Thread by @ThePlumLineGS

1) A quick intrusion into the fascinating ongoing debate between @DouthatNYT and @AdamSerwer, if I may.

Douthat seems to want to dethrone, or at least downgrade, the role of liberal constitutionalism and liberal democracy as a historical force for progress.

@DouthatNYT @AdamSerwer 2) So here's how @DouthatNYT presents the Civil War and emancipation:

nytimes.com/2019/06/18/opi…

@DouthatNYT @AdamSerwer 3) But this leaves important things out. Yes, some abolitionists (Garrison) refused to acknowledge the Constitution’s legitimacy.

But that was due to its *relationship to slavery.*

Abolitionists didn’t give up on *constitutionalism.*

4) As Eric Foner writes, abolitionists “developed an alternative, rights-oriented constitutionalism, grounded in a universalistic understanding of liberty.”

This “invented the concept of equality before the law regardless of race.”

amazon.com/Story-American…

5) Lincoln cited Jefferson’s language in the Declaration, that is, in *a founding document* that helped lead to the creation of the nation.

Lincoln described that as an “abstract truth,” i.e., an *idea* that could be wielded against tyranny for all time, on behalf of anyone.

6) Relatedly, the Douthat take downplays the role of the Civil War Amendments and the Civil Rights Acts of Congress in the long struggle to overturn white supremacy.

The amendments were seen at the time as proof of constitutionalism’s capacity for renewal. Foner again:

7) As Foner noted there, the Civil War Amendments created the capacity for *federal power,* wielded *democratically,* to secure liberties against local state-power tyrannies.

Thus the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts -- liberal constitutionalism's answer to those tyrannies.

8) European liberals, following along from across the Atlantic, understood all this as a struggle which would decide whether popular government could avoid sliding into despotism and could be liberal.

See the great "Lost History of Liberalism" on this: amazon.com/Lost-History-L…

9) Lincoln offered this understanding at Gettysburg:

10) In Europe, after Lincoln’s death, “tributes linked his leadership and the Union’s victory with the prospects of liberal democracy around the world."

That's Helena Rosenblatt in “Lost History of Liberalism."

amazon.com/Lost-History-L…

11) So yes, an “extra-constitutional event” did take place, when arguments over the Constitution became unresolvable.

But immense progress did unfold “within a system of liberal constitutionalism.”

12) The whole debate over @DavidAFrench - ism has been marked by a surprisingly cavalier willingness to cast aside the historical achievements of liberal democracy and constitutionalism.

I think we should be more cautious about that.

FIN