"Freedom's Dominion:A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power" by Jefferson Cowie

 

My Review

John Pepper

31 reviews5 followers

February 13, 2024

I can't overstate my admiration for this outstanding history. It illuminates the tension, indeed the fight for the true meaning of "freedom" between the poles of ensuring and supporting the freedom of every person and the freedom claimed and that asserted by individuals to essentially do what they choose even as and if it deprives the rights of others. As Cowie writes, "By. recognizing discrimination, white supremacy, economic power, and the capacity for violence as dimensions of what 'freedom' has always meant, we gain a fresh perspective on central problems of American ideology and practice. A core dimension of freedom is an expression of power".

Cowie develops this timeless history while never failing to engage the reader with fluent and often inspiring prose and individual stories capturing broadly applicable themes thorough the lens one area of the country--southeastern Alabaman, Barbour County over the course of two centuries. He frames the history in the context of America's being born at "a unique confluence of two streams of global history: settler colonialism and chattel slavery". He describes our experience as being even more unique because our nation was founded "on a premise so deeply wedded to the combined ancient republican values of freedom and democratic governance".

Cowie shows how the oppression of individual rights, beginning with the Creek Indians, to African Americans has been waged at the local level and contested and thwarted only by Federal Action which has all too often proved insufficient and temporary and indeed used by its opponents as a further reason to demand a locally imposed definition of "freedom" which entitles the denial of "freedom" to others. Again, Cowie writes: "we learn that federal power has proven itself, quite consistently, by design and practice, to be inadequate to the basic claims of citizenship by the people" Cowie goes on to lament that "one of the great ironies of American history is that federal power has a far better record of breeding anti-statists than it does disciplining them.

This commitment to "anti-statism" has too often been a cover for discrimination against blacks, immigrants and other minorities. It has been turned into "anti-elites" as well by politicians from Governor George Wallace to Nixon to Trump.

It is striking to read how Wallace's platform and very words mirror those followed by Trump. It fed off "victimization" at the hands of the Federal government and intellectual elites and indulged in outlandish untruths and the aura employed by "strongmen" through all time.

As Cowie cogently writes, "Freedom has always been a contested, messy, and ill defined concept..but it is crucial to recognize that the anti-statist, white power version of it is not an aberration but a virulent part of the American idiom".

He concludes, To confront this saga of freedom is to confront the fundamentals of the American narrative. "We ought not embrace the cruelty of the past, but neither should we continue the malignant idea that this story of oppression was never the 'real' American story. The solution is to commit to a bright, sharp, militant defense of the one single, unambiguous thing that the federal government should do defend. the civil and political rights on the local level for all people--cries of freedom to the contrary be damned".

Shades From US History on What Israel Has Perpetrated on the Palestinians

 

Shades of What Israel Has Perpetrated on the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank over a Period of More than 70 Years

 

In the spring of 1832, the United States War Department gave a difficult task to the United States Marshall Robert L. Crawford to remove white settlers who had illegally encroached on land that had been given to the Creek people under the Treaty of Cusseta, which had been signed just weeks before Crawford received his orders as part of President Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830.  That act allowed the government to exchange land west of the Mississippi for native lands in the east.  The terms of the Treaty of Cusseta essentially privatized five million acres located in southeast Alabama, premised on giving individual plots of land to the Creek people.  It provided Federal protection for the Native American rights for a period of five years. The hope in Washington was that the Creeks would sell their lands during this period and move west of the Mississippi. Yet, for the indigenous population, this was not the “opportunity” to move west but the right, which the government pledged to enforce for five years, to hold their land. 

 

Again and again, the Indians and Marshall Crawford turned to the federal government, Secretary of War Cass and the President for help.  And they received some, but in the end not nearly enough to deter the white intruders who “refused to tolerate the federal government’s curtailing of what they militantly regarded as their rights and freedom.”

 

I can’t read this history without being soberly reminded that this in so many ways is exactly what we have seen as Israeli settlers have moved into land granted by the United Nations to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.  They have had fingers wagged at them from time to time by the Israel government, but not decisively, and indeed there are members of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s cabinet who openly advocate displacing Palestinians to other countries to make room for Israelis, just as U.S. leaders almost a century ago looked to displace the Native American population to the west to make room for white settlers east of the Mississippi.    And, of course, those treaties establishing defined land for Native Americans west of the Mississippi were also soon to be abrogated, making way for the expansion of white settlers.

 

This is a fair reminder of what the Palestinians are up against and what those in the world, like me, who believe they have every right to their own state need to do to force upon the Israeli government the commitment to do what is right to recognize and support what Palestinians deserve—dignity and freedom—just as Israeli citizens do.

 

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An Historic Decision That SCOTUS Dare Not Duck

We will hear oral arguments on Thursday, February 8, on one of the most important cases ever brought before the Supreme Court of the United States as it rules on the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to exclude former President Trump from the state’s Republican primary ballot. 

 

I have read two of the amicus briefs on this case, including one joined by historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat among others and another joined by historians David Blight, Jill Lepore and Drew Gilpin Faust among others.  These briefs summarily and persuasively dismiss the objections which have been made to the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision. They make it clear that Section III of the 14^th Amendment was indeed written looking not only back to the Civil War but forward to other efforts that might be undertaken in the future to overthrow our democracy.  They also convincingly debunk the argument that Trump is not an “officer” of the United States and the other argument that what he was involved in was not an “insurrection.” 

 I AM  convinced that an honest review of what the writers of Article 14 intended will result in Trump’s being disqualified.

  This will admittedly be a hugely controversial decision; it will be said by some to be too political for the Court to decide and therefore should be decided by Congress. Yet, as Conservative Judge Brett Ludwig has argued in his amicus brief, this is clearly a Constitutional matter that should be decided by our Courts. 

The reality that this decision will be politically controversial should not lead the Court to "duck..to try to find a way out" or "kick the can down the road" Disqualifying Trump will be acting in accord with the intent of the authors of the 14th  Amendment to protect our nation from a leader who sought to overturn it. It will be a decision marked forever as a stand for integrity, for doing the right thing. It will also, incidentally, save the Republican Party from not only a grievous threat to our democracy but it will stop its being co-opted by an individual who does not stand for what the Republican Party has stood for at its best.