MONDAY, APRIL 27, 2026
How about that "more perfect Union?" Within the American context, "Union" is a mystical concept as well as an historical term.
The historical term is present at the time of the nation's founding. As the leading authority on this topic reports, it's connected to a second mystical concept--the concept of "us the people:"
Union (American Civil War)
The Union is a term used to refer to the central government and loyal states of the United States during the American Civil War. Its military forces and civilian population resisted the purported secession of the slave states that formed the Confederate States of America following the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States.
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The term "Union" occurs in the first governing document of the United States, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. The subsequent Constitution of 1787 was issued and ratified in the name not of the states, but of "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union ..."
Union, for the United States of America, is then repeated in such clauses as the Admission to the Union clause in Article IV, Section 3. Even before the Civil War began the phrase "preserve the Union" was commonplace, and a "union of states" had been used to refer to the entire United States of America.
So says the leading authority on this multi-faceted bit of American language.
At the very founding of this nation--such as this nation has been--we see the yoking of two mystical concepts:
"We the People" were adopting the new nation's Constitution for the purpose of forming "a more perfect Union."
That said, the language of "Union" had already been present in the full name of the Articles of Confederation, the forerunner to the Constitution.
Back in 1787, a mystical entity, "we the people," were seeking to form "a more perfect union." Several generations later, President Lincoln came to be hailed in the manner described below:
Presidency of Abraham Lincoln
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Following his death, Lincoln was portrayed as the liberator of the slaves, the savior of the Union, and a martyr for the cause of freedom. Political historians have long held Lincoln in high regard for his accomplishments and personal characteristics. Alongside George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt, he has been consistently ranked both by scholars and the public as one of the top three greatest American presidents, often as the greatest president in American history.
The martyred sixteenth president was hailed as "the savior of the Union." A bit later in that report, the leading authority quotes the words with which the incoming President Lincoln ended his first inaugural address:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Mystical chords of memory, he predicted, would swell the chorus of the Union. In the incoming president's view, passions must not be allowed to break the bonds of affection which remind us that "we are not enemies, but friends."
Over the course of the next four years, the Union was saved as a legal jurisdiction. That said, have we Americans ever been a mystical "us the people," grouped together by "bonds of affection," forming a mystical Union extending beyond the legalisms which kept us one nation, not two?
Putting it a bit more directly:
Are we a mystical "people" today, bound together in a mystical "Union?"
Are we some such "American people" today? It seems to us that it isn't clear that any such mystical entity still exists. It seems to us that some such mystical entity is unlikely to survive the sociological changes which have brought us to the point we saw enacted again, on cable TV, this past Saturday night.
Briefly, let's be clear:
As a technical / legal nation, the United States isn't going anywhere in the next few weeks or in the next few years. But in the face of the gruesome behavior of major elements of our society, the notion that we form a mystical American people, bound together in a mystical Union, has become quite hard to sustain.
What has brought to this point? We'll examine that question all week. But as a Union has turned into a Babel, deeply unhelpful behavior has long been emerging from all sides--from Red America but also from Blue.
Those mystical chords of memory are hard to spot at this time. All this week, we'll examine the following question in the wake of what happened on Saturday night:
Can anything resembling a mystical union survive the sea in which we, the former American people, are now condemned to swim?
Somerby needs to watch the Ken Burns documentary "The American Revolution" to see why we are a union. One point it makes is that the people who inhabit our country have always been diverse, had different interests. He points out that our government was designed to encompass such diversity -- it is not weakened or destroyed by heterogeneity as Somerby once again argues. We are bound by our respect for diversity and a desire to be united as one people, respecting the rights and needs of all others. And we are bound by the blood that was shed to form our independent nation.
ReplyDeleteSomerby's ongoing belief that so-called Babel is bad is part of what undermines our nation today. Somerby has outright suggested that we need to be more homogeneous. He has objected to diversity long before Trump and ICE came on the scene. He has suggested we need to be more the same as a people, misunderstanding our roots. The same can be said for all of the xenophobes persecuting immigrants and minorities today.
Burns is not an historian, but a business which sells
Deleteimages.
Burns created a series in which many historians comment upon what happened. THEY are the experts on the revolution, not Burns, who put the film together but does not appear in it.
DeleteIf you are trying to suggest that Burns is selling an image that is inconsistent with facts, you need to provide some evidence of that. The historians are speaking on screen and thus have the weight of their reputations as scholars behind their words.
Lincoln should have let the south go. Slavery would have died a natural death. He preserved a cancerous entity that is killing us today.
ReplyDeleteOnce the war started, he should have made the South the North's parking lot.
DeleteUnless you consider the Native Americans who were here before the first explorers and settlers arrived on our continent, we are not characterized by any particular group of people, no single language, no single ethnicity, color, culture or religion. We have two native religions (originated here), Christian science and Latter Day Saints (Mormons), and neither is widely practiced. In the colonies, Spanish has been as widely spoken as English. In some states, German is still an official language and French was the official language in the original Louisiana purchase, so we are not bound by a single language. Somerby acknowledges that both black and white people arrived before we were a nation, but slavery also included white slaves and indentured servants (people who worked off debts to earn their freedom) and prisoners transported by European nations. We should all know about this as part of our American history.
ReplyDeleteSo, on what basis does Somerby claim that we cannot be a nation because we are a babel? We swim in a sea Somerby says, but where else would someone swim? Our form of government can transcend the mix of people, but it cannot survive while people break our laws. That is the problem, not the babel but the lawbreakers, the scofflaws, the criminals who do not respect the will of the American people and who pursue their own greed and self-interest ahead of the nation's interests. That is what is wrong with Trump and his cronies. We have a Congress full of cowards who will not enforce the law, remove foreign influences, traitors and lawbreakers and protect the rights of the people, all of us.
We fought a war to prevent white men from tyrannizing black people, because it is incompatible with our values. We amended the Constitution to make it clear that all are included. Trump now disputes that and seeks to exclude some, enrich himself at the expense of the rest of us, and turn our country into a laughingstock and despised nation where we once had allies. Trump needs to be removed using the tools provided by our Constitution, applied by our elected representatives. Somerby has never called for this but the rest of us see it clearly. Some polls are showing 75% of the people in favor of impeaching Trump.