Tag: constitution

Usufruct

No, not a misspelling, and no, it has nothing to do with high fructose corn syrup or inedible holiday Fruit Cake.  I came across this word almost three decades ago when reading Peter Onuff’s Jeffersonian Legacies, an edited compilation of essays following a scholarly conference celebrating Thomas Jefferson’s 250th birthday.  

Herbert Sloan’s essay “The Earth Belongs in Usufruct to the Living,” deconstructs Jefferson’s September 1789 letter to James Madison.  Usufruct, basically as Jefferson knew the word, was the right to use something during one’s lifetime, like land or other property, but not destroy the value of the property through misuse, or, in in some instances, generating debts that are worth more than the property.  

He expresses his concerns in the letter whether one generation can “bind” the next generation to its debts. He thinks this issue has not been thoroughly thought through as the new Constitution comes into effect, at least metaphysically. Jefferson wrote, “[T]he earth belongs in usufruct to the living, that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.  The portion occupied by an individual cease to be his when himself ceases to be. & reverts the society.”  That is, when a generation dies off, so too should its debts. Those debts are more than pecuniary, he implied.

He expands on this theme throughout the letter, thinking aloud, and through his own arithmetic of averages of life expectancies, argued to Madison that a constitution, and laws the emanate from it, should expire after 19 years.  An average, he surmised when one generation succeeds another.   Every generation, he argued should be able to make its own laws and government, and I would surmise, even remake the social contract.  Basically, new generations should not be bound or governed by outdated laws or drown in the debts contracted by a generation long dead.  He was particularly concerned with debt.  Yet ironically, he died a debtor.

He gave one example of how the new Constitution, ratified and placed into effect in 1789, addressed this issue of government debt.   The Constitution gave congress the enumerated right to wage war, vice the chief executive:  “We have already given in example one effectual check to the Dog of war, by transferring the power of letting him loose from the Executive to the Legislative body, from those who are to spend to those who are to pay.”  

We, as a nation, squandered that gift of restricting a King — or a President — from declaring or making war.  Congress handed back the ability to wage war beyond our borders to the President with the War Powers Resolution Act of 1973 (ironically an act designed to limit executive powers).  This limited power to wage war by the Executive was dramatically expanded in 2001, after Congress gave the President power to wage war against terrorism, in the so-called global war on terrorism.  But I don’t want to write about Trump’s march to war against Venezuela using those 2001 powers, or his new Monroe Doctrine of imperialism to dominate the Western Hemisphere through force of arms, but to a real existential threat to our country: anthropogenic climate change.

For generations, fiscal conservatives have used a version of Jefferson’s usufruct principle to argue against a growing national debt.  They contended that future generations should not be burdened by huge debts, which sap economic growth and weight workers with heavy taxes.  At least that was their argument, until it wasn’t.  When it comes to saddling the next generations with huge climate debts that must be paid as mother nature demands it, conservatives are not only mute about this principle of usufruct, but chant along with Trump, “drill baby drill.’  

This Administration’s policy of increasing fossil fuel consumption, destroying renewable energy initiatives, undermining electric vehicles, and hobbling renewable energy manufacturing and infrastructure — so that Trump and wealthy elites can profit and live in splendor — at the expense of unborn generations, is astounding.  It is immoral and criminal to condemn unborn children to a dystopian world of climate disaster by a bunch of fat old white men who will be soon moldering in their own graves.   

Jefferson was right.  A generation — our’s in particular — has an obligation to be good stewards of America’s natural resources and bounty so that future generations are not bound by destructive practices that degrade and pollute our water, our air, our food, and our climate out of greed and ignorance. 

The baby boomers had a chance after the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, but like the war powers fiasco, we squandered our chances long ago to do right by Mother Nature and future generations.  Shame, shame on us.  The next generations have no obligation to forgive us, nor should they.  Sorry Gen Z and the Millennials, we royally screwed you by binding you to a no-win situation regarding climate change.  Mother Nature is not as forgiving as an accountant in the Congressional Budget Office.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Yes, even in these trying times one must have hope. I will be taking a break over the holidays so see you in the new year. Thanks.

   

“I Believe Him”

Today, America’s national security policy, as it pertains to international relationships, is more akin to looking for a gas leak with lighted matches than serious deliberations.  That makes the world a more dangerous place and Americans less safe.

The Washington Post in a recent article claimed that Secretary of Defense Hegseth ordered a second strike on a destroyed boat to kill two survivors clinging to the wreckage.  The extra judicial murder of alleged drug smugglers is a crime in its own right; the murder of two survivors is particularly heinous.

These murders threatens our intelligence network as key partner allies back away from sharing intelligence.. Hegseth denies giving such orders and now claims an Admiral directed the second strike.  Trump says, “I believe him.”  This is a Trump pattern.

Trump, and therefore America, has an “I believe him” problem.

Trump brags about killing alleged drug smugglers one minute and then post on social media that he will pardon the ex-president of Honduras, who is serving 45 years in a federal prison for, well, drug smuggling, claiming he got a bad deal. Another example of I believe him syndrome.

 The ex-Honduran president during his term turned Honduras into a narco-state, one step worse than the kleptocracy it has been for decades. Following his term in office in 2022, Hernandez was indicted on drug trafficking and weapons charges, following a long investigation by Trump’s Justice Department during his first term.  

Honduras is a major drug transshipment country, accounting, with some estimates, for between 75 and 90 percent of all cocaine that reaches the U.S.  Less than 2 or 3 percent of all US bound drugs come through Venezuela, yet 10 percent of our entire Navy is in the Caribbean murdering alleged Venezuelan drug smugglers. That means more drugs in America not less.

In his first term Trump famously threw the whole of American intelligence under the bus, when he stated at a joint press conference with Putin in Finland, that he believed Putin’s denials of interfering in the 2016 election over the national intelligence assessment that he did. 

A few weeks ago, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto head of state for Saudi Arabia, was feted with a State Dinner at the White House.  The Crown Prince was persona not grata since 2018 after the murder of American permanent resident and Washington Post journalist Jamal Kashoggi.  If you don’t recall, Kashoggi was lured to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, where he was drugged, murdered, and dismembered by a Saudi government hit team in the Consulate.  His body disappeared.  Our intelligence service determined that the murder was orchestrated by the Crown Prince. 

At a White House press event earlier in the day, the Crown Prince was asked about the Kashoggi murder by an reported from ABC.  After calling ABC fake news, Trump responded that ‘a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman [Kashoggi] ‘’, adding, “whether you like him or not, things happen.’  Trump followed up by defending the Crown Prince, stating that the Crown Prince denies any involvement in the killing, and “we can leave it at that.”  Another ‘I believe the man’ moment.  Trump also denied profiting personally from his Saudi connections. A $63 billion real estate deal with a firm connected to the Royal family says otherwise.

Never in my three decades experience in the foreign service arena has American national security and foreign policy been so chaotic, disjointed, lawless, undisciplined, and shortsighted.  From illegal tariffs, extrajudicial killings, interfering in elections, defending murders of dissidents, propping up authoritarian regimes, destabilizing alliances, breaking treaties and agreements, suspect travel bans, and massive curtailment of humanitarian aid, this administration has made America a pariah. Hero to zero in 200 days.

This all makes Americans less safe, domestically and abroad.  It also impacts Americans in other facets of our daily lives: American exports become less attractive; Americans pay higher prices and import taxes; more illegal drugs not less, America’s rural health care deteriorates further as foreign born and trained doctors and nurses, who make up a large share rural American health care provider, stay away;  America loses the talent wars as scientists and researchers shun work in America and head to other countries. These are not America first policies, but America last policies.  And when Trump says, “I believe him,” don’t. Look for the grift and the greed.

In Congress, July 4, 1776

It is good now and then to read some of our founding documents. The Declaration of Independence is a good place to start as any. It basically is two documents. The first part is a declarative statement that both King and Parliament have, and continued to, violate the the fundamental and inalienable rights bequeathed to Englishmen since time immemorial. Such trespasses forced the colonists, so they wrote, to form a new government to secure their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The second part is a jeremiad of those violations. Of the 27 listed grievances, our president has also committed many of these same trespasses. These include, (1) obstructing the administration of justice; (2) he has attempted to make judges dependent upon him; (3) deployed members of our “standing army” among us in times of peace; (4) he is attempting to render the military independent of and superior to Congress; (5) he has threatened to send Americans overseas to serve time in foreign jails for pretended offenses; (6) for cutting off our trade with the world with illegal tariffs; (7) of imposing taxes on us without our consent (illegal tariffs); (8) depriving many inhabitants of due process virtually suspending habeas corpus; (9) and threatens weekly, if not daily, to declare certain cities out of his protection and insinuate waging war against them.

About 30 percent of the fundamental rights listed by our revolutionary founders they claimed the King and Parliament violated are the same inalienable rights Trump is violating, attempting to violate, or wants to violate. To this list of violations, we can add end birthright citizenship; shutdown the government; hijacking the enumerated rights of Congress; the president not subject to criminal jurisdiction (a King).

What is at stake is not just our Constitution — our written framework of our government and how it should function to protect our inalienable rights — but to the unwritten fundamental rights and laws that make up our social compact with our government. These rights go back to not only the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights, but to the traditions, customs, and common law of England. They predate our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and other constitutional amendments. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights don’t grant us these rights, they are an acknowledgment of the collective rights we inalienable have had since time immemorial. Trump has no right to deny or suppress them and he must be resisted.

The Declaration of Independence

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

The Strange Death of Liberal Congress (Small l)

 Elected assemblies were no stranger to colonial Americans before the Revolution.  Virginia’s General Assembly first meet in 1619.  The American colonies’ long experiences with representative assemblies informed the debate on the creation of our national government as expressed in our Constitution.

The Constitution created three separate and equal branches:  Executive, Judicial, and Legislative.  The legislative branch was divided into two.  A House of Representatives, directly elected by the people every two years, and a Senate.  The Senators were not elected by the folks of their states but picked by state legislators.  This changed in 1913 — in an age of reform after Gilded Age excesses when ‘robber barons’ (proto-tech bros) bought and sold senators – when the 17th Amendment was adopted.  This amendment made senators directly elected and accountable to the people of their various states. 

As the drafters of the Constitution debated structure of the national legislature, it is clear many mistrusted rule by the masses.  The solution was another level of checks and balances:  A divided Congress.   The House was meant to represent the hot and passionate voice of the people, hence the two-year election cycle.  The Senate was meant to temper and cool the passions of the people, hence the six-year terms.  A ying-yang type of thing. 

In its time, it was a liberal creation (small l).  A directly elected national assembly rare.  Although one must add a huge asterisk to that claim as suffrage was primarily reserved for men who owned property, and in many instances in the early republic to white men only.  Eventually the franchise did expand, with women being the last added. As a side note, I should comment that white immigrant men could and did vote in national elections as voting rights were not tied to citizenship until well into to the 19th century.   Many states permitted immigrants the right to vote into the early 20th century.  The nationalism of the post-world war I era ended that practice.

The enumerated duties of Congress were listed in the Constitution, but, it’s primary duty was a check on the power of President (king) — in the liberal tradition of Great Britian since the Glorious Revolution of 1689.  As such, the list of congressional powers was long and gave congress the power to declare war, the power of the purse, the regulation of the militia and Army, the power to regulate domestic and foreign trade, to list a few.  For the Senate, the power to ratify treaties and confirm presidential nominees to high office was added.  

This system basically worked for close to 236 years, until it didn’t.  It’s not the structure.  Our political party system is fatally broken.  You need two parties, not one party and one cult lead by a messianic Daddy Trump.

Congress is dead.  Long live Trump.  

A postmortem would reveal the cause of death as neglect followed by blunt force trauma.  The manner of death?  Democracide.

 Et Tu, Johnson and Thune?  Speaker Mike Johnson and senate majority leader John Thune have murdered Congress, finishing the job started by Mitch McConnell.   Johnson won’t even call the House back into session and Thune has attached himself to Trump’s scrotum like a sucker fish attaches itself to a shark. This week Sec Def Hegseth severely constrained congressional oversight by severing most routine formal and informal discourse between congress and the Defense Department and one trillion dollars in spending.  

Trump literally shits on the people in his AI generated fantasies and Congress defends him. He frequently moves money without congressional official approval and routinely uses rescission to ignore legislative funding bills.  In short, Congress ceded most of its enumerated powers to Trump.  Even the act of declaring war has been ceded, permitting Trump to order extra judicial killings on the high seas.  In the old days we called that piracy.  Congress is dead in name. 

The Supreme Court is the undertaker.

I have no concluding paragraph.  What is there left to say any more?  The phrases “that’s illegal” or “that’s unconstitutional” are deader than a door nail in a post law and order America. Might as well stop using them as they are as useless as Congress and a spittoon full of spit.

15 Minutes Past Midnight: Virginia Votes

Many of us recall the doomsday clock during the Cold War.  It was always minutes before midnight:  Nuclear Armageddon.   Today there is another clock ticking away as our democracy ebbs.  If midnight was the hour when democracy ends, the clock today would read 15 minutes past midnight.  Yes, we have crossed that line into the shadow of autocracy.  We can, however, reset that clock, but we must do it quickly and the first step is to vote.  

Election day is upon us here in Virginia and we have an opportunity to reset that clock.  It will be a consequential election with generational impacts for Virginians.  Think of the world your child, or grandchild, or great grandchild will be born into if Trump has his way. 

First and foremost, your vote will help keep Virginia from following several Republican states down the rabbit hole of one-party authoritarian rule.  Texas is the architype of such a state: Texasistan.

 A neo-theocratic state where women are surveilled and reduced to second class citizen.  A state where race equates to citizenship; a state where people of Latino ancestry are subject to constant local, state and federal police stops and detentions for simply having a certain physical appearance, speak Spanish, and work in low wage jobs.  Guilty!  

Texas is a state that happily offers to deploy its national guard soldiers to occupy cities in Democratic lead states as Trump’s armed enforcers.  A state where Christianity is foisted on folks’ children in public schools who worship differently or choose not to believe.  Ones relationship to your god is between you and your creator and the state has no place in that relationship.  We don’t want to be that kind of state, Winsome Earle-Sears does.

Second, Sears wants to turn the clock back to the 19th century regarding women’s rights.  She spent her whole campaign using trans kids as political fodder, ostensible as a women’s rights issue.  Meanwhile, she voted ‘no’ on a tie-breaking vote as Lt. Governor on a bill that would have given Virginia women reproductive choice rights, in particular access to contraception.   

She claims to protect your daughter from supposed predators while whole heartily supporting a president found by a civil jury to have sexually assaulted a woman in a department store dressing room.  And then Sears has the temerity to tell a woman that she has no right to reproductive choices or contraception, the right to choose when and how to have a family.    

Third, a medical and insurance crisis is in the offing after the passage of the Republican’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which Sears endorsed.  Many Virginians will lose Medicaid coverage starting in 2027 as part of the bill’s multibillion dollar cuts to Medicaid.  Three rural health clinics have already closed or plan to close because of the bills impacts.

Approximately 400k Virginians get medical insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  Given the lapse in ACA insurance subsidies under the bill’s provisions, many of these Virginians will have to give up medical insurance given that premiums will double and even quadruple as subsidies for low-income folks lapse under the bill by the end of this year.  Health care insurance will once again become unaffordable to average Virginians.  

Spanberger has a plan.  According to the Virginia Mercury, Spanberger said, “It’s essential that we be able to strengthen access to health care, improve affordability, and recognize that for so many Virginians, they’re one medical event away from really substantial ruin,” Spanberger adding. “But for so many, (health care cost) is just one more worry that keeps them up at night.”  Sears on the other hand has no plan, except to support the big, beautiful bill.

Fourth, Spanberger will return our schools back to the people, and rid us of the Youngkin and Sears Orwellian thought police.  Remember Governor Youngkin’s attempt to turn our schools in to Stasi-like institutions where teachers and students were under constant surveillance for utterances that contradict sacrosanct Republican notions of history.  Youngkin even started an informant hotline one could call or email to report thought transgressors.  Is that how we raise our children? Turning them into government snitches. 

Youngkin’s education policy was a flop at best.  Under his administration, standardized test scores that remained essentially the same after four years of his administration, and well below pre-pandemic scores.  In short, a failure to achieve one of his top priority goals. Winsome Earle-Sears won’t do much better, I suspect, since she is an advocate for reducing public school funding in favor of private charter schools.

Fifth, Spanberger will be a voice for Virginia’s farmers who are hard hit by Trump’s self-inflicted tariff wars (see last week’s post).  Virginia farmers are losing overseas markets, losing income, and being weighed down by unsustainable debt.  Bail outs aren’t an answer, the preferred Republican solution.  It’s the coward’s way out of not confronting Trump head on.  If you are a afraid to criticize Trump, you already live in your own mental dictatorship.  

Spanberger will speak truth to power, I believe. Nor cower before Trump like so many Republicans in Congress and state governments.

Sixth, Spanberger will fight for Virginian’s serving in not only our military, but our civil and foreign services as well.  Our foreign and civil service Virginians are patriots and deserve much better than mass illegal firings, the constant dehumanization and criminalization, the threats and intimidation.  

They, along with the men and women who serve in our armed forces, are the frontline against Trump’s extra-judicial and unconstitutional attempts to turn America into a police state, an autocracy.  Congress is AWOL, the lower courts are fighting a brave rearguard action, only to be undermined repeatedly by the Supreme Court in yet another opinionless shadow docket ruling.  

States are the bulwark against a tyrannical central government.  It’s how our founders envisioned our federal alliance in 1787.  States need to stand up to Trump and his federal maladministration. Virginia needs to be one of those states.

Things will get worse for America and Virginia under Trump in the next few weeks, months, and years.  We need a strong democratic coalition in Virginia to weather the coming constitutional tempest and damage that may prove fatal to the rule of law.  We must fight, and fight to win.  A Spanberger win in November will set the tone for 2026 and beyond.

Let’s keep Virginia democratic and its people free: Vote.

Tilting at Windmills:  The White House’s Crazy Assault on Children’s Health

The far right seems to be living in Don Quixote’s world of imaginary giants, tilting at every windmill they see in the distance.  At a White House circus masquerading as press conference yesterday, Trump linked Tylenol to autism.   There is no definitive scientific evidence of a link between the active ingredient in Tylenol — acetaminophen – and autism, however, according to many autism researchers and groups. I am not arguing that autism is unimportant. To the contrary, chasing these conspiracy windmills is counterproductive, it sets back critical autism research.

The study cited by the White House was published in August this year and was conducted by Harvard’s Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.  The study claimed an “association” with autism.  The study did not say that acetaminophen should not be given to pregnant women but limited.  They used the term “judicious.”  

Acetaminophen should still be used to treat high fever, according to the study’s authors, because high fever can increase the risk of neural tube defects and preterm births.  Doctor Trump, nonetheless, told pregnant women to stop taking Tylenol, thereby potentially harming women’s health and their pregnancies.  I guess a woman’s body and health are expendable commodities on the right.

Meanwhile……

Our children continue to die from gun related injuries more than any other cause of death. 

If we are serious about protecting our children from harm, America’s tolerance and acceptance of gun related deaths must change.  America is not a battlefield, a treeless rain sodden ‘no man’s land’ where children must die in a perverse act of patriotic sacrificial bloodletting in the name of the second amendment.   Children die in a mass shooting at a Catholic Mass on the first day of school and, ……wait, wait, wait ……. prayers and thoughts.  Nothing more.  Tragically, a rightwing commentator is fatally shot on a university campus in Utah, and all hell breaks loose, to include calls to throw out the Constitution, jail leftists, criminalize dissent, and censor critics.

Almost a decade ago, the authors of a study published in the National Institute of Health’s National Library of Health in 2016, titled “The Major Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States, summarized their findings on gun injuries as a leading cause of death among America’s kids: 

“In 2016, children and adolescents (1 to 19 years of age) represented a quarter of the total estimated U.S. population1; reflecting relatively good health, they accounted for less than 2% of all U.S. deaths.  By 2016, death among children and adolescents had become a rare event. Declines in deaths from infectious disease or cancer, which had resulted from early diagnosis, vaccinations, antibiotics, and medical and surgical treatment, had given way to increases in deaths from injury related causes, including motor vehicle crashes [20 percent], firearm injuries [15 percent], and the emerging problem of opioid overdoses.”

According to an accompanying chart, in 2016 there were 3143 firearms related fatalities of children.  This included 1865 homicides, 1102 Suicides, 126 accidental, and the remaining 50 undetermined.  Horrific statistics that hide immense pain.

By 2020, however, firearm injuries overtook motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of death of America’s children and adolescents, according to a 2024 report by John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  The implications are staggering:  It means that your child or grandchild or great grandchild has a greater risk of dying from a gun related injury than by any other cause.  Is that an America we want?

Thanks to Kennedy, however, that shocking and unacceptable leading cause of death of American children will be augmented in forthcoming years by higher mortality rates of children through declining rates of childhood vaccination.  You will note that the study indicated that deaths by injury eclipsed childhood deaths from contagious disease because, among other things, of near universal access to childhood vaccinations.  Think about it. Before the measles vaccine, on average, approximately 400 to 600 kids died per year of measles.  Do we really want to go back to that era?    

So here we are, instead of addressing gun violence and related kid’s deaths, Kennedy and Trump continue to tilt at windmills, pointing fingers at Tylenol and vaccines and women.  Funny how the right always finds a way to blame women’s actions.  If we truly want to make America safe for our kids, let’s quit sacrificing them on the altar of the second amendment and do something meaningful, instead of offering soothing poultices of prayer after another child’s needless and preventable murder. 

Early voting is now open in Virginia.  Get out and vote.  Get your family and friends to vote.  Let’s stop the madness in Virginia.  We don’t want to go down that authoritarian path Texas, Florida, Oklahoma and many other states have gone down.  

Where Have our Better Angels Gone? Four murders, four Americas

“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely, they will be, by the better angels of our nature”

Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address

George Floyd, Brian Thompson, Melissa Hortman, and Charlie Kirk were murdered.  Yet, how America responded writ large to these individual murders is a telling insight into today’s divisions in America, of who has political capital, the power to weld it, and importantly, who lacks it.  

Murder is not unusual in America. In 1991, for every 100K Americans there were almost 11 murders.  By 2014 that number dropped to about 5 per 100K.  In 2024 that number was relatively the same after a pandemic spike in 2020 of 7 per 100k.  Most were gun related murders, averaging about 17K to 18K per year.  The leading cause of death of kids under 18 in America is gun violence.  As a nation we offer them prayers, for a select few, we fight over their deaths.

It is not surprising then, that three of the four persons mentioned above were shot to death.  Floyd’s death was unusual, a prolonged public spectacle when a police officer used a knee to compress Floyd’s neck for a prolonged period on a busy street, in broad daylight ,while two other police officers stood by, and witnesses filmed the unfolding murder while pleading to not hurt him.

Today, I am not concerned with their manner of death but with American’s reaction to them.  

In 2020, George Floyd’s murder sparked nationwide protests over policing practices and culture in America and the disproportionate killing of black men by police officers; along with other issues of mass incarceration and disparate treatment by the justice system.  The Black Lives Matter movement emerged from these protests.  Backlash was immediate.  Conservative media outlets pointed to Floyd’s criminal record or his alleged drug use to exculpate the police officer’s actions.  

Despite the backlash, some reforms did occur at local and state levels, but not at the federal level.  Today, physical representations of that protest movement that pushed for nationwide police reform are literally being bulldozed.  In March of this year, the Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington DC was torn up and paved over after pressure from President Trump.  

In 2024, Brian Thompson, the CEO of the major health insurance company United Healthcare, was gunned down in midtown Manhattan in the early morning hours by a lone gunman.  Unlike most murders, it garnered national attention.  After a five-day manhunt the alleged shooter was arrested.  Again, unlike most murders, the shooter became something of a social media folk hero, a modern-day Clyde of Bonnie and Clyde Fame.  He even was given the nickname ‘the adjuster.’  This reflected deep anger by everyday Americans on both side of the aisle against health insurance corporate bureaucracy and greed.  Not much empathy for Thompson or his family.

In June 2025, Melissa Hortman, Minnesota’s state legislatures House Speaker, and her husband were gunned downed at their home by a lone gunman.  The gunman also shot two others at another home.  The nation was stunned and shocked by these politically motivated killings and shootings.  However, the right-wing and President Trump unfortunately decided to use the killings to score political points.  Attacking Minnesota’s Governor Walz, a political opponent who ran against him on Kamal Harris’s ticket, Trump called him “wacked out Walz” and refused to call him to offer condolences, saying it would be a “waste of time.”  Some on the right said the killer was a ‘Marxist.’ Elon Musk blamed the “far left” for the shooting.

For her and her husband, no reforms, no National Day of Mourning, no flag at half-staff, no White House rage at a political killing.  The other day, when asked about the double standard of ordering the lowering of the flag for Kirk but not Hortman, Trump, whose better angels are dead or deported, responded that he “wasn’t familiar” with the Minnesota shooting.  

On September 10, Charlie Kirk, a right-wing activist and influencer, was shot to death at an event at Utah Vallery University by a lone gunman.  Shock once again swept the country.  National leaders on the left expressed near universal regret and sadness.   The right expressed near universal outrage and anger.  Over the past week, that rage and anger grew, it seemed.  On the right, vengeance was promised and the White House vowed to investigate far left networks or groups for the Kirk killing, without evidence of a conspiracy.  

Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who has already called the Democratic Party a terrorist organization, vowed to “identify, disrupt, eliminate and destroy this network.”   The Justice Department said it was going to investigate “hate speech,” although the Attorney General did back track after criticism.  Nonetheless, calls to criminally investigate the Soros organization and the Ford Foundation as terrorist funders were made.  Even labelling some domestic left leaning groups ‘terrorist organizations” was floated, to include by Trump, who said he wouldn’t mind appending the terrorist label to Antifa.  Antifa has no known organization to which to attach it to.  It’s more idea than organization.  

The Pentagon vowed firings and crack downs on posts deemed critical of Kirk or celebratory or his death. The Department of State also vowed a crackdown on visa holders who criticize Kirk or celebrate his death.  I don’t recall similar vows when Representative Hortman and her husband were killed.   

Elon Musk in a video played at a far-right protest in England said, “We either fight back or die.”  And in a post, demanded the arrest of one rapper for criticizing Kirk and accused universities of “programming people to murder.”  Some right-wing social media called for mass arrests and even civil war. 

It’s one thing for social media influencers, cranks and crackpots, and fringe elements to threaten and intimidate and engage in conspiracy theory spin.  It is completely another thing for senior government officials to threaten vengeance and engage in conspiracy theories while calling for the extirpation of left leaning speech and organizations. Is the criminalization of dissent coming in a forthcoming executive order?

In an example of our government’s authoritarian shift,  yesterday ABC cancelled Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night comedy show after threats by the Chair of the Federal Communication Commission to pull licensees after Kimmel made remarks about the Kirk’s killer’s political affiliation.  Meanwhile, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said on-air last week that mentally ill homeless people should be executed.  His co-hosts offered no rebuttal.  No threats from the FCC to cancel licenses for advocating mass executions. Another example of our authoritarian government’s willingness to control speech of those that do not conform to the governments messaging.  

So, here we are.  Four murders, four different reactions, four different Americas it seems.  I do not want to flatten or simplify the reactions to the murders because there were many individual and collective responses by a broad range of folks, some good, some bad, some ugly.  But as a nation, we have struggled to find common ground or cause over politically motivated killings because we now instinctively split into our respective camps, which increasingly aren’t ideological – like a working-class consciousness — but ones based on race and religion.  80 percent of Trump voters were white.  

It is clear we are now led by a sectarian national government, a government increasingly narrow-minded and protective of ‘tribal’ affiliations.  Kirk was the personification of this sectarianism and white Christian nationalist identity politics for young Americans, young American men in particular. This white Christian nationalism movement dominates our national government.  

Kirk didn’t deserve a violent death for his racist commentary, trans bigotry, or anti-Islam sentiment.  However odious someone’s speech may be, they are engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment.  We must disagree through discourse and words, not violence and bullets.  Unfortunately, our government seems to have abandoned this principle and is playing favorites as to who has the right to speak freely without fear of government discipline and punishment.

How then, as a nation, can we find common cause and ground to express our views openly and without fear of retaliation when even our government has abandoned the principle of free speech, plays favorites?  Can we ever find that common ground as a nation, bring out our better angels?

It’s not coincidental that I end I began this essay with a quote from President Abraham Lincoln’ first inaugural address.  He too died from a cowardly assassin’s bullet. He spoke these words when secessionist war clouds threatened America over an intractable issue:  slavery.  I think as a nation we are at a similar inflection point over a myriad of seemingly intractable issues.  

War Pigs

Generals gathered in their masses/just like witches at black masses/evil minds that plot destruction/sorcerer of death’s construction

Opening lyrics to War Pigs, Black Sabbath

Why do I feel under siege?  It seems that our government is at war with half the country.  Since inauguration day, Trump and his goons have engaged in asymmetric warfare against childhood vaccinations, the civil service, the Constitution, freedom of the press, higher education, immigration, law firms, law and order, medicine, museums, public education, pluralism, public health, science.  And that is just the domestic war.  He is also at war with the world, welding missiles and tariffs and now extrajudicial killings, making us a country with zero friends, and many enemies.  Now he is going to war against the people, not just institutions.  

I don’t recall a time in modern American history when a president threatens war and destruction against its own citizens, even jokingly.  The Chipocalypse Now meme of the president overseeing an attack on Chicago is insane, equating deporting people to napalmed bodies.  Trump is acting very much the war pig.

In response to Trump’s post, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, in the understatement of the year, said that Trump’s threatened war with an American city was ‘not funny.  Not normal.’   When questioned about his meme and comments, an irritated Trump berated and belittled the reporter.  

Given his past actions, I don’t think Trump is being the comic.  He wants to provoke an incident – a blue on green shooting or something similar – to invoke the Insurrection Act or perhaps even martial law.  We have, I think, slipped from proto authoritarianism into autocratic rule, even as the lower courts fight a losing rear-guard action. Two courts issued a series of rulings over the past two weeks regarding his deployment of the National Guard and Marines in Los Angeles and the imposition of universal global tariffs.  “Illegal” is the operative word used by the judges.  

The attack on, and sinking of a ship, allegedly carrying drugs and the murder of her 11-man crew is another example of Trump’s war mindset, displaying to domestic audience his willingness to kill.  I think Trump does not see a difference between domestic and foreign ‘enemies.’ Caught up in his own warped rhetoric and inability to distinguish fact from fiction as his mental state of mind deteriorates rapidly.

Thank you, Chief Justice Roberts.  The blood of those who died in that attack are on his hands as much as Trump’s and Hegseths’.  Given this administrations propensity for outright lies and bullshit, I don’t believe the purported intelligence of drug smuggling, and the timing is suspect.  They were sacrificed on Trump’s altar.  

Even if the crew was smuggling drugs, it’s a law enforcement problem, not a military one, and certainly not an excuse to engage in extrajudicial killings.  The White House defended the murders by claiming fentanyl kills tens of thousands in the U.S. and taking out the ship and crew was a righteous act of war.  Well, if that logic is true, shouldn’t American pushers of opioids like the Sackler family be targeted for a drone strike?  Add the modifier terrorist and Trump claims a license to kill.  He isn’t helping end the drug epidemic he is making it worse.

After several years of declines in opioid related deaths, however, the number of deaths in 2025 is ticking upward, according to the CDC.  This uptick parallels the economic dislocation, stagnation, and uncertainty brought about by Trump’s policies: 

  • Job growth is at an all-time low not seen since the pandemic.  A meager 22K in August.  Even Sleepy Joe did better than that.  
    • Unemployment is rising, up to 4.3 percent.
    • The average hourly earnings (wages) grew 1.23 percent from the first to the second quarter of 2025, according to the Brookings Institute.  This rate is below the average hourly earnings rate growth of 1.56 percent in Biden’s final year (2024).
    • Overall, wages are still trailing post-pandemic inflation.  The Trump job market slowdown won’t help bridge that gap.
    • Trump fueled Inflation is on the rise and is expected to get worse as the full impact of tariffs are felt.  
    • Grocery prices are set to rise as Trump mass deportations impact harvests and meat processing plants.
    • Manufacturing has lost 75,000 jobs under Trump’s Tariff regime.  

So instead of focusing on the economy, Trump decides to rebrand the Department of Defense the War Department.  This rebranding is more than just a distraction, it is also a symptom of a greater evil brewing in the White House.  Traditional boundaries of keeping the military out of domestic politics ….. and domestic law enforcement is eroding.  

The South was militarily occupied after the Civil War.  Something the South still bristles at: Humiliated militarily and occupied.  The Union Army was used to suppress white terrorism against African Americans in a period called Reconstruction.  This included the army policing the rural south and ensuring elections were relatively free from violence against voting African Americans. 

However, as Reconstruction waned, the South wanted Army troops out.  The Army appropriation act of 1878 banned the use of the Army to enforce laws, known as the Posse Comitatus Act.   The Army withdrew from policing and protecting African Americans, resulting in a surge in terrorism and violence against African Americans that persisted well into the mid 20th century. 

Paradoxically, this southern white supremacist inspired law banning the use of the military to directly conduct law enforcement duties, e.g., arresting people, became a cornerstone of American civil society and rule of law.  The National Security Act of 1947, which created the Department of Defense (and the Central Intelligence Agency), further codified the military from acting directly as law enforcement officers enforcing civilian laws.  It is in fact a felony to ‘knowingly and willingly’ deploy active-duty military in direct law enforcement actions unless authorized by law (for instance the Insurrection Act) according to federal criminal law.  

State National Guards, which are controlled by the governors, are generally excluded from the Posse Comitatus Act, when mobilized by the State’s governor, are vestiges of state militias.  The original intent of the Second Amendment was for states through their militias (now National Guard) to defend themselves from a powerful and tyrannical central government and its standing army.  In a perplexing and bewildering perversion of our history, the second amendment crowd is in league with our increasingly tyrannical central government. Go figure that so many of these gun toting self-appointed defenders of liberty and freedom are stepping up to crush liberty and freedom for all. 

A federal judge in the northern district of California ruled last week that Trump’s federalization and deployment of units of the California national guard and active-duty marines in Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.  It is a victory for the rule of law; however, I believe a temporary one. 

The decision will be appealed and eventually reach the Supreme Court.  I suspect the Supreme Court will side with Trump, handing him even greater power: A complete monopoly to domestically deploy the state’s immense power of violence contained by the military against civilians for any conjured-up reason.  

In another very recent example of the Supreme Court taking Trump’s side, yesterday in a 6 to 3 decision they ruled (without explanation) in another emergency docket case to permit ethnic profiling of Latinos for citizenship purposes.  That is using ethnicity as one of several factors as reasonable suspicion to conduct investigatory stops to determine whether someone is in the country illegally.  It’s crazy that the Supreme Court conflates ethnicity with non-citizenship and illegality.  The ruling also sounds eerily like the black laws in the post-civil war south where blacks were rounded up for, you know, being black.  Given Trump’s criminal record, stopping, big white, fat orange tinted fucks at random is also permissible, I suppose. 

Another week, another round of setbacks for democracy and America.  Where do we go from here?  Now’s not the time to sit on the fence.  Get mad, get angry, get busy.  The extrajudicial killings off the coast of Venezuela, Trump’s war memes on American cities, the conflation of ethnicity as a legal marker of citizenship and determinant of criminality, and his evolving uncontained police state should give all Americans pause as the country slips into the penumbra of authoritarian rule. 

Liberty’s Chrysalis

“The love of power is natural; it is insatiable; almost constantly whetted; and never cloy’d by possession.”

Henry Saint John, 1st Viscount of Bolingbroke

This spring my wife and I planted a small rain garden.  The plantings included several swamp milkweeds, the preferred plant for Monarchs to lay their eggs on.  It’s Latin name is Asclepias incarnata for the serious gardeners out there.  The other day, to our delight, we discovered a dozen monarch caterpillars denuding the milkweeds.  

It took several days for them to consume every leaf.  Fully fueled with toxic bitterness and relatively immune from predation, they slowly wandered off to other plants, leaving the bare stalks of the milkweed as testament to their presence.  One by one they moved on, rambling off into the garden seeking leaves or branches to safely transform into chrysalises.  

Within several days of the caterpillar migration, we spotted two bright green chrysalises hanging under leaves.  A third caterpillar wasn’t quite there yet. We hope that within 14 days, given the mild weather, the caterpillars will be reborn as butterflies.  A well-tended garden brings unexpected joys.

The discovery of the caterpillars reminded me of the words of Henry Saint John, that liberty is like a tender plant.  He penned these words close to 300 years ago and the metaphor could not be more relevant in our time: “liberty is a tender plant which will not flourish unless the genius of the soil be proper for it; nor will any soil continue to be so long, which is not cultivated with incessant care.”  

He wrote these words in the early 18th century, a time of upheaval in England: political factions vying for power in a deadly struggle.  He didn’t always choose wisely, backing the Stuart’s claim to the crown and the ensuing Jacobite Rebellion, ending up in exile in France for some time.  He is most famous, I think, for his essay “The Idea of a Patriot King,” arguing that a King should be above faction.

This idea of a King above faction is important in our own history. It informed how Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams saw the presidency.  A president above faction.  They tried mightily to be above faction, not always successfully, however.  Andrew Jackson threw the notion of a patriot president out a White House window along with the contents of a chamber pot.   

Today, we are ruled by an unsound and troubled president hell bent on hyper factionalizing our country, resorting to violence and armed soldiers patrolling city streets.   He has taken the notion of faction to new extremes in America, not seen since the late 1850s.   This includes sending the military to occupy blue cities to show his political muscle;  flaunting the rule of law; criminally investigating critics; ruling solely by dictate; musing publicly about being a dictator; rewriting our history; engaging in extrajudicial killings on the high seas off Venezuela; and setting the stage to nullify next year’s mid-term election results unfavorable to him.

Our garden of democracy needs tending.  And damn quickly.  

We must steadfastly feed and nourish our democracy.  Stay informed in the face of daily trespassing against our liberty.  Although in today’s world where most Americans get their ‘news’ through social media, ‘informed’ is perhaps obsolete.  There still are reliable news sources out there.  Social media is not one of them.  Social media is an avalanche of computer driven feeds designed to elicit clicks, rage, and profit.  Curate your news sources. Go old fashioned and read books, lots of them.  The more you read, the more you realize how little you actually know about things you thought you knew a great deal about. That’s a good thing.

We must clear out the authoritarian weeds that plague our garden of democracy.  We must elect leaders that reflect our values and are in tune with today’s generation and willing to fight.  The continual reelection of octogenarians does the party no good.  

We must go to the polls this November and elect Abigail Spanberger governor and weed out the noxious plants occupying Virginia’s governor’s mansion.  We must not just elect her but elect her in a historical landslide. We don’t want to become an autocratic state like Texas or Florida. 

We must seed our garden of democracy with plants that are robust and acclimated to our current political reality:  An opposition party bent on one-party authoritarian rule.  We can do that by supporting new faces and ideas in the Democratic party at all levels.  Starting with David Rogers who is running for the Mineral seat in our local board of supervisors.

We must amend the soil of our garden.  Get friends and family to register to vote, get them to the polls on election days.  Attend rallies or local meetings.  Donate to candidates you support.  If you can, canvas for that candidate. Volunteer with the Louisa Democrats.

We must not only resist the orange piped piper of Mar-a-Lago but fight him at every junction.  Write or call your representatives, write the Supreme Court Justices, write our governor.  Tell them your story and how you are impacted by Trump’s dangerous and illegal actions.  That food, housing, and healthcare will be unaffordable and unattainable once the full impact of Trump’s tariffs, deportation of farm and food processing workers, and regressive taxes are felt.   

Plant a garden an act of subversion against Trump’s war on climate science.  Whether you have only a south facing front door stoop, a small balcony, or quarter acre, or ten acres, plant a garden in the dirt or in pots.  Every plant you grow feeds or houses an insect or animal and soaks up carbon.  Get radical and grow a victory garden.

Our garden of democracy is in big trouble, but with our incessant care and nourishment our democracy can flourish once again.  Together we must tend the garden of democracy and create the space and time to protect and nurture liberty’s chrysalis from Trump’s insatiable drive to possess absolute power. 

The Minstrel Show Presidency

“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” 

President Donald Trump, 2025

Ignorance is strength I suppose.  Trump, perhaps the least read and most historically illiterate president this country has ever had, continues his campaign of whitewashing American history.  Trump’s sole understanding of slavery, it appears, is informed by Disney’s “Song of the South.”. A dated and romanticized depiction of slavery.  The Trump White House is theater, an increasingly odd mix of minstrel show and Nuremberg Rally.  

According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, a museum is “an institution devoted to the procurement, care, study, and display of objects of lasting interest or value.”   It should include ‘interpretation’ as well.  But it is essentially correct in that it preserves things ‘of lasting interest and value.’ 

In America, that meant museums sidelining, excluding, or denigrating peoples and their cultural objects that did not conform to America’s myths of exceptionalism and manifest destiny, that shiny white city on the hill.  Reducing the ‘other’ to an asterixis of history.  More heritage and nostalgia than history.

The National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of African American History and Culture were remedies for this deliberate exclusion from America’s origin myths. Trump, however, wants to return America to a dated interpretation of our history by recasting the Smithsonian’s museum’s interpretations of our history back through the white male gaze.

Our history is complex with many paradoxes, for instance slavery and freedom.  But one can’t speak to the future without knowing where we came from.  America must confess to the sin of slavery before it can move on.  Slavery was and is bad and showing slavery for what it was and is should not be controversial.  Enlightened and benevolent plantation slave masters did not exist.   A mature country, sure of itself and its future, acknowledges its horrific failures as well as its great successes. Obviously, despite his MAGA moniker, Trump really does not believe in America’s potential for greatness or future as a thriving pluralistic democracy.

Over generations, millions endured brutal dehumanizing conditions: Sexual assaults, beatings, whippings, amputations as punishment, malnutrition, murders, executions, burnings, hangings, forced sales and separations of children, wives, and husbands.  This system of violence and oppression became the cornerstone America’s economic system from its founding to 1865. America was not merely a country with slaves, but a slave society.  

African American history is American history.  Africans were in North America even before the English, arriving as explorers with the Spanish.  The first permanent presence of folks of African descent in English settlements arrived in 1619 near Jamestown, Virginia.  With them came new foodways, new cosmologies, new medicines, new music, new cultural infusions that make us what we are today:  American. 

African American history is larger and more complex than just the institution of slavery, however.  It’s a story about agency, determination, family, resilience, survival, and even thriving in the face of relentless state sanctioned violence to oppress and control.

If you are interested in your own further readings on the subject, below is my list of books that I think are worth a close read. The list is far from complete and is not meant as a comprehensive historiography of America’s ‘peculiar institution’ but merely a starting point for further exploration.   They are not listed in any order, but there is a distinct Virginia tilt.

Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870. An excellent primer on the Atlantic Slave trade.

The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: A Documentary History of Virginia, 1606-1689. Edited by Warren M. Billings.  Traces Virginia’s establishment and legal evolution of race-based slavery through statutory acts.  For example, in December 1662, Virginia’s General Assembly passed a law stating that “all children borne in this country shalbe held bond [slave] or free only according to the condition of the mother.”

Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery — American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia.  Argues that colonial Virginia’s long and deep experience with slavery is a central paradox in America’s revolutionary demands for freedom from English “slavery.”

Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Traces the transformation of society with slaves to a slave society and back again and how the relationship between enslaved and free continuously remodeled over time.   

Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts.  First published in 1943, it was part of a growing academic response and challenge to Columbia University’s ‘Dunning School’ of historical interpretation that originated in the late 19th century.  This ‘school’ dominated scholarly discourse on Reconstruction and policies and laws in the Jim Crow South well into the 1930s.  The Dunning school defended racist laws that oppressed African Americans using arguments based on ‘scientific racism’ then popular in the late 19thcentury.  For more on ‘scientific racism’ see Stephen Gould’s excellent book Mismeasure of Man.

Douglas Egerton, Gabriel’s Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802. An excellent account of the attempted rebellion by a Gabriel in Henrico County and its aftermath.

Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo. From Hurston’s 1927 interview of Oluale Kossala, the last survivor of the Clotilda, the last documented slave ship to carry captive Africans to American shores in 1860.  The book is a fascinating retelling of Kossala’s life in Africa before his harrowing capture and transport to the U.S., his subsequent enslavement (renamed Cudjo Lewis) and life after emancipation.  Of note, the remains of the Clotilda were discovered in 2019.

The Slave Classic Slave Narratives: The life of Olaudah Equiano, The History of Mary Prince, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.  

Charles Ball, Fifty Years in Chains or the Life of an American Slave.  Excellent first-person narrative.  The story of Chales Ball is extraordinary. A truly epic account of loss and resilience and hope.  An American version of the Iliad.

Annette Gordon-Reed, The Heminges of Monticello: An American Family.  A superb recounting of the Heminges family history while enslaved by Thomas Jefferson.  Flips the script of telling the story of slavery from the perspective of the enslaver to that of the enslaved taking center stage.

Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South.  Explores the reasons why America’s revolutionary generation – the ones screaming loudly about being slaves of the English and all the enlightenment language on equality – did not abolish slavery, but expanded it under their watch in the early Republic.

Tiya Miles, All that She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, A Black Family Keepsake.  A beautifully written cultural history of a canvas sack and its contents given to a daughter by her mother after her child was sold.  The canvas bag survived the vagaries of time.  If you read one book from this list, this is it.

Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life in the Antebellum Slave Market.  It’s a story of the slave showrooms in New Orleans, how being on the sale block was negotiated from the perspective of the enslaved and the slave holder.  Excellent read.

Steven Deyle, Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life, and Michel Tadman, Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slave in the Old South.  Two excellent studies on America’s domestic slave trade which developed after the constitutional ban on the importation of slaves after 1807.  This ban, in conjunction with America’s Westward movement, sparked a massive internal slave trade from Virginia and North Carolina to the ‘deep south.’

Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772 – 1832.  This is the story of those enslaved African Americans that fought with the British to gain their freedom.  

Jonathan Daniel Wells, The Kidnapping Club:  Wall Street, Slavery, and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War.  A story of northern complicity in perpetuating slavery for Wall Street profit. How New York City cops, courts, lawyers, judges, and politicians conspired with southern slave owners and slave catchers to kidnap free blacks and capture runaway slaves and send them South.   

David Waldstreicher, Slavery’s Constitution:  From Revolution to Ratification.  The author cogently and convincingly argues that “slavery was as important to the making of the Constitution as the Constitution was to the survival of slavery.”  While one won’t ever find the word ‘slave’ or ‘slavery’ in the constitution, there are at least 11 clauses that directly or indirectly concern slavery. 

M. M. Manring, Slave in a Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima.  A provocative book that explores the legacy of slavery and racial subservience in America’s consumer revolution in the late 19th century.  You won’t walk down the aisles of a supermarket or watch a commercial on TV or streaming the same way after reading this book.

As we careen wildly and OUT OF CONTROL towards an authoritarian government, reading will become an act of resistance.  Please share this list with your friends and family.