#5SmartReads - July 5, 2022

Hitha on the United States of America's past, present, and future

July 05, 2022

Many people like to opine on what the Founding Fathers would think the news cycle today.

Well, we had one vehemently pro-choice founding father (and my personal favorite). Benjamin Franklin was so supportive of abortion that he included instructions for abortions in one of his books.

"[The book] starts to prescribe basically all of the best-known herbal abortifacients and contraceptives that were circulating at the time," Farrell said. "It's just sort of a greatest hits of what 18th-century herbalists would have given a woman who wanted to end a pregnancy early."

"It's very explicit, very detailed, [and] also very accurate for the time in terms of what was known ... for how to end a pregnancy pretty early on."

History, in this case, is on the side of choice.

How many times have you sung ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ with no thought about the lyrics, or the man who wrote them?

This read may change all that.

I highly encourage reading through the Twitter thread first, which references this article. It’s an important history lesson of the War of 1812, the role Francis Scott Key played in it and how the war inspired the song, and why the song took so long to become our national anthem.

James Williams does a better job of breaking it all down than I ever could, so give this a read.

Are you familiar with the independent state legislature concept? If not - let’s get familiar, because our next election could very well be decided by it and not the voters.

Essentially, it acts as a separate legislature purely for the sake of federal elections, unencumbered by the elected legislature and state judiciary. And yes, it sounds just as bad as it sounds.

Thom Hartmann is very much painting the worst case scenario in this thread, but it’s one worth considering because I see it as our likely reality in the next presidential election. Which could make 2020 the last fair and free presidential election we see in our country’s history for some time.

That is, unless we act. And in order to act, we need to understand this theory and what’s at stake, and to advocate for our state and federal legislatures to act to protect our country.

Yes. Yes, they did. And yes, Senator Jim Abeler voted in favor of a bill he thought he was voting against.

"That doesn't legalize marijuana — we didn't just do that, did we?" Abeler asks, seconds after adopting the amendment to legalize the products. 

"Oh, are you kidding? Of course you have," committee co-chair Rep. Tina Liebling (DFL-Rochester) responds. "No, just kidding, just kidding — next, we'll do that next, okay?" 

If only this could be a winning legislative strategy for other key issues - reproductive rights, voting rights, gun control, etc. We’d be better off - and get in a good chuckle in the process.

This Fourth of July demands that we remember who we were and who we are, but also ask difficult questions about what kind of country we aspire to be. Do we trust ourselves enough to openly teach, discuss and debate the hard parts of American history with our children and future generations, or do we move toward an insularity defined by uncritical thinking that cheapens that very history?

Should we expand the right to vote or restrict access, rendering our country less democratic and a perpetual political tinderbox? Can we extend citizenship to all women by not only restoring Roe but safeguarding against other ongoing assaults on women's rights and dignity?

Is the story of January 6 an important chapter in the continuing saga of American democracy or will it be the nation's epitaph -- the beginning of an end that could have been avoided if we exhibited more faith in not only our founders but in each other?

At the heart of Independence Day commemorations have always been questions about who we are as Americans. The newly recognized Juneteenth holiday adds an important and unifying historical layer to this narrative; one that finally acknowledges slavery's crucial role in the creation and transformation of the American republic.

I appreciate the Fourth of July for the day off, the chance to gather with loved ones, to eat delicious food, and to watch the seminal Independence Day film (because Jeff Goldblum hacking into alien spaceships brings me great joy). I find it increasingly difficult to be patriotic or celebratory beyond that, and don’t have any words of my own to share about my mixed feelings.

So I’m sharing Peniel E. Joseph’s words instead.

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