because when i was 14, an armed burglar broke into our house and at the moment we each realized the other was there, and he began turning toward me, i was quick enough to scamper up the stairs into my parents’ bedroom before he could take aim at me, yelling “armed burglar in the house – get the gun !(my dad kept under his bed) – and the burglar fled out the front door.  That said, he had a handgun, not an assault rifle, and our weapon was a .12ga shotgun loaded with lethal buckshot, and so had he tried to confront us, we would have had position and advantage – our shot did not require accuracy, his did.

  116. 116.

    Mnemosyne

    @Cmorenc:

    To be fair, what you shouted probably would have worked even if your family didn’t have a gun on hand. The threat alone would make most burglars turn tail and run even if they were themselves armed.

    Still, how scary!

  117. 117.

    cmorenc

    @Mnemosyne:

    Again, the burglar had a gun, and he was definitely turning to point the gun AT ME.  Had he thought I was alone with no timely weapon available to fend him off, he likely would have shot me to not leave any live witness who could identify him.  Turned out he was a drug addict who had been breaking into various doctor’s offices and residencies – my dad was an M.D. (back 50 years ago, doctors frequently were given samples of narcotic painkillers by drug companies, a practice is now long since forbidden.

    Another scary tidbit: about a week later, local police caught him, but despite his having briefly turned to face me during the confrontation, I honestly could not positively identify the guy from memory.    Fortunately, they had him dead to right anyways on some of the other burglaries, and at our house, by fingerprints from the bathroom windowsill he broke in through.

  118. 118.

    Mnemosyne

    @cmorenc:

    Yes, that’s why I mean that shouting to another room, “Get the gun, there’s a burglar!” would probably have been equally effective without an actual gun at hand since it sounds like your father did not actually come down the stairs with the weapon to get the guy to leave. Unless you left that part out? Now I’m confused.

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