The accelerating MAGA assault on democratic freedoms echoes America’s first “Redemption,” a backlash to Reconstruction after the Civil War. Understanding the historical parallels—long marches for freedom, reconstructions, violent backlashes, and judicial betrayals—is essential to confronting today’s threats to our freedoms.
Your fleshing out of two important streams of breakthroughs and backlashes is strangely devoid of the third stream, women’s rights.
Perhaps the white robed suffragettes, and their millennia long quiet-the-way-women-are-supposed-to-behave slog to equality doesn’t register on your seismograph but trust me, women gaining the right to have a legal say in their destinies, whether through voting or contraception, is at least as consiquential as the other two streams you delve into.
I respectfully ask that you consider expanding your thinking and postings to include the third stream; Women’s Independence. Thank you. (Contact Dr Riane Eisler for assistance, she can upgrade your seismograph.)
Friederike, Women are in great danger in the US right now. If not, you might be interested in following Jessica Valenti's Substack "Abortion, Every Day." She is documenting the destruction of women's bodily autonomy in the USA.
It is so alarming the direction I see things going, and we have seen things deteriorate rapidly for women in Afghanistan too, so we know that things can quickly turn in the opposite direction. With misogynists like Pete Hegseth and Elon Musk being the norm of this administration and the Broligarchy and the Heritage Foundation we see them reigning supreme while women are removed from the history books along with other groups considered DEIA.
I am particularly worried about LGBTQ+ women, women of child bearing years, and non-White women in the USA. The second group is meant to be forced to breed and that is not a good thing. I think people should be considering their options. It is very individual. It is why I wrote this piece. A "Plan C" for Catastrophe.
Thank you. This is very educational and brings a lot of the history I’ve been aware of together with the underlying white supremacist convictions that I didn’t realize still ran so deep in our culture. And so much more. I appreciate your references so that I can further my education and understanding of how we got here. And your suggestions of how we must endeavor to fight now are much appreciated too.
We have to have a platform and a leader. The courts need us in the streets now to support their gavel. You thought there were only 3, but we have 5 branches. The media is the 4th branch, and we the people are
1. Justice John Marshall assumed what he was trying to prove in Marbury v Madison (1803), and that is not an implied power, except maybe at Harvard Law School and Yale Law School.
2. Marbury v Madison involves a tautology, and restating the constitution is not legislating from the bench. However, Marshall wanted power shifted to the judiciary--midnight appointment Federalist judges--and Jefferson wanted those judges out.
3. Each and every judicial review replaces constitutional law with case law.
4. Not much happened after the opinion of Marshall, because opinion is all that it is.
5. However, in 1833, near the end of Marshall's 35 year reign of arrogance, Barron correctly sought to enforce the 5th Amendment on a case in Maryland. Rights are exogenous to the system, from laws of nature and nature's God, so any right is from nature or God and applies to everyone. Privileges and immunity can be argued exogenously determined, but not rights.
6. Barron was correct. Marshall knew that. Southerners knew that the constitutional opinion--the legal question was a tautology--would open the path for Northerners to buy slaves from Southerners and set them free under just compensation clause.
7. Marshall was a disgrace for most of his career, to include coercing other justices to vote as he did, a practice Scalia followed with his annoying emails to other justices, but this was the worst.
8. Marshall said the Bill of Rights were, in so many words, not from the laws of nature or nature's God, but determined based on what geography you call home. A disgraceful lie.
9. This ruling was so bad that one of the framers of the 14th Amendment said that he was trying to repair the damage from Marshall's opinion in Barron v City of Baltimore. This was the oligarchy that Thomas Jefferson warned of after Marbury v Madison.
10. There can be no debate: Marshall was the worst Chief Justice in history. Yet John Roberts idolizes Marshall and wants to be compared to him. Well, sadly for the citizens of the US, Roberts is well on his way to achieving his dreams..
11. Many experts believe that Stump v Sparkman (1978) is when the wheels of the constitution came off, and the US legal system has been going hell in a handbasket every since.
12. Au contraire. It was Bradley v Fisher (1871) that was the catalyst for Stump v Sparkman. SCOTUS abused the 'common law' clause in the 7th Amendment to introduce Sir Edward Coke's Star Chamber policies when Coke was the head judge in the notorious English Star Chamber.
13. Abuse of discretion--different that obstructing justice--cannot be extended to judicial acts in criminal cases. Roberts keeps extending immunity--none of which is constitutional--until he is very much the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Star Chamber.
14. Roberts and others invented 'quasi-judicial act' in Connick v Thompson, without proof, just heuristics, so that Roberts wouldn't face civil suit for his numerous violations of civil rights and of due process when he was a federal prosecutor. This is the true John Roberts: self-absorbed, criminal, that craves power.
Such a terrific essay, Michael! Looking forward to more of what you've been working on. The wait for this was worth it!
The chart that best summarized how we got here was the chart in §3 on African Americans Serving in Congress since enactment of the 15th Amendment. I'm trying to extend that chart thru 2024 election.
This was very well written. I have seen that this is what’s going on, but this really brought it all together in a historical context. I agree that women’s rights is also a big issue, but having lived overseas for years and having had the opportunity to look back on America from the outside - race has always been America’s Achilles heal. I just hope that we can get through this with our country still intact and be better for it.
I so agree with Freidrike's comment below. This fight we are in is a fight for all people, male, female, gay, straight, black, white, brown yellow, red, able or disabled, smart, dumb, rich (for their eternal souls), poor and middle class. If it is not that, it is not legitimate.
America must have it's own Maidan Uprising against Trump’s power grab! Governmental legitimacy ultimately comes from the consent of the governed. Trump repeatedly defends his actions with false claims of a mandate. It was a close election & Trump disavowed Project 2025. We the people must demonstrate in the streets in massive numbers to show Trump, the country and the world that we do not consent!
This is an excellent essay. Yet it misses something vital. The first long march to freedom was the march that began in 1765 with opposition to the Stamp Act and that ended almost a long 20 years later with the Treaty of Paris concluding the American Revolution. One value in taking this early history in deeply is that it unites us behind one consistent narrative—at least as far as the ideals of the Revolution and the ideals of the founding are concerned.
I am writing about these ideals. It is something I wish to share with others. It is something I believe is essential to uniting all Americans who wish to work together today to overwhelm and overcome the corruption and tyranny emanating today from the White House.
Thank you, Michael, for this comprehensive historical analysis. Halfway through the discussion, I wondered, like the commenter, Friedrike Merck, whether there is any relevance to the women's suffrage and autonomy movement. I believe this is an undercurrent that should be recognized. In any case, your work here is illuminating.
My hope (and expectation) is that we are living the moment before another period of reconstruction as Americans prepare to take to the streets (i.e. April 5 "Hands-Off" action) reclaiming "the agency of popular constitutionalism" with the eventual further amendment of the Constitution to protect women's rights, the right to vote and correct an errant judicial system.
It will be 10 am EST. In any case, he is talking about the Reconstruction and Redemption, but I am only halfway through the book, so I have not gotten beyond the first redemption. That is where we are now. He is examining this behavior and White slavers concept of freedom as different from that of the rest of us. It is their freedom to own people, to do whatever they want pretty much without consequences that is what he is defining, and the history of this in one Alabama County, from the driving away the Indigenous People with which the Federal government had treaties that they in the end did not honor, because they did not honor the people they made them with, and allowed the Whites to just take over reserved land for Creeks. Now we are post the Civil War and the first Reconstruction and the Federal government has again neglected to stand up for the rights of Blacks to vote in this state and county, so a majority population is disenfranchised.
I have never seen the Supreme Courts or our judicial system as fair. There is too much evidence of it not being fair, so I have no expectations of this justice, and therefore when many of the Substack writers I read, who feel that their role is to be optimistic to keep people fighting hold out hope of the courts, I am inclined to not trust that. I really appreciate hearing this sort of analysis, because only when we understand how bad things are and what we are up against can we truly fight against it.
I have been looking at having multiple plans, and one of them is Blue State secession of some sort. A gathering of states that have sanity together as an economic entity to stand up to Trump and the rest of the fascists behind him.
I was glad to see Michael cite Adolph Reed Jr.'s book The South. Since before 'the founding' what became the U.S. has struggled with three issues: property, race, and sex. In my opinion, the foundational problem has involved property—but it's the three are completely entangled. Reed has a great deal to say about all that on the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute's Class Matters podcast. https://classmatterspodcast.org/
Your fleshing out of two important streams of breakthroughs and backlashes is strangely devoid of the third stream, women’s rights.
Perhaps the white robed suffragettes, and their millennia long quiet-the-way-women-are-supposed-to-behave slog to equality doesn’t register on your seismograph but trust me, women gaining the right to have a legal say in their destinies, whether through voting or contraception, is at least as consiquential as the other two streams you delve into.
I respectfully ask that you consider expanding your thinking and postings to include the third stream; Women’s Independence. Thank you. (Contact Dr Riane Eisler for assistance, she can upgrade your seismograph.)
Friederike, Women are in great danger in the US right now. If not, you might be interested in following Jessica Valenti's Substack "Abortion, Every Day." She is documenting the destruction of women's bodily autonomy in the USA.
https://jessica.substack.com/
It is so alarming the direction I see things going, and we have seen things deteriorate rapidly for women in Afghanistan too, so we know that things can quickly turn in the opposite direction. With misogynists like Pete Hegseth and Elon Musk being the norm of this administration and the Broligarchy and the Heritage Foundation we see them reigning supreme while women are removed from the history books along with other groups considered DEIA.
I am particularly worried about LGBTQ+ women, women of child bearing years, and non-White women in the USA. The second group is meant to be forced to breed and that is not a good thing. I think people should be considering their options. It is very individual. It is why I wrote this piece. A "Plan C" for Catastrophe.
https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/a-plan-c-for-catastrophe?r=f0qfn
See my comment at the tail end of this thread, Friedrike. Right on.
Thank you. This is very educational and brings a lot of the history I’ve been aware of together with the underlying white supremacist convictions that I didn’t realize still ran so deep in our culture. And so much more. I appreciate your references so that I can further my education and understanding of how we got here. And your suggestions of how we must endeavor to fight now are much appreciated too.
This is critical perspective for our moment now.
We have to have a platform and a leader. The courts need us in the streets now to support their gavel. You thought there were only 3, but we have 5 branches. The media is the 4th branch, and we the people are
The 5th branch of this government. We march when we have had it. We have had it. March on DC! https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/a-just-movement?r=3m1bs
I wonder if Trump 2.0 will finally wean US liberals off their fetish for judicial solutions to political problems.
Rule-by-case-law.
1. Justice John Marshall assumed what he was trying to prove in Marbury v Madison (1803), and that is not an implied power, except maybe at Harvard Law School and Yale Law School.
2. Marbury v Madison involves a tautology, and restating the constitution is not legislating from the bench. However, Marshall wanted power shifted to the judiciary--midnight appointment Federalist judges--and Jefferson wanted those judges out.
3. Each and every judicial review replaces constitutional law with case law.
4. Not much happened after the opinion of Marshall, because opinion is all that it is.
5. However, in 1833, near the end of Marshall's 35 year reign of arrogance, Barron correctly sought to enforce the 5th Amendment on a case in Maryland. Rights are exogenous to the system, from laws of nature and nature's God, so any right is from nature or God and applies to everyone. Privileges and immunity can be argued exogenously determined, but not rights.
6. Barron was correct. Marshall knew that. Southerners knew that the constitutional opinion--the legal question was a tautology--would open the path for Northerners to buy slaves from Southerners and set them free under just compensation clause.
7. Marshall was a disgrace for most of his career, to include coercing other justices to vote as he did, a practice Scalia followed with his annoying emails to other justices, but this was the worst.
8. Marshall said the Bill of Rights were, in so many words, not from the laws of nature or nature's God, but determined based on what geography you call home. A disgraceful lie.
9. This ruling was so bad that one of the framers of the 14th Amendment said that he was trying to repair the damage from Marshall's opinion in Barron v City of Baltimore. This was the oligarchy that Thomas Jefferson warned of after Marbury v Madison.
10. There can be no debate: Marshall was the worst Chief Justice in history. Yet John Roberts idolizes Marshall and wants to be compared to him. Well, sadly for the citizens of the US, Roberts is well on his way to achieving his dreams..
11. Many experts believe that Stump v Sparkman (1978) is when the wheels of the constitution came off, and the US legal system has been going hell in a handbasket every since.
12. Au contraire. It was Bradley v Fisher (1871) that was the catalyst for Stump v Sparkman. SCOTUS abused the 'common law' clause in the 7th Amendment to introduce Sir Edward Coke's Star Chamber policies when Coke was the head judge in the notorious English Star Chamber.
13. Abuse of discretion--different that obstructing justice--cannot be extended to judicial acts in criminal cases. Roberts keeps extending immunity--none of which is constitutional--until he is very much the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Star Chamber.
14. Roberts and others invented 'quasi-judicial act' in Connick v Thompson, without proof, just heuristics, so that Roberts wouldn't face civil suit for his numerous violations of civil rights and of due process when he was a federal prosecutor. This is the true John Roberts: self-absorbed, criminal, that craves power.
Such a terrific essay, Michael! Looking forward to more of what you've been working on. The wait for this was worth it!
The chart that best summarized how we got here was the chart in §3 on African Americans Serving in Congress since enactment of the 15th Amendment. I'm trying to extend that chart thru 2024 election.
This was very well written. I have seen that this is what’s going on, but this really brought it all together in a historical context. I agree that women’s rights is also a big issue, but having lived overseas for years and having had the opportunity to look back on America from the outside - race has always been America’s Achilles heal. I just hope that we can get through this with our country still intact and be better for it.
I so agree with Freidrike's comment below. This fight we are in is a fight for all people, male, female, gay, straight, black, white, brown yellow, red, able or disabled, smart, dumb, rich (for their eternal souls), poor and middle class. If it is not that, it is not legitimate.
America must have it's own Maidan Uprising against Trump’s power grab! Governmental legitimacy ultimately comes from the consent of the governed. Trump repeatedly defends his actions with false claims of a mandate. It was a close election & Trump disavowed Project 2025. We the people must demonstrate in the streets in massive numbers to show Trump, the country and the world that we do not consent!
This is an excellent essay. Yet it misses something vital. The first long march to freedom was the march that began in 1765 with opposition to the Stamp Act and that ended almost a long 20 years later with the Treaty of Paris concluding the American Revolution. One value in taking this early history in deeply is that it unites us behind one consistent narrative—at least as far as the ideals of the Revolution and the ideals of the founding are concerned.
I am writing about these ideals. It is something I wish to share with others. It is something I believe is essential to uniting all Americans who wish to work together today to overwhelm and overcome the corruption and tyranny emanating today from the White House.
Thank you, Michael, for this comprehensive historical analysis. Halfway through the discussion, I wondered, like the commenter, Friedrike Merck, whether there is any relevance to the women's suffrage and autonomy movement. I believe this is an undercurrent that should be recognized. In any case, your work here is illuminating.
My hope (and expectation) is that we are living the moment before another period of reconstruction as Americans prepare to take to the streets (i.e. April 5 "Hands-Off" action) reclaiming "the agency of popular constitutionalism" with the eventual further amendment of the Constitution to protect women's rights, the right to vote and correct an errant judicial system.
My Democrats Abroad bookclub is reading Freedom's Dominion by Jefferson Cowie, who is speaking tonight in Berlin, on livestream at the American Academy in Berlin. At least it will be tonight here in Germany. https://www.americanacademy.de/event/populist-rage-and-american-illiberalism/
It will be 10 am EST. In any case, he is talking about the Reconstruction and Redemption, but I am only halfway through the book, so I have not gotten beyond the first redemption. That is where we are now. He is examining this behavior and White slavers concept of freedom as different from that of the rest of us. It is their freedom to own people, to do whatever they want pretty much without consequences that is what he is defining, and the history of this in one Alabama County, from the driving away the Indigenous People with which the Federal government had treaties that they in the end did not honor, because they did not honor the people they made them with, and allowed the Whites to just take over reserved land for Creeks. Now we are post the Civil War and the first Reconstruction and the Federal government has again neglected to stand up for the rights of Blacks to vote in this state and county, so a majority population is disenfranchised.
I have never seen the Supreme Courts or our judicial system as fair. There is too much evidence of it not being fair, so I have no expectations of this justice, and therefore when many of the Substack writers I read, who feel that their role is to be optimistic to keep people fighting hold out hope of the courts, I am inclined to not trust that. I really appreciate hearing this sort of analysis, because only when we understand how bad things are and what we are up against can we truly fight against it.
I have been looking at having multiple plans, and one of them is Blue State secession of some sort. A gathering of states that have sanity together as an economic entity to stand up to Trump and the rest of the fascists behind him.
It has often been about race but I think gender is even more over arching.
I was glad to see Michael cite Adolph Reed Jr.'s book The South. Since before 'the founding' what became the U.S. has struggled with three issues: property, race, and sex. In my opinion, the foundational problem has involved property—but it's the three are completely entangled. Reed has a great deal to say about all that on the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute's Class Matters podcast. https://classmatterspodcast.org/