Michelle Goldberg, who has been outstanding for the past year or so, has written an op-ed in the NY Times speaking about grief over people losing faith in democratic or republican norms (lower case for philosophies of government, not political parties). She is essentially correct. Her essay should be read in tandem with Bertrand Russell's "The Ancestry of Fascism" from 1935 about how difficult it is to argue with people who are not even aware they have rejected those norms (It is unfortunate the Google Docs version is edited and removes most of the point Russell was making about trying to argue where the foundational norms for agreement no longer exist. It is worth getting the book in which the essay was reprinted, "In Praise of Idleness").
This got me to thinking about my lost opportunity to write a PhD on this subject. I had at least two thesis idea, and one of them was the most ambitious, and is relevant here. My more ambitious PhD thesis was going to be about the loss of faith in democratic/republican norms during the 1930s, and how there were those who saw Fascism as a road to get on and those who saw Communism as a road to get on. Most business people, including Hollywood studio execs and the editorial board of the NY Times, and a surprisingly strong minority of intellectuals, writers, and others in the creative arts were more concerned with fighting Communism and therefore siding with Mussolini and Hitler, and even the Japanese war lords (one recalls John Foster Dulles' defense of Japanese atrocities and imperial conquest of much of China in 1935 in the Atlantic Monthly, sadly not online and only referenced here at the I.F. Stone Weekly archives). Union organizers, liberal people of faith, and many in the creative arts were more concerned with fighting Fascism and therefore siding with Stalin or at least Trotsky. What both sides agreed upon was the democratic and republican norms were no longer effective to promote a stable society, and what was needed was government to organize the masses in one way or another to provide stability and eventually prosperity. I wanted to write about the period of 1930 through 1946 and how both sides included many who became more confident again in those norms to reject their initial leanings, but only one side was demonized for ever giving into despair about those norms (there were exceptions: William Bullitt and Joe Kennedy, Sr. were knocked out, but that is because they directly challenged FDR in the Democratic Party and paid the political price for the challenges). I also wanted to be fair to both sides, in the sense of seeking to explain their motives, their overall desire to avoid excessive measures, and to look at their overall conduct before and after the 1930s.
Anyway, we are, again, at this point in American history. However, this time, I am not sure there is an FDR to save us. Well, I am sure, and the presidential candidate's name is Bernard Sanders. Unfortunately, since most people today, my age and up, especially, don't understand what I am talking about in the previous paragraph, and keep thinking instead we should just muddle through or just get rid of Trump or Trump-Pence, my despair and sense of hopelessness are heightened that this time, we will not choose well as a nation. Worse, the bad faith "arguments" Republicans are making with respect to the impeachment proceeding would be astonishing to most observers even a few years ago. Notwithstanding this grief I feel these days, I have not given in to the conclusions those in the 1930s and early 1940s gave in to regarding democratic or republican norms. Far from it. I support open primaries, same day registration, public financing, instant run off types of reforms in elections, the National Popular Vote initiative regarding the Electoral College, an end to Voter ID laws, and other electoral reforms. I continue to disagree with the early 20th Century revolutionary line about "the worse it gets, the better it gets." Often, it just gets worse when we give up the norms. My opposition to the "worse it gets, the better it gets" line is what drives my support for Trump's impeachment, and even Pence's impeachment, too. It also drives my rage against Weimar Republic types in corporate media and in the Democratic Party who would rather risk losing to Fascism than allow for completing the New Deal.
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So what was my more straightforward PhD project, you may wonder? That project would have been to write the first full length biography of Charles Francis Adams in over 60 years, and to write about the importance of Adams in ways his great previous biographer, Martin Duberman, was not able to, in 1957, write about Adams in quite the way I would, due to constraints on how biographies were written in the 1950s. I planned to call this thesis paper or book: "Charles Francis Adams: Legacy and Loyalty" and would focus on how those two terms defined much of Charles Francis Adams' life. Examples would include Charles Francis Adams' loyalty to, and protecting the legacy of, his father, John Quincy Adams, and grandfather, John Adams, in the sense of going through their papers, cataloguing them, and then offering an illumination of his father's and grandfather's policy positions, their political and other philosophies, and their integrity in how they governed (I would not hesitate to offer critical information regarding the Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798 or how JQA was not sensitive to Native Americans in his negotiations with Spain over Florida, to take two concrete examples). The phrase would also illuminate Adams attempting to be practical in his opposition to slavery in the Antebellum period to protect the nation's legacy, and, then, as US ambassador to Great Britain during the US Civil War (1861-1865), working hard and effectively to defeat those British politicians seeking to side with the Confederate treason to the US. In his actions as ambassador, Adams showed a sense of loyalty and demand to protect the nation's legacy--and the best of British's anti-slavery legacy. Finally, after the Civil War, Adams was important in establishing modern international law, helping to establish the first international arbitrations, including one between the US and Great Britain. Duberman could only hint at some of Adams' personal issues, especially Adams' descent into dementia, and Adams' relationships with his wife and sons. I figure the bio would be at least 500 and likely 600 pages, plus footnotes--in short (pun intended) more like Chernow's bio of Hamilton in page length.
I am open to someone telling me they would fund me for one or both projects. Although I do know some wealthy people, I don't know anyone interested in such funding. :)
