A Liberal Dose, June 13, 2025 "A Brief History of Democracy, Part 2"

 

A Liberal Dose

A Brief History of Democracy part 2

Troy D. Smith

 

Last week I wrote a little about how the Revolutionary generation viewed the word “democracy.” They equated it with “mob rule,” such as ran rampant in the French Revolution, and so worked to keep the common people from having too much power -primarily by having property requirements to vote. This meant that even free white men aged twenty-one or over could not vote unless they were worth a certain amount of money. That was the norm at the time, and is no doubt what the Framers had in mind when they drafted the Constitution. Of course, they also had in mind women and people of color not voting.

A handful of states removed property requirements in the 1790s and early 1800s. Vermont, at #14 the first new state, gave the vote to all adult males regardless of wealth or race. The majority, though, still had those requirements in place by 1820. But when the Panic of 1819 collapsed the economy, working class men started agitating for their voting rights. By the end of the 1820s, almost all states had removed wealth as a qualification to vote… which led to the election of Andrew Jackson, a populist who had grown up poor and presented as a man of the people. It also led to a reconfiguring of the word “democracy”, which started to carry a positive connotation, associated with social equality of the working class. In fact, by the 1820s the Federalist Party had collapsed, leaving the Democratic-Republican party of Jefferson and Madison as the only remaining political party… and during the Jackson era, they started being called simply “Democrats,” which they made official by changing their name in 1844.    

In the 1830s, a French traveler named Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a book (originally in French) called Democracy in America, which examined the character of Americans and sought to determine why their experiment with democracy had gone so much better than that of France. One thing he noted was that Americans love money, and generally hope to make more of it; that they don’t mind when an individual gets rich, but that they hate the idea of a handful of families, via generational wealth, becoming an aristocracy. He also noted that, unlike in Europe, you could not determine someone’s social status by how they dressed -in America poor people often dress well, so as not to appear poor, and rich people often dress like slobs so as not to be viewed as hoity-toity (not his exact words, of course). In other words, a social expectation of equality.

He did warn of two dangers to American democracy. First, the “tyranny of the majority” in which a majority group, having the most votes, can impinge on the rights of minorities. This danger was countermanded by things like the Bill of Rights, which protect individual liberties. Second, he warned of “soft despotism”, in which the government finagles a series of regulations to make voters FEEL LIKE they are participating, but which actually blind them to how they are being controlled and led to authoritarianism.

And that brings us to today, June 13. Tomorrow is Flag Day… and it is also Trump’s birthday, and the day of his massive military parade in his honor… and the date of over 1,800 planned “No King” demonstrations around the country. It also happens to be my wife’s and my anniversary (married on Flag Day!). There could be no better events to demonstrate the dangers facing democracy in America today from a militaristic authoritarian bully, and the American tradition -going back to the Boston Tea Party -of massive protest against tyranny. We are also seeing how, by ignoring the Constitution (and being allowed to get away with it), the current administration is imposing the tyranny of the majority -many of whom they have taken control of via soft despotism (which seems to be getting harder by the day).

The Constitution and its Bill of Rights. Those are our defense against tyranny. That is why military personnel and politicians pledge an oath to defend the Constitution, not to obey a president (or a king). The whole of U.S. history has revolved around trying “to make a more perfect union” by expanding rights, especially voting rights, to more and more people, not fewer and fewer.

This weekend, let our mantra be -not MAGA -but TAFA: Take American Forward Again.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, June 6, 2025 "A Brief History of Democracy, part 1"

 

A Liberal Dose

A Very Brief History of Democracy, Part 1

Troy D. Smith

 

I’m going to step away for a moment from my weekly monologue about how Trump is ruining the economy and address a specific question someone asked me. There is a meme going around social media saying, in effect, the U.S. has never been a democracy but is instead a constitutional republic, designed to protect common folk from being ruled by a tyrannical elite. The quote on that meme is actually pulled, out of context, from a long Facebook rant by an ultra-libertarian, anti-vax, Jews-are-secretly-running-the-world conspiracy theorist. That information provides a lot of context. However, the stark divide in the comparison reminds me of something else I’ve been hearing for about a decade now from conservative friends: “America is not a democracy, it is a republic.” While all the statements I have quoted are true on some levels, the framing of them in the context used by people citing them is “Democrats are bad.” In the latter case the contrast is offered that “Republicans are good.” The ultra-libertarian view is that both parties, and indeed the very concept of parties, or of government, is evil. Either way, I realize that most folks have never done a deep-dive into democracy (or populism), and can find these sorts of random quotes, when pulled out of context, confusing.

So I’m going to talk, in the 500 words I have remaining, about Democracy in America (a full discussion might take more like 500 pages!). This is especially appropriate as today, June 6, is the anniversary of one of the largest defenses of democracy in history.

First, let’s look at the word and the concept themselves. “Democracy” is from a Greek word meaning “rule by the common people” -demos. In ancient (and/or classical) Greece, city-states like Athens were run this way: major decisions were made by a vote of all adult male citizens (of course, slaves were left out of the decision-making process, and so were women for the most part). We still see a form of this every once in a while when there is a referendum -an issue voted on by every voter in a county, or a state. That differs from a representational democracy, in which voters elect someone to represent their town, district, state, etc. in a larger voting body that makes decisions, which is what we have in the U.S. (except for those occasional referendums).

Here's something many of you probably didn’t know, because you don’t see it in pop culture representations. The vast majority of indigenous North American tribes were democracies, probably more than 95% of them (I can name some of the exceptions). Every indigenous village or town (among that 95+%) had elected, nonhereditary, leaders who served as peace chiefs (diplomats), war chiefs (military leaders), or on the tribal council. However, very often, really big decisions were made by referendum- a vote of all adult members of the tribe (usually including women). The Iroquois actually had a representative democracy centuries before Europeans arrived on the continent. There were five Iroquois Nations -later six -the Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Cayuga, and Onondaga (and later Tuscarora) nations, who all formed together into a confederacy. Each town elected representatives to speak for them at the national council (Mohawk, for example), while each nation elected people to represent their nation on the grand council of the confederacy.

Most of the “Founding Fathers” were very well-educated and were very knowledgeable about the democracies of Greece and Rome (which was a democratic republic until the Caesars turned it into an empire, a generation or two before Jesus). They knew the parts that worked, and the parts that didn’t. Some were also familiar -though no one mentioned it in their writings at the time -of the democratic nature of indigenous groups, especially the Iroquois, who were close allies of the British (and therefore of the colonists before the Revolution). They were also very aware of the thoughts of various European philosophers on the subject of government and rights, especially the Englishman John Locke, and their thoughts on government as a social contract between leaders and the governed.

Those Founders, though, were a little divided on where they thought the common people stood. Most believed that “the mob”, or the general public, were too uneducated and emotional to be trusted to make good decisions, and only people (people meaning free adult males) who owned a significant amount of property should be allowed to participate in the process. This included people like John Adams and George Washington, neither of whom trusted “mob action”. For such folks, “democracy” was almost a dirty word, because they equated it with “mob rule”. Others, like Thomas Jefferson and John’s cousin Sam Adams, were very much in favor of the common people and of group protests. When they got together for the Constitutional convention in Philadelphia, they were in agreement they wanted a representative democratic republic, but a balance had to be reached between those fearful of giving the central government too much power, and those afraid of giving the common people too much power. The balance was reached by having one part of Congress, the House of Representatives, being elected directly by the people and the other, the Senate, being appointed by state legislatures (which is how we did it for the first 130 years or so of the U.S.), as well as by the president being elected by the electoral college, not the popular vote.

So that was the situation when the Constitution went into effect in 1788. However, in the 1820s there was a sea change in how people looked at democracy. We’ll look at that next time -depending on the news cycle, who knows what might come up between now and next week.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, May 30, 2025 "Our National Tradition of Opposing Kings and Aristocracies"

 

A Liberal Dose

Our National Tradition of Opposing Kings and Aristocracies

Troy D. Smith

 

Did you know that, since he was elected six months ago, the size of Donald Trump’s fortune has doubled? DOUBLED. From 2.5 billion to 5 billion. And I hear people say “oh that wonderful man, he’s sacrificed so much to be president- he doesn’t even accept a salary!” He doesn’t NEED to accept a paltry public service salary -not when he can charge billionaires from around the world to come to his private parties to celebrate the “Trump bitcoin”, or when he can arrange for visiting dignitaries and their (large) retinues to have meetings where they have to pay HIM a fortune to stay at his ritzy hotels, or when new Trump hotels are suddenly going up in every country that wants to do backroom deals with him, or even when he can have taxpayers foot the travel bill (millions and millions of dollars so far) for him to spend every weekend golfing at his own private clubs… where he literally charges the small army of secret service agents protecting him to stay at his pricy resorts, and the taxpayer pays for it.

Did you know that there are only about 800 billionaires in America… and they have as much money as the “bottom” half of Americans put together? That’s about 170 million people (and you are probably one of them). In other words, every billionaire -on the average -has as much money as a quarter-of-a-million working class people. And yet, Trump’s “big beautiful bill” that passed the House of Representatives this week is going to -through massive tax cuts to billionaires and millionaires -add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. And that is AFTER all the cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and other programs that the bill calls for (and which will be impacting people you know, and maybe you personally). It is being called by economists the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in American history. To say noting of the tariffs, which some are calling the largest tax hike in American history -because tariffs are ultimately paid by YOU, the consumer, NOT foreign countries. Many economists are warning of, not just an imminent recession, but the biggest depression in history… which, they say, will ruin most Americans but will make the super-wealthy even wealthier. And in the midst of this, Trump wants to raise the debt ceiling -so as to incur even MORE national debt, and further imperil America’s economic standing in the world… all to lower taxes on billionaires like himself. To enable people who already have more money than they could ever spend in 100 lifetimes to make MORE. And all that “waste and fraud” being cut by DOGE -which are mostly vital programs for the wellbeing of the citizens of the country, things to “promote the general welfare” -well, all of it put together is only a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the debts about to be incurred by these robber baron tax cuts.

So no, Trump has not “sacrificed so much” -at least not from his own pocket. He has sacrificed, instead, the poor of this country, and then the working class of this country, and he is about to sacrifice the middle class -including many of you reading this that might have voted for him. The whole point, for the entire crowd, is to tear everything down and destroy the ability of the country to function -and then swoop in and buy everything that is left, cheap. And thereby turn YOU into a permanent serf class… barons must own their peasants, after all. And so far, many of you have just been handing it over to them… but it is about to start hurting YOU.

You’ve probably heard the word “oligarchy” thrown around lately… it means “rule by a small group of people”. Well, there’s another word for it: aristocracy. That is literally what “barons” are, titled members of an aristocracy. Our country was FOUNDED on refusing to be ruled by an aristocracy or a king; on everyone being equal and having a fair shot. Well, that fair shot is dwindling day-by-day in this still-young administration… and the elements our country’s founders expected to resist such a turn of events are floundering. The press is afraid to speak out. Education is being crippled. Republicans who hold a majority in Congress go along with everything the president tells them to, either in fear of Trump’s supporters in the primary or, literally, in fear for their own families’ safety. Lower courts have been standing up, but the Supreme Court is a very mixed bag. How thick the irony that SCOTUS is now complaining that Trump is ignoring everything they tell him to do -when they themselves, less than a year ago, ruled that as president he can literally do anything he wants to and be immune from consequences.

Know who it is all coming down to? YOU. I am talking to independents, fence-sitters, people who don’t follow the news, traditional conservatives who have not gone full-MAGA (and maybe some that have). You’ve been sold down the river along with everyone else. Something has to be done to rein this insanity in… and that means you’re going to have to hold your nose and elect some Democrats to Congress so they can check his power. And while you’re at it, to our own state’s legislature.

Sure the libs are being “owned” and a bunch of social issues that do not directly affect you are being reversed… but very soon, your wallet is going to inform you that this is not what you voted for, and you’re going to have to do something about it.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, May 23, 2025 "Property Taxes, Tariffs, and Taking Back the Keys"

 

A Liberal Dose

Property Taxes, Tariffs, and Taking Back the Keys

Troy D. Smith

 

Several people in White County have noticed their property taxes have gone through the roof- in some cases more than doubling. Walmart has announced that consumers need to prepare themselves, as they are going to have to raise prices significantly this summer due to Trump’s tariffs (Trump angrily told Walmart they need to “eat the losses” -thus accidentally admitting there will be huge losses). Inflation continues to go up, with no end in sight -in fact, economists warn it is going to get a lot worse. Plants in the Upper Cumberland that employ a lot of people have been shut down because the parent companies have to consolidate costs due to so many of their workers nationwide being deported (I speak primarily of the Perdue chicken processing plant in Monterey, throwing people born and raised in the Upper Cumberland whose families have been here for generations out of work). 19 people died in tornadoes in Kentucky this week -and the early warning systems had been forced to close at night because they are run by the federal government and DOGE put so many of them out of work (remember when I said, about a month ago, that people in this area were going to start dying because of that?). Airplanes are falling out of the sky, and the country has barely avoided much greater aerial catastrophes (so far) because so many air traffic controllers have been fired. The U.S. credit rating has been downgraded and the dollar is losing value around the world. The U.S. economy shrank in the first three months of this year, for the first time since Covid, after several years of gradual growth- if it shrinks again this quarter we are officially in a recession. This week the GOP has taken another step in pushing through Trump’s “big beautiful bill” that will give massive tax cuts to billionaires (though if you make less than $4 million you will be paying more, not counting tariffs, WHICH ARE A TAX ON YOU), while taking health insurance away from 10 million people, cutting SNAP, and making massive cuts to Medicaid. “Oh, they would never cut Medicaid! Trump said so!” The fact is, the only thing that slowed this bill down some was that several Republicans refused to support it because it didn’t cut Medicaid ENOUGH. And make no mistake, Medicare and Social Security are next.

No matter how much some folks would like to blame Democrats for this, the facts are these: the Republican Party is in complete control of every branch of government, from the federal level to the state level in Tennessee to the county level in White County. Those of you who support that party got your wish. What we are seeing is the result. This is what happens when you hand everything over to one party -they no longer have to care about your needs, because they know you will keep electing them because you’ve been trained to hate the other party. And you lose all leverage. Sure, here in Tennessee the one-half of one percent of trans kids can’t play sports, and school libraries are being forced to remove books about Jackie Robinson and MLK, and those annoying poor kids won’t get to eat at school anymore… and that makes it all worth it, right?

Remember how angry many of you were -the vast majority of you, regardless of party affiliation -about the governor’s school voucher program, which will essentially be taking money away from our county schools and giving it to rich people’s kids in private schools in the cities? Remember how angry you were at your Republican representatives for going along with that, despite the fact you, their constituents, did not want it? I sure hope you remember the feeling you got when you saw your property tax bill this year.

If you want them to stop robbing your house, STOP HANDING THEM THE KEYS. Stop letting them distract you with tirades about “wokeness” that have almost no impact whatsoever on your daily life, while they rob you blind to give more money to their fat cat, robber baron friends/contributors. Listen, I know some of y’all have just moved here in the past few years. But for those who have been here even a little while, you remember -barely more than a decade ago -when we had Charlie Curtis and Charlotte Burke, and before that her late husband Tommy, representing us at the state legislature. When Bart Gordon represented our district in the U.S. House, and when Phil Bredesen was our governor? All Democrats. Was life really so bad here then? Is it really better now, after over a decade of absolute Republican rule on the county and state level -or is it a whole, whole lot worse? I think we all know the answer to that.

Take the keys back, people.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, May 16, 2025 "The Con Game Is Running Thin"

 

A Liberal Dose

The Con Game Is Running Thin

Troy D. Smith

 

I have been trying to primarily focus on the economic aspects of Trump’s second administration in these columns, hoping to also get to all the other elements… but the economic angle alone has so many moving parts, and so much new to absorb every day, it’s hard to keep up. Last week I couldn’t keep up at all, because it was finals week and I was working around-the-clock to get everything graded. But while all that is true, it is also true that there is a sense of sameness to it all… the details change from day to day, and even from hour to hour, but the general trajectory is always in the same direction. Which is to say, downhill. Faster and faster.

At Tennessee Tech, hard-working, dedicated professors I know have been fired in the past week because their federal funding was suddenly canceled. I think they found out on graduation day. The House GOP has unveiled the first draft of their budget deal (these jokers STILL don’t have a budget for the year we are IN), and, sure enough, it promises massive cuts to Medicaid. Massive. Of course, Trump is promising that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will not be cut -but that’s not what Project 2025 says, and so far, they are following that to the letter and then some. Despite promising they would not, and even denying knowledge of it, and yet elevating the authors of it to high posts in the administration.

The tariff dance keeps getting wilder by the day, bouncing up and down like a yo-yo, and every time it bounces (up or down) the stock market bounces with it. Global confidence in the dollar has tanked. Here in the U.S., consumer confidence has tanked as well. Polls show that the vast majority of Americans understand that, at the rate things are going, inflation and the economy in general are going to get much worse. At least half or more of Republicans are now feeling that way (as multiple polls verify). Businesses are warning of price increases and probable dramatic shortages by Christmas. Of course, by now, you’ve probably all heard about Trump’s solution for that: tell your little girl she will be fine with only two dolls this Christmas instead of thirty, or five pencils instead of a couple of hundred. This gives us some idea what the Christmas norm must have been for Ivanka, but I guarantee none of YOUR kids have been getting thirty dolls at Christmas. They may actually be lucky to get any this year, with shipping from China being halted as we speak. What Trump is really telling his fan base, of course, is that -despite his promises to make prices go down “on day one” -they are going to go through the roof, but don’t whine to him about it.

When he isn’t telling you to rein in your spoiled kids (the irony there is thicker than oatmeal cut with concrete), he is -brace yourself -lying. He has been saying in the last couple of weeks that the price of eggs and gas has been plummeting to record lows, claiming eggs are now below $1.98 a dozen. Even his most devoted followers know better than that.

Listen. Donald Trump is running the U.S. economy into the ground. A lot of voters who supported him because of his promises on the economy are going to start looking back on Joe Biden as the good old days. Trump doesn’t care as long as he gets what he wants: adulation from a third of the population, abject fear from another third, with a remaining third to blame everything on. Oh, and his billionaire buddies not having to pay any taxes at all from now on. Oh, and tanks parading on his birthday, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars, while he is gutting the government left and right of valuable services and dedicated personnel to “save money.”

Donald Trump is a con artist. Which is short for “confidence artist.” Which means someone who is an absolute master at knowing just what to say to win your confidence, so he can cheat you blind. The trick is, finding a victim who will either blindly believe or who will continue being played even after they’ve caught on because they’re embarrassed to admit they were fooled.

Maybe Donald Trump successfully conned you. Don’t be embarrassed, it happens to us all at some time or other. But don’t you think it’s time to stop playing along? Look around, folks.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, May 9, 2025 "Are Some People Wising Up to the Con Job?"

 

A Liberal Dose

“Are Some People Wising up to the Con Job?”

Troy D. Smith

 

Donald Trump’s popularity and approval ratings are plummeting, in every poll, in every category. He is the most unpopular president at the 100-day mark of anyone since they started keeping track, and measuring presidential performance out of the gate with FDR’s first hundred days in 1932. While apparently about 30% of the American public supports Trump consistently no matter what he does, that 15 to 20 % of casual Trump voters -who cast their ballots last November based on inflation and their wallets -are coming around to the truth. The truth is, Donald Trump is not going to make the economy better; in only three months he has made it much worse with prospects of catastrophe ahead. Heck, everyone seems to forget the shape he left the economy in when he left office last time. Or the number of times he has gone bankrupt, or the number of people he has cheated in his long career. Donald Trump is and always has been a narcissistic con artist, whose only concern is what he can bilk you out of and how much richer he can make himself and his friends at your expense.

He promised voters on the campaign trail, though -day after day after day -that he would start making things better on Day One (the same day he promised to be a dictator, a promise he actually has been fulfilling). In my column of December 5, I made note of current prices that week and invited everyone to check back in one year and see how much he had improved things. In light of the public’s falling confidence in Trump, let’s check in right now, five months after that column and three months after Trump was sworn in, and see how things are going.

Dec. 5, average price of eggs in the U.S. was $3.37 per dozen, which drove voters crazy… right now they are $4.95 per dozen. Gas averaged $3.01 then, $3.15 now. Milk was $4.04, now it’s $4.29. Rent was averaging $1,559, now it is $1,828. No wonder only 19% of Americans polled believe Trump’s economic policies are benefiting them financially. And no wonder that -for the first time since WWII -worldwide confidence in the stability of the dollar is declining. Rapidly. Why is that important? Because it enables the U.S. to secure loans much more easily, at lower rates. Losing that would make the price of everything go up, and cripple U.S. economic power around the word. Trump’s tariff games are causing massive disruptions -even when he keeps walking them back. We’re levying high tariffs today, no wait they’re lower, no wait they’re even higher, no wait they’re maybe just a little bit lower… this makes investing in the U.S. seem incredibly risky, because you can’t make any long-range plans. Every new day is entirely dependent on Trump’s whims of the moment.

Meanwhile, Trump and Musk are cutting government services (and jobs) left and right. Most Americans agree that government needs to be more efficient, and waste needs to be avoided… but the current administration’s policy seems to be that any tax dollar spent on anything that can’t blow people up is automatically wasteful. If you voted for Donald Trump, were you voting to end Headstart? Meals on Wheels? Americorps? To fire most of the staff running social security and Medicare, and to possibly cut those programs themselves? And for what? To secure unprecedented tax cuts for billionaires. To run the con.

Lately Trump has been claiming that the high point of U.S. history was between the 1870s and early 1900s (before the introduction of income tax). The fact is, that period was the absolute best time in American history to be filthy rich -and it was horrible for everyone else. That’s why we call it the Gilded Age (a term coined by Mark Twain). It LOOKED like solid gold, but the gold was a thin veneer disguising how bad things were inside. The primary beneficiaries were the class called Robber Barons (“Get rich,” Twain wrote sarcastically, “dishonestly if you can, honestly if you must”).

The fact that Trump thinks of that time as “the good old days” tells us volumes.

Believe me, or any other historian -we don’t want to go back to that.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, April 22, 2025 "A Free Country Where the Law Is King"

 

A Liberal Dose

“A Free Country Where the Law Is King”

Troy D. Smith

 

On Saturday, April 19, protests were held around the country, many of them with titles like “No Kings” and “protest to protect democracy. The point was to protest the autocratic actions of Donald Trump, who in only three months in office has lived up to his promise to be a “dictator from day one.” There were 150 people protesting on the square in Cookeville, 130 in Crossville, and thousands of others around the state and the country.

April 19^th also happened to be the 250^th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which was the beginning of the American Revolution –“the shot heard ‘round the world.” The night before was the 250^th anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride to warn the colonial militia that “the British are coming.”

Thinking of April 19, 1775, reminded me of some words written a few months later, in January, 1776, by Thomas Paine in his pamphlet “Common Sense”, which laid out arguments in favor of democracy and against submitting to the rule of a king. Paine refers to April 19, and also lays out what the new country should one day be. In speaking to the crowd in Cookeville, I thought an excerpt of Paine’s words was the perfect thing to present. Take out “England” or “Britain” and replace it with “Trump”, and you’ll see what I mean. So here is what I read to them -the all-caps words at the end were written that way by Paine.

“No man was a warmer wisher for a reconciliation than myself before the fatal nineteenth of April 1775, but the moment the event of that day was made known, I rejected the hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh of England forever; and disdain the wretch, that with the pretended title of FATHER OF HIS PEOPLE can unfeelingly hear of their slaughter, and composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul. The independence of America should have been considered as dating its era from, and published by, the first musket that was fired against her.

When William the Conqueror subdued England, he gave them law at the point of the sword; and until we consent that the seat of government in America be legally and authoritatively occupied, we shall be in danger of having it filled by some fortunate ruffian, who may treat us in the same manner, and then where will be our freedom? where our property?

As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of government to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith. For myself, I fully and conscientiously believe that it is the will of the Almighty that there should be a diversity of religious opinions among us; and on this liberal principle I look on the various denominations among us to be like children of the same family.

So.

Resolution is our inherent character, and courage hath never yet forsaken us. Wherefore, what is it that we want [lack/need]? Why is it that we hesitate? From Britain we can expect nothing but ruin. If she is once admitted to the government of America again, this Continent will not be worth living in. Jealousies will be always arising; insurrections will be constantly happening; and who will go forth to quell them?

For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other. The Almighty hath implanted in us these unextinguishable feelings for good and wise purposes. They are the guardians of his image in our hearts. They distinguish us from the herd of common animals. The social compact would dissolve, and justice be extirpated [removed] from the earth, or have only a casual existence, were we callous to the touches of affection. The robber and the murderer would often escape unpunished, did not the injuries which our tempers sustain provoke us into justice.  O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her—Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for all mankind.

We have it in our power to begin the world over again. The birthday of a new world is at hand.

WHEREFORE, instead of gazing at each other with suspicious or doubtful curiosity, let each of us hold out to his neighbor the hearty hand of friendship and unite in drawing a line which, like an act of oblivion, shall bury in forgetfulness every former dissension. Let the names of Whig and Tory be extinct; and let none other be heard among us than those of a good citizen, an open and resolute friend, and a virtuous supporter of the RIGHTS of MANKIND and of the FREE AND INDEPENDENT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”

To summarize: Kings are bad. Democracy is good. The way things were (and once again are) must not be allowed to continue; we must have the courage to stand up against it. It is okay to be angry, to be “provoked to justice”, and to struggle against injustice. America is meant to be a beacon of hope to the world -a republic without a king, of the people, by the people, and for the people, which can inspire other countries to rise up against tyrants…and, if they fail, come join us, for we welcome the fugitive and provide asylum for the whole world. We must put aside all prior differences and stand up together for human rights.

Preach, Thomas Paine. Preach.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

A Liberal Dose, April 18, 2025 "A Short Time Ago in a Galaxy Not Far Away"

 

A Liberal Dose

“A Short Time Ago in a Galaxy Not Far Away”

Troy D. Smith

 

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

How well I remember the first time I saw that line. It was early summer of 1977, and I was sitting in Oldham’s Theater. I was nine years old. That very first Star Wars opening crawl was not super-detailed -it merely told us that a band of determined freedom-fighting rebels had just struck their first blow against an evil empire. And that was good enough for a nine-year-old, really. Within a few minutes it had been established that there was a cruel dictator named Emperor Palpatine who was trampling on the rights of citizens all around the galaxy, and that his chief hatchet-man was a ruthless, imposing, evil wizard-figure named Darth Vader. There was also a smarmy and arrogant autocrat, Governor Tarkin, whom I recognized as Professor Van Helsing and Dr. Frankenstein from the Hammer horror films I’d loved for a long as I could remember, and a bunch of generals and admirals.

I missed some of the subtext on that first viewing (and the next several, really). For example, early on, one of the generals complains about complications arising in the senate, when Governor Tarkin delivers a piece of news that flew right over my nine-year-old head: "The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away."

25 years later I was sitting in one of the theaters at Highland Cinema in Cookeville (Oldham’s closed not long after that first Star Wars film years earlier), watching Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, my own nine-year-old child beside me. In case you don’t follow these things, that was one of the prequel films, set about a quarter of a century before the first movie. The main plot involved then-Senator Palpatine manipulating events to get himself elected chancellor, and then creating a false emergency that gave him the excuse to eventually declare martial law and make himself Emperor. The final step of that, a generation later, was the complete dissolving of the senate. The first steps, in the previous movie, had been the beginning of a trade war that would help set up the fake emergency later.

This movie also focused on Palpatine’s efforts to manipulate an idealistic, naïve and (mostly) heroic young Jedi with anger issues, Anakin Skywalker, into becoming his fervent supporter -he would later become Darth Vader, and perform cruel acts his younger self could never have imagined. At the same time, young Anakin was falling in love with a beautiful -and highly principled -young senator named Padme Amidala. All of us in the audience knew they would one day become the parents of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia.

In the midst of a romantic scene between the young couple, they discuss politics… and there is a foreshadowing of the troubles between them to come.

ANAKIN: “I don’t think the system works.”

PADME: “How would you have it work, then?”

ANAKIN: “We need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problem, decide what is in the interests of all the people, and then do it.”

PADME: “That’s exactly what we already do. The trouble is that people don’t always agree.”

ANAKIN: “Well, then, they should be made to.”

PADME: “By whom? Who’s going to make them?”

ANAKIN: “I don’t know. Someone.”

PADME: “You?”

ANAKIN: “Of course not me. Someone wise.”

PADME: “Sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship to me.”

ANAKIN (pause): “If it works….”

We all knew what was coming down the pike… because we had seen the earlier movies. But 34-year-old me knew a lot more about history than 9-year-old me had, and I had long understood that George Lucas’s tale of the rise of Palpatine was closely modeled on two things: the fall of the Roman Republic and rise of the Caesars, and the fall of the Weimar Republic of 1920s Germany and the rise of Hitler. And those were only the two most famous examples of a template that has been followed over and over again through history. A democratic republic exists, in which the people are represented by an elected senate… until the people put into power a charismatic and ambitious man who becomes a dictator by, first, making the senate powerless and irrelevant, and then by eliminating them altogether.

Know who else knew their history (except for the Hitler and Star Wars stuff)? The Founding Fathers. They knew how democracies, republics, and democratic republics have tended to end. And as they worked together in 1787 to draft a constitution to guide this new republic they were creating, they tried to install failsafes to prevent the repeating of that history -to prevent the rise of tyranny. They did this by creating three co-equal branches of government -executive, legislative, and judicial -to provide checks and balances against each other, so that one individual would not have the power to tear it all down.

But do you know what they didn’t have in 1787, and didn’t plan for? Political parties. The Founding Fathers did not envision a time when all three branches would be controlled by one party, or that such a party would be so devoted to their leader (or, more accurately, to their voters who adored him) that they would hand over all power to him, enabling him to be a dictator from day one.

Maybe you don’t know much about history, or the Constitution. But, for petesake, you can watch Star Wars.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE