more people should know that in 1970 Congress came within a few votes of amending the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College
you can read @jessewegman’s excellent book on the Electoral College or Alexander Keyssar’s book (which I have yet to read) on the subject
the proximate reason for this was the 1968 election, in which George Wallace — he won 46 electoral votes and came within 40,000 votes or so of winning another 11 in Tennessee — nearly threw the election to the House of Representatives
this shocked the entire political establishment and fueled an almost-successful drive to get rid of the Electoral College
This is a really important observation that I want to elevate. The extent to which divergence was incredibly rare is why the Electoral College has persisted for so long.
This gets people tripped up so it is worth clarifying. "Abolition" in this context refers to the political movement to *immediately end slavery* everywhere it existed. This was indeed a "fringe" position.
There were a variety of antislavery positions as well as the Anti-Slavery political movement that wanted to restrict slavery through legislation. The end of slavery in the North, beginning after the Revolution, was a gradual process, not one of immediate emancipation.
Part of the reason abolition was unpopular is it because it presumed the full civic inclusion of black Americans, which was pretty unpopular throughout the country!
Whether this is a slight of hand or just poor reasoning, the problem is that this argument fails to distinguish between “compromises that ameliorate injustice” and “compromises that entrench injustice.” slowboring.com/p/the-two-kind…
Clear that he is inviting readers to think about this in the context of LGBT rights, but there are no justice-facing compromises on the table. There is, instead, an effort to push LGBT people out of public life entirely. That is the context for the “no compromise” position.
To use his analogy, I am reasonably confident that A. Philip Randolph would not have accepted a compromise on the integration of war industries that left black workers substantially worse off than the status quo.
beyond the obvious logical issue with Thomas’ assertion here, the basic problem here is that Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 specifically to deal with the “badge of servitude” that undermined the equal status of freed AND free blacks.
the fourteenth amendment was written, in fact, to provide a firm constitutional foundation for precisely the kind of ameliorative work congress tried to do in the 1866 CRA
as evidenced by the fact that the civil rights act of 1875 was passed using the authority granted by the 14th!
a fun thing about the zoning in my neighborhood is that you can build a monstrous, hideously expensive single-family home by right, but if you wanted to build 2 or 3 smaller units on the same lot you would have to go through approval hell.
this, even though the monster single family home is wildly out of scale with the neighborhood, while a set of smaller attached homes (or even a small apartment building) fits the “character” of the area
anyway, this is apropos of watching a contractor put up what will almost certainly be a home valued at three times (at least) the price of everything around it (including my place)
i think LINCOLN is one of spielberg’s late-career triumphs and it is a personal favorite movie of mine but the one thing that takes me out of it is at the very beginning when dane dehaan shows up as a union soldier. he doesn’t belong! he looks too much like he’s seen an iphone.
on the other hand, bruce mcgill looks like he came straight out of 1865
i love this scene and i wish there were more of them. a lot of people, even his allies, thought lincoln was kind of aggravating! like, stop talking in frontier stories and dirty jokes my dude!