The Rise and Fall of Theocracy in Illiberal America: John Winthrop Versus Roger Williams, 1631-1833

Who was the First Founding Father of America?  

Some scholars say it was John Winthrop, who led the Puritan founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630--the "shining city on a hill" and all that (Bremer 2003).

Others say it was Roger Williams, who founded the city of Providence (later incorporated into Rhode Island) in 1637 (Johnson 2015).

There is some truth in both claims.  But we should see that the Puritan theocracy of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was the first founding of illiberal America, while the establishment of religious liberty and separation of church and state in Providence was the first founding of liberal America.

We should also see that the liberal America of Williams eventually prevailed over the illiberal America of Winthrop.  Because while the legacy of Puritan theocracy has dwindled to almost nothing today, the principles of religious liberty and separation of church and state established by Williams have been foundational for American political culture.  

When these principles are combined with freedom of speech and of the press in the First Amendment, this establishes liberal America as an open society with freedom of thought and speech that allows for the free pursuit of both philosophic or scientific understanding and religious experience, with an open debate over reason versus revelation. 

In his book Illiberal America, Steven Hahn rightly begins his history of illiberal America with Winthrop and the theocracy of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (49-63).  But then he passes over Williams in four sentences (54, 60, 63, 70), and he does not allow his reader to see how in the debate between Winthrop's illiberal America and Williams' liberal America, Williams' arguments eventually (over 200 years) prevailed.

This sets the pattern for Hahn's rhetorical strategy throughout his book.  He moves through nine periods of American history from the early 17th century to the present.  For each period, he shows the emergence of some illiberal tradition of American history.  But then he obscures the fact that each of these illiberal traditions has either been utterly defeated or seriously weakened by the success of liberalism.  Hahn's deceptive rhetorical strategy then allows him to mistakenly claim that today Donald Trump and his MAGA movement manifest the triumphant convergence of all of America's illiberal traditions.

BANISHMENT FROM MASSACHUSETTS AND THE FOUNDING OF PROVIDENCE

Over the years, I have written a series of posts arguing that Roger Williams was right about the Biblical basis for religious liberty and the separation of church and state, and that John Locke's defense of religious toleration largely coincides with Williams' reasoning.  Although there is no clear evidence that Locke ever read Williams, their arguments are so similar that Locke's writing on toleration can be considered a vehicle for the transmission of Williams' view of religious liberty (Johnson 2015: 345-373).  Thus, Williams and Locke jointly contributed to the American liberal tradition of freedom of conscience.

This all began in 1631, when Williams and his wife sailed from England to Boston, where the Puritans had already established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1830 with John Winthrop as Governor.  Winthrop recorded the event in his journal and identified Williams as "a godly minister."  But then Winthrop quickly discovered that he and Williams disagreed about the fundamental principles of religious life and political order.

This became clear when Williams refused an offer to join the Congregationalist (Calvinist) church in Boston and become its minister because the church maintained its ties to the Church of England, and as a radical "Separationist," Williams believed that each church must be a self-governing association of voluntary members who are not under the authority of any ecclesiastical hierarchy.  Williams also denied the authority of the theocratic government of Massachusetts to coercively enforce the First Table of the Ten Commandments--the religious commandments to worship God, to avoid worshipping false gods, and to observe the Sabbath.  Williams argued that the power of the civil magistrates extends only to the "outward goods" of worldly life--one's property and bodily security--and not to the "inward goods" of one's spiritual life--one's religious beliefs and practices.  He also refused to take any of the oaths required by the Massachusetts Bay Colony because while he accepted religious oaths taken voluntarily, he rejected oaths enforced by legal coercion as taking God's name in vain.  A fourth point of disagreement was that Williams challenged the right of the colonists to the lands taken from the American Indians under the grant of the English king, because Williams argued that these lands could not be rightly taken without the consent of the Native Americans.

In 1635, Williams was brought up for trial and charged with "apostasy" and "heresy."  He was convicted, and his punishment was banishment from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  

Williams and his family travelled for many weeks in a harsh winter through the New England wilderness.  Because of his friendships with Native Americans, they fed and sheltered him.  Finally, he reached the Narragansett Bay area, where he was welcomed by the Native American peoples.  He negotiated with them to obtain the land for his new settlement that he called "Providence."

On August 20, 1637, Williams and 12 other people who had followed him to Providence signed the "Providence Agreement":

"We whose names are hereunder, desirous to inhabit in the town of Providence, do promise to subject ourselves in active and passive obedience to all such orders or agreements as shall be made for the public good of the body in an orderly way, by the major consent of present inhabitants, masters of families, incorporated together in a Towne fellowship, and others whom shey shall admit unto them only in civil things" (Lutz 1998: 162).

This is the beginning of Liberal America.  Previously, Puritan settlers in America had signed "covenants" in which they took an oath "in the presence of God and one another" to combine themselves into a civil polity "for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian Faith" (Mayflower Compact).  But notice that in this Providence Agreement, they make a "promise" rather than an oath, God is not mentioned, and they submit themselves to the political body "only in civil things"--not in spiritual things.  This was the first founding in America of government by the consent of the governed with a separation of church and state.

Prior to the Revolution, most of the American colonies--with the exception of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania--had established churches supported by the government with various kinds of coercive persecution of religious dissenters.  That began to change after 1776, as the states moved away from illiberal theocracy towards liberal toleration.

 

DISESTABLISHMENT IN VIRGINIA

In Virginia, the established church was the Anglican Church (the Church of England) of Virginia, which became the Episcopal Church after the Revolution.  Religious dissenters--such as the Baptists--were persecuted.  Baptist preachers were often imprisoned because of their religion.  They could be punished for publicly expressing their religious beliefs or for refusing to pay the taxes for supporting the established church.  Baptist preachers like Isaac Backus and John Leland preserved the legacy of Roger Williams by arguing for religious liberty in Virginia, and they were influential with Virginia political leaders like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.

On June 12, 1776, the Virginia Constitutional Convention adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was written by George Mason.  The last section of that document affirmed religious liberty:

"That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other" (Art. 16).

Although this echoes some of the language of Williams about religious liberty, it still suggests some blending of religion and the state that Williams would have rejected.  First, it uses religious language--"our Creator" and "Christian forbearance"--that suggests a governmental endorsement of Christian theism.  Second, it does not clearly condemn the legal establishment of religion; and in fact, it was not interpreted as challenging the existence of the established church in Virginia.

Madison was a delegate at the Virginia Convention.  And he proposed alternative language for this section on religious liberty: "all men are equally entitled to the full and free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience; and therefore that no man or class of men ought, on account of religion to be invested with peculiar emoluments or privileges; nor subjected to any penalties or disabilities" (Johnson 2015, 267; Madison 1962, 1:170-75).  The Convention rejected this language, presumably because this would have abolished the legal privileges of the established church in Virginia. 

The opening sections of the Virginia Declaration of Rights ("that all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights . . .) influenced Jefferson in writing the opening sections of the Declaration of Independence.  But Jefferson's Declaration says nothing about religious liberty.  It does recognize, however, "certain unalienable rights" that include "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  Williams had argued that religious liberty was one of those unalienable rights:

"Truth.  Kings and Magistrates must be considered (as formerly) invested with no more power than the people betrust them with."

"But no people can betrust them with any spirituall power in matters of worship, but only with a Civill power belonging to their goods and bodies" (BT, 418).

Indicating their agreement with Williams, Madison and Jefferson attacked the establishment of a state-supported church in Virginia as a violation of the unalienable natural right to religious liberty.  Their arguments were set forth in Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments" and Jefferson's "Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty."  Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance" was a written petition opposing a bill introduced in the Virginia General Assembly in 1784 and 1785 that would have required the people of Virginia to pay an annual tax "for the support of the Christian religion or of some Christian church."  Jefferson first proposed his "Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom" in 1779, but it was not ratified until 1786 (Johnson 2015, 273-79).

All of their arguments can be found in the writings of Williams.  For example, Madison repeated Williams' claim that the New Testament shows that the early Christian churches were voluntary associations that did not depend on the support of human laws, because the spiritual kingdom of God was separated from the earthly kingdom of the world.  Ecclesiastical establishments supported by human laws began with the Roman Emperor Constantine, over three hundred years after the first Christian churches (Madison 1973, 12).  

Madison also agreed with Williams in arguing that not only did the Christian religion not depend on the support of human laws, but the civil government did not depend on an established religion, because as Williams indicated, the "civil peace" of a political community did not depend on the "spiritual peace" of a true church.  After all, native Americans and pagans have kept the peace of their communities without belonging to the true church of God (BT, 72-73).  Here Williams agreed with Pierre Bayle that a society of atheists could live together in a peaceful social order based on their natural moral sense without any religious beliefs.

When the Virginia General Assembly ratified Jefferson's "Statute of Religious Liberty" on January 16, 1786, that effectively ended the legal establishment of religion in Virginia.

MADISON, THE GODLESS CONSTITUTION, AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT

The United States Constitution as ratified in 1789 and as amended in 1791 supports religious liberty and the separation of church and state in three ways.  First, unlike most of the state constitutions, the national Constitution is literally "godless" in that it says nothing about any divine being, which suggests that the national government does not need the support of a national religion.  Second, there is the provision in Article V of the Constitution that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."  The third way is the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

All of the state constitutions except for Virginia and New York had religious tests for their public officers.  For example, the members of the Pennsylvania state legislature had to swear an oath: "I do believe in one God, the creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and punisher of the wicked, and I do acknowledge the scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration."

In the ratifying debates on the Constitution, the "no religious test" clause was criticized.  One speaker at the Massachusetts ratifying convention warned that no religious tests "would admit deists, atheists, etc., into the general government; and, people being apt to imitate the examples of the court, these principles would be disseminated, and, of course, a corruption of morals ensue."

This shows the primary reason why people wanted religious tests and the legal establishment of religion--without religion, there would be a "corruption of morals."  That's why any proponent of religious liberty had to argue, as Williams did, that the "civil peace" of a community could be sustained by a natural moral sense without any particular religious belief.  One can be good without God.

Apparently, this argument for "no religious test" was successful because all of the states with religious tests abolished them during the founding period.

Similarly, the Constitution's silence about God provoked a debate that continues up to today.  Some of the people who want to identify America as a "Christian nation" have said that the Constitution needs a "God Amendment."  The most prominent example of this movement to put God into the Constitution was the National Reform Association that emerged during and after the American Civil War.  This was a movement of evangelical Protestant ministers, theologians, academics, lawyers, and judges, who claimed that the Civil War was God's punishment of America for having a godless Constitution, and that this showed the need for amending the Constitution.  

They proposed an amended version of the Preamble to the Constitution--with the new language in italics:

"We the People of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations, his revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government, and in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America" (National Reform Association 1874, p. 7).

Beginning in 1864, the NRA formally petitioned President Lincoln and the Congress of the United States to support this amendment to the Constitution.  The leaders of the NRA argued that they were not proposing an established church or a merging of church and state.  Rather, they were proposing a constitutional recognition of the fact that America was a Christian nation, and this could be done without denying religious liberty and the separation of church and state.  But they failed to persuade President Lincoln or the Congress to take their proposed amendment seriously.

Their claim that their proposed amendment of the Preamble would not violate the First Amendment was not plausible.  The Constitution requires that all the officers "both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution" (Art. VI).  How could anyone who was not a Christian believer honestly pledge to "support this Constitution" if the Preamble affirmed "the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations"?  Surely, a constitutional declaration that the United States has "a Christian government" would violate the First Amendment's prohibition on any law "respecting an establishment of religion."

That these proposals for a "Christian Amendment" of the Constitution have never succeeded confirms the triumph in America of Williams' argument for a "wall of separation" between church and state.  Moreover, there is some evidence that the critical turning point in this historical triumph of Williams over Winthrop--the ratification of the Constitution in 1789 and the ratification of the First Amendment in 1791--would not have happened without the influence of Williams' ideas on some Baptist preachers in Virginia.

The devotion of some Virginia Baptists to Williams' conception of religious liberty--and particularly the devotion of one Baptist preacher, John Leland--was crucial for James Madison's elections to the Virginia ratifying convention in 1788 and to the First Congress in 1789.  If Madison had not been at the Virginia convention, it is likely that Virginia would not have ratified the Constitution, and that would have swayed other states against ratification.  If Madison had not been elected to the First Congress, it is unlikely that there would have been any other member of Congress willing to vigorously argue for the Bill of Rights to be added to the Constitution (Scarberry 2009).

Madison's home was in Virginia was in Orange County.  The election for Orange County's two delegates to the ratifying convention was set for March 24, 1788.  Many of Madison's friends urged him to stand for election.  Initially, he declined, but he finally changed his mind and decided to run.  And yet he had reason to believe that he would lose the election.  There were many Baptists in Orange County, led by the popular Baptist preacher John Leland, who opposed the Constitution because they did not think it went far enough to secure religious liberty.  They liked the "no religious test" clause.  But they wanted an explicit declaration that religious liberty was a natural right.  They agreed with Patrick Henry that the Constitution should not be ratified so long as it had no Bill of Rights.

Madison met with Leland, and he persuaded Leland that he should support Madison's election with the promise from Madison that he would promote constitutional amendments for a Bill of Rights in the First Congress.  Madison then won the election.

At the Virginia ratifying convention in June, Madison faced the eloquent opposition of Patrick Henry and George Mason, who argued that the Constitution should not be ratified without a Bill of Rights.  Madison responded by insisting that if the Constitution was ratified, the new Congress would seriously consider amending the Constitution to include a Bill of Rights.  Madison's argument carried the day: the Virginia convention ratified the Constitution by a vote of 89 to 79.  Since Virginia was the largest state in both population and territory, it is unlikely that other states would have ratified the Constitution without Virginia's ratification.

Then, in 1789, as Madison stood for election to the new House of Representatives, he once again needed the votes of Baptists who doubted his commitment to a Bill of Rights.  And once again he persuaded Leland and other Baptists that as a congressman, he would push for a Bill of Rights.  He won the election by 336 votes--1,308 to 972--in a district that had been gerrymandered to be heavily antifederalist.  Then, once in Congress, Madison led the movement for a Bill of Rights--against stiff opposition both in the House and the Senate.  It was ratified by the necessary number of states on December 15, 1991.

So, it is not much of an exaggeration to say that the "no religious test" test clause in the Constitution and the freedom of religion clauses of the First Amendment would not have become the law of the land without the political support for Madison from the Virginia Baptist followers of Roger Williams.

But even so, Madison's original proposal for amending the Constitution to protect religious liberty was not completely successful.  Because originally he wanted a clause that would secure religious liberty from infringement by the state governments.  His preferred language was "No State shall violate the equal rights of conscience, or the freedom of the press, or the trial by jury in criminal cases."  But the final language of the First Amendment was only directed against congressional legislation: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ."

This implied that state governments were free to legislate an establishment of religion or prohibit the free exercise of religion.  Indeed, some state governments did just that.  It wasn't until 1940 that the U. S. Supreme Court held that the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment (Cantwell v. Connecticut).  And in 1947, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment also incorporated the Establishment Clause as applied to the states (Everson v. Board of Education).

 

DISESTABLISHMENT IN MASSACHUSETTS

Taxpayer funding of particular Christian denominations was common in the American colonies.  But after 1776, only four New England states--Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut--continued to do this.  By 1833, even these four states had rejected this policy.

In Massachusetts, the debate over the public funding of churches began at the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1780 (Witte and Latterell 2019).  In the Constitution of 1780, the language about the ceremonial and moral roles of religion evoked little controversy.  So, for example, the Preamble affirmed "the people of Massachusetts, acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the goodness of the Great Legislator of the Universe," and "devoutly imploring His direction in so interesting a design."  And Article 2 declared that "it is the right as well as the duty of all men in society, publicly, and at stated seasons, to worship the SUPREME BEING, the great creator and preserver of the universe."  Most of the delegates did not object to this language.

But it was the institutional establishment of religion in Article 3--particularly, compulsory religious taxes "for the support and maintenance of public protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality"--that stirred intense controversy.

This debate over religious taxes continued for over fifty years.  Finally, in 1833, the critics of religious taxes who wanted a complete separation of church and state that would foster "pure and undefiled religion" prevailed by passing the Eleventh Amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution, which made church membership and funding entirely voluntary.

Thus, the theocratic legacy of John Winthrop's Massachusetts Bay Colony came to an end, as it was defeated the liberal legacy of Roger Williams' Providence Colony.   

FREE ARGUMENT AND DEBATE IN A LIBERAL OPEN SOCIETY

In his "Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty," Jefferson argued that securing religious liberty frees the mind by recognizing "that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them" (Jefferson 1984, 346-48).

Thus, perhaps for the first time in human history, an open society was emerging in liberal America--and later in Scotland, England, and a few other places where the liberal social order was spreading--where freedom of thought and speech about the reason/revelation debate, and about the place of the human mind in the universe, was possible.  

The best sign that this was happening was that sometime after 1800, esoteric writing was no longer considered necessary or desirable, because the natural desire of philosophers or scientists for intellectual understanding was no longer seen as a subversive threat to the natural desire of many other human beings for religious experience.  Philosophers and scientists no longer needed to hide their true thoughts in secret writing and speech for fear that they would be persecuted for writing or speaking openly and sincerely.

That was the ultimate triumph of "free argument and debate" in Roger Williams' liberal America.

REFERENCES

Bremer, Francis J. 2003. John Winthrop: America's Forgotten Founding Father.  New York: Oxford University Press.

Hahn, Steven.  2024.  Illiberal America: A History.  New York: Norton.

Johnson, Alan E. 2015. The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience. Pittsburgh, PA: Philosophia Publications.

Lutz, Donald S., ed. 1998.  Colonial Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

Madison, James. 1962. The Papers of James Madison. Vol. 1. Edited by William T. Hutchinson and William M. E. Rachal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Madison, James. 1973. The Mind of the Founder: Sources of the Political Thought of James Madison. Edited by Marvin Meyers. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.

National Reform Association. 1874. Proceedings of the Fifth National Reform Convention To Aid in Maintaining the Christian Features of the American Government, and Securing a Religious Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, Held in Pittsburg, February 4, 5, 1874, With a History of the Origin and Progress of the Movement.  Philadelphia: Christian Statesman Association.

Scarberry, Mark S.  2009.  "John Leland and James Madison: Religious Influence on the Ratification of the Constitution and on the Proposal of the Bill of Rights."  Penn State Law Review 113: 733-800.

Williams, Roger. 1963. The Complete Writings of Roger Williams. Vol. 3: Bloody Tenent of Persecution.  Edited by Samuel L. Caldwell.  New York: Russell and Russell.

Witte, John, and Justin Latterell. 2019. "The Last American Establishment: Massachusetts, 1780-1833.  In Carl H. Esbeck and Jonathan Den Hartog, eds., Religious Dissent and Disestablishment: Church-State Relations in the New American States, 1776-1833, 399-424. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.

The Liberalism of the MAGA Voters Explains Trump's Election. But Trump's Illiberal Presidency Could Become Fascist.

Leading up to the presidential election, commentators like Robert Kagan and Steven Hahn argued that if Donald Trump were elected, this would show the triumph of the illiberal tradition of American politics in defeating the American liberal tradition.  

I agree with Kagan and Hahn that the political history of America has been a continuing battle between liberalism and illiberalism.  But I see that the liberal tradition of American political thought--as expressed in the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence--has ultimately prevailed over the illiberal tradition.  And I see that even in the MAGA movement.  I agree that much of Trump's rhetoric has illiberal, and even fascist, overtones.  But most of the MAGA voters accept the liberal principles of the Declaration of Independence.  (I have written previously about the prominence of the Declaration of Independence in the rhetoric of the 2020 Republican National Convention.)

Here I use the term "liberalism" in the broad Lockean sense that includes both those who we call "liberals" in America and those we call "conservatives"--as opposed to the illiberal Left (such as the socialists), on the one extreme, and the illiberal Right (such as the fascists), on the other extreme. 

We can see the triumph of the American liberal tradition in Trump's election.  The American illiberal tradition defends the national cultural homogeneity of a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant America against subversion by both internal and external enemies.  (Consider the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, for example.)  But Trump's electoral victory depended on a pluralistic coalition of voters who were racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse.  As opposed to a WASPish illiberal America, it was a culturally heterogeneous liberal America that voted for Trump.  If Trump's presidency gives into his illiberal propensities, he will alienate these MAGA voters.

Steven Hahn doesn't understand this because in his book Illiberal America, he describes the MAGA voters this way:

". . . When supporters of Donald Trump channel his slogan 'Make America Great Again,' they are looking back to a world before a Black man could be elected president, before people of color demanded equal rights, before feminists battled against gender exclusions and inequalities, before sexual identities began to be redefined, before American Protestants had to confront growing spiritual diversity, before immigration from Asia, Africa, and Latin America began to threaten the majority status of white people, and before the federal government served as an enabler of all these developments.  The tradition they value is anything but liberal.  It emphasizes state rights, community control, patriarchal families, rugged individualism, Christian nationalism, and some form of white supremacy" (35).

White supremacy?  Hahn offers no evidence for this. Perhaps he could point to people like Luke Meyer and Richard Spencer--white supremacists who have supported Trump.  But these people have been ostracized by the MAGA movement.  For example, Meyer was a 24-year-old regional field director for the Trump campaign in Western Pennsylvania.  But when a reporter for Politico exposed him as the person who goes by the online name Alberto Barbarossa, who co-hosts a white supremacist podcast with Richard Spencer, who was the organizer of the 2017 white nationalist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Meyer was immediately fired.  The Republican Party of Pennsylvania issued a statement: "The employee in question was background-checked and vetted, but unbeknownst to us was operating separately under a pseudonym.  If we'd had any inkling about his hidden and despicable activity, he would never have been hired, and the instant we learned of it, he was fired.  We have no place in our Party or nation for people with such shameful, hateful views."  Similarly, Spencer has been condemned by Republican leaders.  After being spurned by the Republicans, Spencer endorsed Biden in 2020 and Harris in 2024!

So while there have been a few white supremacists who have voted for Trump, they know that as soon as they are openly identified as white supremacists, they will be expelled from the MAGA movement.  Moreover, if Trump appealed only to illiberal voters like the white racists, he would never win any election.  Given the racial and ethnic diversity of the American electorate, Trump can win only with the support of what Patrick Ruffini has called the "multiracial populist coalition" that includes most of the white working-class voters with large portions of the Hispanic, Asian, and Black voters.  The evidence for that became clear in the 2020 election, as compared with the 2016 election, in which Trump's vote share in each of these groups trended in his favor.  That trend continued in the 2024 election.  

The crucial factor here is that many Hispanic, Asian, and Black voters are politically and culturally conservative in their values; and therefore, as the Democratic Party shifts to the Left, these conservative voters are open to being persuaded by the more conservative Republican Party.  In the 2020 election, the Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters who described themselves as conservatives moved 35 to 40 points toward Trump as compared with the 2016 election.

Democrats have assumed that Trump's threat to deport all the illegal immigrants would alienate all of the Hispanic immigrant voters.  But Ruffini's studies of Hispanic voters in Miami Dade County in Florida and along the Rio Grande in Texas found that many Hispanics who are legal immigrants resent those Hispanics who have entered the U.S. illegally, and they think they should be deported.  Amazingly, almost all of the counties along the Rio Grande, which has the largest concentration of Hispanics in the U.S., went to Trump in 2024.

The "AP VoteCast" survey for the 2024 election shows this multiracial and multiethnic shift towards Trump.   White voters split 56% for Trump and 43% for Harris. While Harris won the Black vote (83%), Trump's share (16%) was an increase over 2020.  Among Black men, Trump won 25%.  Latina women went 59% for Harris, 39% for Trump.  Latino men split evenly--49% for Harris and 48% for Trump.  Since Hispanics are the fastest growing ethnic group in America, it's hard to win a presidential election without them.  Although Harris is of South Asian ancestry, Asian Americans split 54% for Harris and 39% for Trump.  In all categories, Trump's share of the nonwhite vote increased from 2016 and 2020; and that's why he won the popular election for the first time this year.  

So, how can Hahn see this as a vote for white supremacy?  

It would be better to say that this was a vote for the working class, because in all of the racial and ethnic categories, Trump got most of the votes from those people who have no college degree, while Harris got most of the votes from those with a college degree.  This gives Trump a big advantage because seven in ten American adults have never graduated from college.  Trump appeals to the natural working-class majority in American politics, while people like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris appeal to the professional elites with advanced educational degrees who work with their heads rather than their hands.

Furthermore, it's ridiculous for Hahn to claim that the MAGA voters are "looking back to a world before a Black man could be elected president," because many of the white working-class voters who have voted for Trump voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.  Indeed, Obama would have lost those elections if he had not won large portions of the white vote.  In 2012, he got 46 percent of the white vote in Pennsylvania and 47 percent in Michigan.  In 2008, 51% of the eligible voters belonged to the white working class (that is, white people without a college degree).  So, Obama could not have won without a big share of their vote, and he made explicit appeals to them in his campaign rhetoric.

And what about women?  Hahn asserts that Trump's supporters are looking back to a world "before feminists battled against gender exclusions and inequalities."  What world is that?  The world in which under the common law doctrine of coverture, married women had no legal identity separate from their husbands?  The world in which women had no right to vote?  If so, where's the evidence that Trump's supporters want to return women to that patriarchal world?  In this year's election, women between the ages of 18 and 44 split their vote between Harris (55%) and Trump (44%).  Women over 45 voted 51% for Harris and 48% for Trump.  Isn't it hard to believe Hahn's suggestion that close to half of the women voters want to repeal the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, so that they will never again have the right to vote?

But what about Hahn's claim that the MAGA voters want to go back to a world "before sexual identities began to be redefined"?  It is true that one of the themes of the Trump campaign was that allowing biological men to compete in women's athletics was unfair to women.  Another theme was that taxpayers should not be forced to pay for transgender treatments for prisoners.  But what makes such arguments illiberal?  (I have argued that liberal principles and the biology of sex differences justify sex-segregated sports and perhaps a new category of intersex sports.)

Finally, is it true that MAGA voters want to go back to a world "before American Protestants had to confront growing spiritual diversity"?  I assume that Hahn is pointing in particular to the time when Catholics were persecuted, and Protestant Christianity was considered an essential part of American national identity.  Well, again, I can't see any evidence that the MAGA movement is devoted to persecuting Catholics.  If that were so, it would be hard to explain why so many Catholics have voted for Trump--50% of them in 2020, 54% in 2024.  Since Catholics represent 22% of the electorate, Trump's winning the Catholic vote was crucial for his winning the election.

And, of course, J. D. Vance is a serious Catholic.  Moreover, one of the criticisms of Harris brought up by the Trump people was that she was anti-Catholic.  As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Harris suggested that a Trump judicial nominee should be disqualified because he was a member of the Knights of Columbus!

On all of these points, I see no evidence to sustain Hahn's claim that the MAGA voters want to go back to an illiberal America.  On the contrary, they seem to belong to a liberal coalition of voters who belong to a multiracial, multiethnic, multireligious, and working-class majority in American politics.

Let's also keep in mind, as I have argued previously, that the one issue that decisively favored Trump's election was high inflation--in the summer of 2022, the highest inflation in 40 years--and no one suffers more from high inflation than working-class voters.  But there's nothing illiberal about hating high inflation.

Nevertheless, as I have argued on this blog, I also see an illiberal propensity in Trump's rhetoric towards fascism that must be restrained if he is to keep the support of his liberal coalition.

And as we see Trump appointing loyalists throughout the government who will carry out his orders, even if they are unconstitutional, his move to fascist rule appears ever clearer.   It appears that most of Trump's voters made a mistake in thinking that he was not serious about his fascist rhetoric, and that will prove to be a tragic mistake for America.

If Hahn is right about how MAGA voters understand the slogan "Make America Great Again," then we can predict that shortly after his inauguration, Trump will proclaim that his voters have given him a mandate to make America into a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant theocracy and patriarchal society in which Catholics and non-Christians are persecuted, women have no voting rights, married women have no independent legal identity because they are under the authority of their husbands, all nonwhite people are treated as inferior, and only white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are permitted to immigrate to America.  

I predict that that will not happen because most Americans do not want to live in that kind of illiberal America.  They want to live in a Lockean liberal social order that is better than any illiberal order in satisfying the natural human desires of our evolved human nature.

REFERENCES

Hahn, Steven.  2024a. Illiberal America: A History.  New York: Norton.

Hahn, Steven.  2024b.  "The Deep, Tangled Roots of American Illiberalism."  The New York Times. May 4.

Klein, Ezra.  2024.  "The Book That Predicted the 2024 Election."  The New York Times.  November 9.

Moore, Amanda.  2024.  "A Trump Field Director Was Fired for Being a White Nationalist."  Politico.  November 4.

Ruffin, Patrick.  2023.  Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP.  New York: Simon and Schuster.

Is Trump's Populist Authoritarianism What America Really Wants? Or Do Americans Really Hate High Inflation?

I was wrong.

For years, beginning in 2016, I have argued that Trump's populist authoritarianism was not really popular enough to win the popular vote.  After all, he lost the popular vote in 2016 and 2020.  This indicated to me that although he had a solid base of 35 to 40 percent of the voters, he did not have a majority, although he could win in the Electoral College.  That's why I predicted that Harris would win the election yesterday.

So, now that Trump has won the popular election, we face two questions.  First, will Trump be the kind of populist authoritarian that he has promised to be?  

If he does fulfill this promise, he will use his power as Commander-in-Chief to use the military to punish "the enemy within"--those who disagree with him.  He will use his pardoning power to protect himself and his supporters from criminal prosecution (including the January 6th insurrectionists).  He will also act vigorously within the immunity from criminal prosecution for "official acts" recently granted to him by his Supreme Court.  He will use the military to help him in forcibly deporting over 10 million illegal immigrants.  He will raise tariffs on imports so high as to impede international trade and create what will be effectively a high sales tax on imported goods.  He will establish an isolationist foreign policy that weakens the NATO alliance and withholds support for Ukraine in its war against the Russian invasion.

Trump and his supporters have said that he is God's Chosen One to save America.  After all, didn't God miraculously intervene to turn his head away from the assassin's bullet?  If they believe this, will they treat Trump's opponents as evil enemies of God?

If Trump carries out these and other promises for acting as a populist authoritarian, that will raise a second question:  will the Americans who voted for him say yes, this is just what they wanted?  Or will they regret their choice?

Actually, I see no evidence that Trump's supporters voted for his populist authoritarianism.  But I do see evidence that they voted against the inflation during Biden's term.  In the summer of 2022, the inflation rate was over 9 percent--the highest inflation rate in 40 years.  Overall, consumer prices have gone up over 20 percent under Biden.  Home prices have gone up 37 percent.  Gasoline prices 33 percent.  It is true that over the past year, the inflation rate has dropped to about 2.4 percent.  But notice what that means:  Prices are not dropping.  But the rate of increase has slowed.

Among voters who said that the poor economy--and particularly high inflation--was the primary issue for them, the great majority (60 to 70 percent) said that they were voting for Trump.  This would explain the Latino and Black male vote for Trump.

Yesterday, the Associated Press released its AP VoteCast--a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide--that shows the primacy of the high-inflation issue for the Trump voters.

My mistake was not seeing that the American voter's hatred of high inflation will defeat any candidate who is identified as responsible for inflation.  Harris pointed to the indicators of a growing economy with low unemployment.  But she could not escape responsibility for inflation.

One of the Trump campaign's most effective tv ads juxtaposed these comments from Kamala Harris:

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS, 2024: Everyday prices are too high... Food, rent, gas, back-to-school clothes.

HARRIS, 2023: That is called Bidenomics!

HARRIS, 2024: A loaf of bread costs 50% more... ground beef is up almost 50%... There's not much left at the end of the month.

HARRIS, 2023: Bidenomics is working!

HARRIS, 2024: The price of housing has gone up. It feels so hard to be able to just get ahead.

HARRIS, 2023: We are so proud of Bidenomics!

That one ad might have been enough to defeat Harris.

How could Harris have answered this charge that Bidenomics caused high inflation?  She could have argued that Bidenomics was an extension of Trumpenomics.  Four years ago, the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats enacted the American Rescue Plan that pumped $1.9 trillion into the economy, which included $1,300 payments to American families.  As predicted by economists like Larry Summers, this overstimulated the economy and created a surge in inflation starting in 2021 and peaking in 2022.  But Harris could have argued that this ARP stimulus was simply adding to the $2.7 trillion in pandemic relief spending enacted under President Trump.  So, if this was a mistake, it was a mistake made by both Trump and Biden.

Nevertheless, the American economy has recovered from the pandemic economic downturn faster and more robustly than any other economy in the world.  And the rate of inflation has gone down dramatically in the past year, although Americans are now suffering from the overall increase in prices of over 20% over the past four years.

When Harris was asked whether she would have done anything different from what was done during Biden's term, she said she couldn't think of anything she would have done differently.  What she should have said is "Yes, of course, the big spending programs supported by Biden--and by Trump!--drove up inflation.  So, I promise to keep inflation low, and if inflation rises during my term, I promise that I will not run for a second term."

Harris could then have argued that if Trump were elected, voters would quickly become dissatisfied with Trump when his policies (such as high tariffs on imports) create a new surge in high inflation.  The U.S. is the world's largest importer.  The value of imported goods and services is over 3.8 trillion dollars a year.  Imagine the higher prices that would come from putting tariffs of over 20% on all of that.

If this happens, the voters will turn against the Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential election, just as they turned against the Democrats in this year's election.

ADDENDUM (November 21)

On election night, Trump claimed that he had won an "unprecedented and powerful mandate."

As more late ballots have been counted, we now know that that is not true.  In fact, Trump did not even win a majority of the national popular vote.  His percentage now stands at 49.87 percent.  

His popular vote margin over Kamala Harris now stands at 1.62 percent.  That's about a half-percent smaller than Hillary Clinton's national popular vote margin over Trump in 2016.  By comparison, Obama won the popular vote by 3.9 percent in 2012 and 7.2 percent in 2008.  George W. Bush won the popular vote by 2.4 percent in 2004.

We can now say that having run for the presidency three times, Trump has never won a majority of the popular votes.  That's not an "unprecedented and powerful mandate."

Trump and the History of Fascism: He Cannot Take Power by Majority Vote or by Force

The Roman Fasces, A Symbol of the Authority and Unity of the Ancient Roman State

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                                 The January 6th Insurrectionists Storm the Capitol Building

Is Donald Trump a fascist?  If he is, does the history of fascism help us to predict whether he is likely to take power as a fascist ruler?

My answer to the first question is Yes.  My answer to the second question is that the history of fascism tells us that fascists cannot take power by majority vote or by force, because they need to be given power by conservative elites.  For Trump to become a fascist ruler, he would have to be put into power by the political and military elites.

THE CONCEPT OF FASCISM

Since he is one of the leading historians of fascism, Robert Paxton has often been asked whether he identifies Trump as a fascist.  Up to the end of Trump's term as president, Paxton said No.  But on January 6, 2021, as he watched the Trump-inspired insurrection on Capitol Hill, which was meant to overturn the election of 2020 and keep Trump in power, he changed his mind.  A few days after the insurrection, he wrote an essay for Newsweek explaining how that insurrection was the final piece of evidence pointing to Trump's character as a fascist.

We now have even more evidence for that conclusion coming from General Mark Milley, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Trump's presidency, and retired General John Kelly, who was Trump's Chief of Staff for almost a year and a half.  They have reported that Trump wanted to use the military against his political opponents and that he expressed his admiration for how Hitler had used his generals.  Both Milley and Kelly told Trump that their oath to uphold the Constitution would take precedence over their loyalty to the President.  And both concluded that Trump was a fascist.

Paxton's position in the debate over Trump's fascism is unusual.  There are two questions in this debate.  Is Trump a fascist?  And is it helpful to identify him as a fascist?  Most people in the debate either say yes to both questions or no to both.  As he told the New York Times, Paxton says yes to the first question but no to the second.  Yes, Trump is a fascist.  But no it doesn't help the debate to say that, because "fascist" is "a word that generates more heat than light."  

I agree that most of the time "fascist" is a sloppy epithet that we throw around to express our moral disgust with someone we disagree with strongly, and therefore using that word enflames emotions without clarifying the debate.  But when a historian of fascism like Paxton says that Trump is a fascist and explains the exact similarities and differences between Trump and fascists like Mussolini and Hitler, that illuminates the debate by showing how the history of fascism might explain and predict Trump's behavior.

Recently, Trump has said that he is planning to use military force against the "enemy within," which includes "bad people" like Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff.  This convinced John Kelly (Trump's Chief of Staff from July 2017 to December 2018) that he needed to speak out, and he was interviewed by the New York Times.  Kelly read aloud a definition of fascism:

"Well, looking at the definition of fascism:  It's a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy."

"Certainly, the former president is in the far-right area, he's certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators--he has said that.  So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure."

Much of the discussion among historians is about whether there really is a "general definition of fascist."  Some historians argue that since Benito Mussolini originated the term, it should apply only to the specific historical movement of Mussolini's Italian fascism.  In 1919, Mussolini coined the Italian fascismo from fascio--a bundle or sheaf--recalling the Latin fasces:  an axe encased in a bundle of rods carried in public processions to symbolize the authority and unity of the Roman state.

This explains why the Oxford English Dictionary identifies the primary definition of "fascism" as "a nationalist political movement that controlled the government of Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini."

But then the OED also provides a generic definition of "fascism": "an authoritarian and nationalistic system of government and social organization which emerged after the end of the First World War in 1918, and became a prominent force in European politics during the 1920s and 1930s, most notably in Italy and Germany; (later also) an extreme right-wing political ideology based on the principles underlying this system."

As Paxton indicates, there are two reasons for why it's hard to reach agreement on these or any other definitions of fascism.  First, it is hard to define fascism as an ideology because the fascists did not care very much about ideas or doctrines.  They were devoted more to action than thought--they were driven more by feelings than by reason.  That explains why there is no authoritative statement of their ideas comparable to say Marx's Communist Manifesto as a statement of communist doctrines.  Mussolini and Hitler did issue some programmatic statements of fascist ideas.  But then their actions often contradicted what they had promised to do, and they never felt compelled to justify their actions as consistent with their ideas.  By contrast, Marxist leaders like Lenin and Stalin had to make elaborate arguments for why their actions were in conformity with the texts of Marx and Engels.

The second reason for why it's so hard to define fascism is that fascism never had a fixed or static identity because it changed as it passed through five stages: (1) the initial creation of a fascist movement, (2) the rooting of the movement as a party in a political system, (3) the acquisition of ruling power by the fascist leader and his party, (4) the exercise of that ruling power, and (5) the long term development of fascist power towards radicalization or dissolution.  Fascism looks different at each of these stages.  And while every fascist movement reaches Stage One, only a few reach Stage Two.  And very few--maybe only in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany--reach Stage Three by actually gaining ruling power.  (Most of what have been commonly assumed to be examples of fascists taking power--like Franco in Spain or Salazar in Portugal--are really examples of traditional authoritarianism rather than pure fascism.)

Paxton has explained this fascist history of five stages in an article--"The Five Stages of Fascism" (1998)--and he has elaborated this history and analysis in a book--The Anatomy of Fascism (2004).

Despite his reluctance to reduce fascism to a single definition, Paxton does think that from this history of fascist actions in five stages, one can deduce the ideas implicit in those actions, which he summarizes in one long "functional definition of fascism":

"Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion" (1998: 21; 2004: 218).

He also states this as nine "mobilizing passions" that "belong more to the realm of visceral feelings than to the realm of reasoned propositions":

(1) "a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;"

(2) "the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it;"

(3) "the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;"

(4) "dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;"

(5) "the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;"

(6) "the need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group's historical destiny;"

(7) "the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason;"

(8) "the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success;"

(9) "the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess within a Darwinian struggle."

Do Trump and his MAGA party manifest most of these fascist passions?  You can answer this for yourself by watching the video of the recent Trump rally at Madison Square Garden and checking off the items on this list.

Okay, so you're not going to watch all six and a half hours of this!  But you can skip around it and see if it shows the "mobilizing passions" of fascism.

Now there are a few items in Paxton's definition and list of passions that don't show up here.  For example, Trump and his people don't express any interest in "external expansion"--they're not proposing to invade other countries.

We also might question whether there's any "collaboration with traditional elites" here, since the speakers repeatedly attack the "elites" in the Democratic Party.  But there is certainly a collaboration with some economic elites (such as Elon Musk) and some of the conservative elites in the Republican Party.

On the other hand, there are some distinctive traits of American Fascism here that are not prominent in Paxton's sketch of fascism.  While fascists like Mussolini and Hitler have been secular or perhaps pagan, American Fascists are often Christian Nationalists defending American Christians as the Chosen People of God against their godless enemies.  So, you'll notice that the Madison Square Garden rally begins with a prayer read by Tiffany Justice, one of the founders of "Moms for Liberty," who prays for God to intervene in support of Trump's election, and she thanks God for His miracle in saving Trump from being assassinated.  Later in the rally, David Rem holds up a cross at the podium and declares that Kamala Harris is the "Devil" and "the Antichrist."  Thus, we have the image of Trump as God's Chosen One fighting for America against the forces of demonic evil led by the Antichrist in the Last Battle as described in the book of Revelation.

Previously, I have written about the Christian Evangelicals who identify Trump as being the Messiah like Cyrus in the Old Testament.

NEITHER BY VOTE NOR BY FORCE

So, how do fascists come into ruling power (Stage Three)?  And does the history of fascists taking power help us to predict whether Trump's fascism could come into power in America?

It has been commonly assumed that fascists have come to power by force alone--through a coup d'etat.  Or, occasionally, you'll hear people say that fascists like Mussolini and Hitler took power through majority vote at the ballot box.  As Paxton and other historians have shown, both claims are false.

"Both Mussolini and Hitler were invited to take office as head of government by a head of state in the legitimate exercise of his official functions, on the advice of civilian and military counselors.  Both thus became heads of government in what appeared, at least on the surface, to be legitimate exercises of constitutional authority by King Victor Emmanuel III and President Hindenburg.  Both these appointments were made, it must be added at once, under conditions of extreme crisis, which the fascists had abetted."  We should see then that "no insurrectionary coup against an established state has ever so far brought fascists to power" (Paxton 1998: 17; 2004: 96-97).

The story that Mussolini's Fascists seized power over Italy through their "March on Rome" is fascist propaganda.  It is true that on October 28, 1922, about nine thousand Blackshirts marched to the gates of Rome.  But they were "poorly armed, wearing makeshift uniforms, short of food and water, and milling about in a discouraging rain" (Paxton 2004: 89).  Mussolini arrived in Rome from Milan on the morning of October 30, and he met with the King.  Although the King had plenty of soldiers who could have dispersed the Blackshirts, he foresaw that this would be bloody.  He decided, instead, to appoint Mussolini as Prime Minister.  Mussolini was bluffing, and his bluff worked.

The next day--October 31--with Mussolini already in office, ten thousand Blackshirts marched in a parade through Rome.  That evening, Mussolini had all of his Blackshirts sent out of town in fifty special trains.  The parade had established the myth that his Blackshirts had taken power by their own will and force.  October 28 became a national holiday and the first day of the Fascist New Year.

A year later, Hitler showed that he had been taken in by Mussolini's propaganda about the "March on Rome."  He attempted his own "march" on November 8, 1923.  During a nationalist rally in a Munich beer hall, he tried to kidnap the leaders of the Bavarian government and force them to launch a coup d'etat against the federal government in Berlin.  This "Beer Hall Putsch" was easily put down by police who fired on the Nazi marchers.  Hitler was arrested and imprisoned.  He learned the lesson that fascist political power could not be taken by force alone as long as the police and soldiers remained loyal to the government.

Hitler also learned that while he would have to work within the parliamentary party system, he could not come to power by winning a majority vote for his party.  The Nazis became the largest party in the German Reichstag in the parliamentary elections of July 31, 1932, when they won 37.2 percent of the vote.  But this dropped to 33.1 percent in the election of November 6, 1932.  Even when Hitler had become chancellor, and he could use his Storm Troopers to intimidate voters, the Nazi Party won only 43.9 percent of the vote in the elections of March 6, 1932.  By comparison, the Italian Fascist Party won 35 out of 535 seats in the parliamentary election of May 15, 1921.

Just as Mussolini had become the Italian Prime Minister by the appointment of the King, Hitler became the German Chancellor by the appointment of President Paul Hindenburg.  In both cases, conservative elites decided that appointing fascist leaders as the heads of government was the only way to form parliamentary majorities capable of vigorous governing without having to form coalitions with radical socialist and communist parties.

These conservatives saw this as the only way to resolve the unprecedented crises that they faced.  The first crisis was the social and political crisis created in the wake of World War One, which included the threat of a communist revolution in Western Europe sparked by the Russian Revolution.  The second crisis was the Great Global Depression that began in 1929.  By 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor, over 30% of the German workforce was unemployed.  Part of this was the "crisis of liberalism" insofar as it seemed that liberal democracy could not solve these problems.

On February 28, 1933, a fire set by a Dutch communist youth gutted the Reichstag building in Berlin.  This was generally believed to be the beginning of a communist coup.  This provoked President Hindenburg into using his emergency powers under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, and he issued a decree suspending the legal protection of personal liberties.  This allowed Hitler's Brownshirts to use violence against Jews and others suspected of left-wing activities.  Then, on March 24 of 1933, parliament passed an Enabling Act that delegated its legislative powers to the executive.  This allowed Hitler to rule by his own personal authority from 1933 to the end of the war.  He was free to use violence against the "enemies of the people."  Here we see the fatal flaw in the Weimar Constitution--its openness to unchecked executive prerogative powers.

So, what does this history suggest as to whether and how Trump's fascism could gain ruling power in America?  First, we should say that Trump has never won an election by majority vote, although he won in 2016 in the Electoral College.  Like Hitler, he seems to have about 35-40 percent of the voters as a solid base.  When he ran in 2016, he was not clearly identified as a fascist candidate.  But now, after the January 6th insurrection and his open threats to use military force against the "enemy within," his fascist propensities have become clear to many voters.  And that's why I am predicting that Harris will win this election.

But if he does win, perhaps only in the Electoral College, can't we predict that he will make himself a fascist dictator?  And even if he loses, can't we predict that Trump will say the election has been stolen again, as it was in 2020?  And won't he lead his MAGA movement into a violent insurrection to take power by force alone?  

Well, sure, we can imagine that he will try something like this.  But from what we have seen from his failure to overturn the election of 2020, we can predict, as I argued a few years ago, that Trump will not have the guts or the guns to launch a successful coup.  

In his last year in office, Trump's fascist advisors told him that he needed to declare martial law (under the Insurrection Act) and order the military to suppress the Black Lives Matter demonstrations and to overturn the election.  He did not act on their advice because he lacked the courage to try this, and because his generals had told him they would not obey his orders if they violated the Constitution.  There is no reason to believe that there will be any change in these circumstances after the election.

Here is where I disagree with Robert Kagan's argument that regardless of whether Trump wins or loses the election, his fascism will destroy liberal democracy in America.  As I explained in my response to Kagan, the "crisis" that America faces today is nowhere near as deep as the crisis faced by Italy and Germany between the wars.  There is no threat of Communist Revolution in America despite Trump's silly assertion that the Democrats are Communists.  There is no Great Depression in America.  The American economy is more prosperous than it has ever been.

And, most importantly, there is no "crisis of liberalism" in America today comparable to what may have happened in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.  While I agree with Kagan's claim that Trump's fascism is rooted in an American tradition of illiberalism, the American liberal tradition is stronger today than it has ever been.  One sign of that is that Trump and his supporters must insist that of course Trump is not a fascist, and of course the theme of his campaign is "freedom."

Moreover, even Kagan recognizes that illiberal fascists like Trump are desperate to win this election because they recognize that America is experiencing a "demographic shift" that favors liberalism over illiberalism:  as America becomes ever more multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, and religiously pluralistic, it becomes impossible for any single ethnoreligious group to dominate American politics and culture, and the appeal of liberalism as the only means of holding such a pluralistic society together will grow ever stronger.

In this election and its aftermath, we will see the confirmation of Francis Fukuyama's argument for the "end of history":  liberalism will prevail over fascism.

THE LIBERAL REFUTATION OF ILLIBERALISM: BY FORCE OF IDEAS AND ARMS

Remember the ninth "mobilizing passion" of fascism:  "the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess within a Darwinian struggle."

Lockean Liberals can accept that challenge and agree that liberalism must prevail over illiberalism through Darwinian cultural group selection in the war of ideas and arms.

Although ideas don't matter very much to fascism, particularly in its later stages when it takes political power, ideas do matter in the early creation of fascist movements.  I have written about the "Nazi philosophers"--from Plato and Fichte to Nietzsche and Heidegger.  And I have suggested the ways in which liberalism wins the intellectual war with illiberalism.  Indeed, the intellectual victory of liberalism has been so clear that even those who pose as antiliberals--Patrick Deneen, for example, turn out ultimately to be liberals.

Moreover, as Locke saw, there is a practical expression of the theoretical appeal of liberalism when people "vote with their feet" and choose to immigrate to those countries with more freedom, which is one form of cultural group selection.

But Locke also saw that the power of liberal ideas must ultimately be backed up with the power of liberal arms in the "Appeal to Heaven."  So, for example, the Declaration of Independence was not only a declaration of the "self-evident truths" of equal natural rights but also a declaration of war, in which the outcome would depend on the "popular Lockeanism" of the Americans fighting in the war.

Then, in 1861, the Confederate States of America declared themselves a nation conceived in the liberty of white men to enslave others and dedicated to the proposition that all men are not created equal; and they engaged in a great war testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.  That nation did not endure because it was defeated by a Lockean liberal regime with a larger population of well-armed fighting men, including emancipated slaves, many of whom understood that they were fighting for the principles of the Declaration of Independence.  As the proslavery Southerner George Fitzhugh admitted, the Union defeat of the Confederacy was the victory of John Locke over Robert Filmer.

But that was not enough to ensure the "new birth of freedom."  The use of military force to suppress the fascist militias of the Klan in the Reconstruction Era and then in the Second Reconstruction (the Civil Rights Movement) to reform the Jim Crow South was required for overthrowing the illiberal tradition of the American South.  This included a Black tradition of armed self-defense and rebellion.  Ultimately, Lincoln's rhetoric of equal liberty defeated George Wallace's rhetoric of freedom as domination.

Similarly, in World War Two, we saw a test in war of the fascist "right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint."  And with the defeat of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in war, we saw that there is a sense in which might does make right, when people in the state of nature exercise "the executive power of the law of nature" to resist and punish those who would dominate them.

REFERENCES

Kagan, Robert.  2024.  Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart--Again.  New York: Knopf.

Paxton, Robert O.  1998.  "The Five Faces of Fascism."  The Journal of Modern History 70 (March): 1-23.

Paxton, Robert O.  2004.  The Anatomy of Fascism.  New York: Random House.

Paxton, Robert O.  2021. "I've Hesitated to Call Donald Trump a Fascist.  Until Now."  Newsweek, January 11.

Schmidt, Michael S.  2024.  "As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator."  The New York Times, October 22.

Zerofsky, Elisabeth. 2024. "Is It Fascism?  A Leading Historian Changes His MInd."  The New York Times, October 23.

The Declaration of Independence Affirms the Natural Equality of Rights for Men and Women: Refuting Darrin McMahon

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.  That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.  That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." 

In Equality: The History of An Illusive Idea, Darrin McMahon argues that this declaration "that all men are created equal" really meant that only all white men and not women are created equal in their unalienable rights (see Equality, 165-166, 187).  Therefore, the Declaration of Independence did not justify the emancipation of slaves and women from despotic dominance by white men.  Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King were wrong in claiming that the Declaration promised equal liberty for all citizens regardless of race.  And Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were wrong in claiming that the Declaration promised equal liberty for all citizens regardless of sex.

In my previous posts, I have given some reasons for rejecting McMahon's assertion that the Declaration was compatible with racial slavery.  For example, when the African American mathematician Benjamin Banneker wrote to Thomas Jefferson complaining that slavery violated the principles of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson did not dispute anything Banneker said about slavery infringing on "the rights of human nature," which is what he would have done if McMahon were right.  In fact, Jefferson was clear in declaring that the abolition of slavery would be "the complete emancipation of human nature."  McMahon says nothing about this.

Now, in this post, I will dispute McMahon's claim that "all men" in the Declaration excludes women.  In the wake of the American Revolution, advocates of natural equality of rights for women saw the principles of the Declaration as including women as well as men.  And the American Founders never denied that this was true in principle, although they worried that this would be difficult to achieve in practice.  They were right about this, as indicated by the fact that it took 150 years before American women were guaranteed the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

The debate over women's rights was really a debate over the meaning of the Declaration of Independence, particularly the famous paragraph quoted above that affirms four "self-evident" truths.  

Does "all men are created equal" include both men and women since they are equally human?  Or are there natural differences between men and women that justify men having superior political and social authority over women?  

If "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are natural and "unalienable rights," does that mean that all human beings--female as well as male--naturally and equally have those rights?  Or can customary practices and positive laws rightly override those natural rights in assigning men and women to separate spheres of life?  

If government derives its "just powers from the consent of the governed," does that mean that all citizens--men and women--have the right to consent to being governed through voting?  Or are there practical reasons to restrict voting to men, with the assumption that the men can be trusted to represent the interests of the women?

Does "the Right of the People to alter or abolish" a form of government that has become "destructive of these ends" include the right of women to rebel against a governmental aristocracy of men over women?  Or should men and women refuse to allow such a rebellion as an unjustified disruption in the American political order?

The history of this debate can be divided into three critical periods: the early American republic from 1776 to the 1840s, the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls in 1848, and the Reconstruction Era debates over voting rights for freedmen and women.

THE REVOLUTIONARY OPENING FOR WOMEN IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC

On March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote a famous letter to her husband--John Adams--urging him to "Remember the Ladies" in drawing up new laws for Revolutionary America:

"I long to hear that you have declared an independency--and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.  Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands.  Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.  If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation."

"That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend.  Why then, not put it out of power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity.  Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex.  Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in immitation of the Supreem Being make use of that power only for our happiness."

Abigail's teasing tone softens but does not completely hide her censorious argument.  John responded in a letter of April 14 with a patronizing humor:

"As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh.  We have been told that our Struggle has loosened the bands of Government everywhere.  That Children and Apprentices were disobedient--that schools and Colleges were grown turbulent--that Indians slighted their Guardians and Negroes grew insolent to their Masters.  But your Letter was the first Intimation that another Tribe more numerous and powerful than all the rest were grown discontented.--This is rather too coarse a Compliment but you are so saucy, I wont blot it out."

"Depend upon it, We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems.  Altho they are in full Force, you know they are little more than Theory.  We dare not exert our Power in its full Latitude.  We are obliged to go fair, and softly, and in Practice you know We are the subjects.  We have the Name of Masters, and rather than give up this, which would compleatly subject Us to the Despotism of the Peticoat, I hope General Washington, and all our brave Heroes would fight.  I am sure every good Politician would plot, as long as he would against Despotism, Empire, Monarchy, Aristocracy, Oligarchy, or Ochlocracy.--A fine Story indeed.  I begin to think the Ministry as deep as they are wicked.  After stirring up Tories, Landjobbers, Trimmers, Bigots, Canadians, Indians, Negroes, Hanoverians, Hessians, Russians, Irish Roman Catholics, Scotch Renegadoes, at last they have stimulated [blank] to demand new Priviledges and threaten to rebell."

 If John thought that his weak sarcastic banter would silence Abigail, he was wrong.  In a letter of May 7th, she renewed her challenge:

"I can not say that I think you very generous to the Ladies, for whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to Men, Emancipating all Nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over Wives.  But you must remember that Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken--and notwithstanding all your wise Laws and Maxims we have it in our power not only to free ourselves but to subdue our Masters, and without violence throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet."

In complaining about men insisting on "an absolute power over Wives," Abigail was probably referring to the common law doctrine of coverture, which denied that women had any independent legal identity.  Before they were married, women were under the guardianship of their fathers.  After marriage, their husbands took over their legal identity.  Women could not sue or be sued in court.  They could not make contracts or own property.  Wives had no legal right to defend themselves from the physical or mental abuse by their husbands. 

As I said in a post some years ago, by suggesting that women could form a coalition to challenge such male dominance and oppression of women, Abigail was anticipating the women's movement of the 19th century.  And without knowing it, she was adopting a behavioral strategy employed by bonobo females, who form strong social bonds with one another so that coalitions of females can check the power of aggressive males.  In contrast to chimpanzees, bonobo females can challenge male dominance and aggression, so that bonobo groups are more peaceful and more egalitarian than chimpanzee groups.  

The challenge to male dominance coming from American women like Abigail was rhetorical--appealing to the American Lockean principles of equal liberty and government by the consent of the governed and pointing out that the arbitrary power of men over women contradicted those principles.  The Declaration of Independence became the most concise and eloquent statement of those principles, so that the rhetoric of the women's rights movement was grounded fundamentally in the Declaration.

Although John Adams' first response to Abigail sounded dismissive and mocking, some of his other correspondence at the same time shows how serious he took her arguments.  One can see that in a letter he wrote to James Sullivan on May 26th, 1776.  Sullivan had argued that since the American Revolutionaries agreed that law and government are founded on the consent of the people, then they need to establish new governments in which all citizens would have the right to vote, which meant eliminating the property requirement for voting.  Adams warned that although this was true in theory, there were practical problems in proposing this:

"It is certain in Theory, that the only moral Foundation of Government is the Consent of the People.  But to what an Extent Shall We carry this Principle?  Shall We Say, that every Individual of the Community, old and young, male and female, as well as rich and poor, must consent, expressly to every Act of Legislation?  No, you will Say.  This is impossible.  How then does the Right arise in the Majority to govern the Minority, against their Will?  Whence arises the Right of the Men to govern Women, without their Consent?  Whence the Right of the old to bind the Young, without theirs."

Although Sullivan had not mentioned the possibility of women voting, Adams thought that women would inevitably demand this: "Depend upon it, sir, it is dangerous to open So fruitful a Source of Controversy and Altercation, as would be opened by attempting to alter the Qualifications of Voters.  There will be no End of it.  New Claims will arise.  Women will demand a Vote."

In fact, beginning in 1790, some women had the right to vote in New Jersey, where the New Jersey Assembly had passed an election statute saying: "No Person shall be entitled to Vote in any other Township or precinct, than that in which he or she doth actually reside at the time of the Election."  But while this "he or she" opened up voting for women, only a small group of women could vote, because there was a property qualification, and married women could not own property.  Consequently, the women most likely to vote were widows who had inherited their deceased husbands' estates (Zagarri 2007: 31).

Abigail Adams took notice of this.  In a letter to Mary Smith Cranch on November 15, 1797, Abigail wrote that "if our state constitution had been equally liberal with that of New Jersey and admitted the females to a Vote, I should certainly have exercised it."

In later years, John Adams moved ever more in the direction of granting the right to vote to women.  Writing to his grandson (also named "John Adams") on November 26, 1821, he agreed with "universal suffrage," but he worried about the difficulties of defining its boundaries.  He was not persuaded by his grandson's assumption that women could be excluded.  "You make very light of the argument for the ladies and evade it by a turn of wit and gallantry, but this is not argument.  Upon what principle of liberty, justice, equity, and fraternity would you exclude them?  Once let them know they have the right, and you will find them as fond of displaying . . . their charms and their eloquence in public as the men and as ardently aspiring to offices and dignities."

Notice that he criticized his grandson for "making light of the argument for the ladies" just as he had done in response to Abigail in 1776.

If you exclude women from the vote, he observed, "you will exclude the better half of mankind."

But still, Adams suggested that landed property as a qualification for voting was "the safest, the most equitable, and the most likely to produce education, independence, discretion, and will."  And so, he seemed to say, women with landed property should have the right to vote.

To be continued . . .