Boe Forum recap: Presidential historian Jon Meacham speaks against partisanship, nationalism
Presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham spoke in front of the Augustana community on March 19 in the Elmen Center gymnasium as part of the Center for Western Studies’ 28th Annual Boe Forum on Public Affairs.
The forum, created by late South Dakota Gov. Nils A. Boe in 1995, serves to provide South Dakota residents with knowledgeable individuals who address issues of “current worldwide or national concern and of broad public interest.”
Meacham was no exception, interweaving wit, self-deprecating humor and a serious analysis of previous U.S. Presidents’ actions to both highlight the struggles present in the current political climate and encourage South Dakotans not to have fear.
Meacham began his speech addressing the room of Augustana students, alumni, staff and faculty about the importance of liberal arts. He explained that without broad exposure to a variety of ideas, it is impossible to make connections and think creatively.
“There is no more important enterprise, nor, I would argue, is there any more important preparation for citizenship in this hour of crisis than a liberal arts education,” Meacham said.
Throughout his speech, the historian drew on the thoughts, actions and lives of previous American presidents to support his arguments, including Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and George H. W. Bush.
Meacham drew one such connection between the current administration’s actions against minority groups and President Jefferson’s famous line in the Constitution.
“He wrote the most important sentence ever originally rendered in English, that ‘all men are created equal’ and ‘endowed by their Creator,’” Meacham said.
Although the line has been challenged since its writing in 1776 — particularly in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857 in which Scott was denied the protections of the Constitution — Meacham argued that it holds as much significance now as ever in light of the current federal administration’s actions.
Meacham pointed out that presidents who were frustrated with the current affairs of the nation in their time, like Andrew Jackson, still obeyed the Constitution and rule of law. He argued that they valued upholding an infrastructure that they believed in over their personal feelings.
The extremist ideas of the current administration are not new, Meacham said, and they’ve in fact been around since the nation’s very beginning. Knowing that the nation’s people have been through unsettling periods before should give the people hope, he said.
“Authoritarianism, extremism, nativism, protectionism, racism, intolerance — all of these forces are perennial ones in the American experiment,” Meacham said. “They ebb and they flow. The task of any given generation, I would submit, is to do everything we can to have them ebb instead of flow. And at every point in American life, as in our own individual lives, we face that choice.”
Meacham highlighted the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s as an example of a tumultuous period that put “the American experiment” to the test. For years, activists fought for the condemning and outlawing of discrimination until racial discrimination was made illegal under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This, Meacham argued, was when Jefferson’s famous line about equality finally became genuine truth in the eyes of the law — not even 70 years ago.
Young and therefore fragile, the rule of law is under duress today, Meacham said, but that does not mean the people should let fear overwhelm them. He said that reminding people of the “glory and greatness of their past” will lead to a better future.
“The eras that we wish to emulate, the eras that we should commemorate, are the eras in which we have broadened the implications and the application of the Declaration of Independence,” Meacham said. “The eras in which we must draw a negative exemplum, in which we must learn what not to do, are areas where we have constricted the implications of that document.”
Meacham then argued that partisanship is not inherent to politics, that instead it is a choice that American citizens make. A person does not have to subscribe wholly to one party.
“It is a choice,” Meacham said. “We have decided to be this polarized, so we can decide not to be. We have decided to reward behavior that is reflexively partisan, so we can decide not to.”
The Boe Forum speaker lastly argued that U.S. citizens should be patriots, who believe in an idea like a democratic republic, as opposed to nationalists, who believe in supporting their own kind. Letting American patriotism shift toward nationalism results in a reduction of faith in the nation. Meacham warned that a nationalist perspective could very well lead to harder times in the future.
“The United States of America is one of the few nations on earth founded on a patriotic impulse and not a nationalistic one,” Meacham said. “And the faith of this country — and I never thought I would say this — the faith of this constitutional republic may well hinge on which prevails.”
As Meacham concluded his speech on Wednesday, he called South Dakotans to act within their communities — to see, accept and love people that look and don’t look like themselves, that act and don’t act like themselves. No matter what a person’s political view is, he said, there is only one solution to the current American political climate.
“We have to love our neighbor,” Meacham said. “There's no other choice. Democracies don't work if we don't.”
