July 5, 2013
The Civil War matters because the nation is more deeply
divided than at any time since 1860. The Voting Rights Act is in peril because
it is insufficiently deferential to States Rights. How the nation regards and
treats nonwhites is at the core of the division. The fact that this Civil War
is cold means that the lives sacrificed to it are ignored rather than
commemorated as they were at Gettysburg. Disparities in
health care, education, jobs, life expectancy, criminal justice are dismissed
as individuals failing, genetic inferiority or cultural inevitability with
little serious analysis of the role of intentional public policy. We need a
third Reconstruction (the second was roughly 1954 to 1970) that addresses
structural discrimination. We should attend to the recommendations of the UN
Commission on the Elimination of Race Discrimination. We need a Constitutional
Amendment guaranteeing the right to vote. We urge the Egyptian regime to listen
to protestors, but nary a word to Rick Perry ranting that state house
demonstrations in Texas amount to terrorism. Had Lincoln survived the Civil War
we might have had benign Reconstruction and genuine reconciliation. The lessons
of Gettysburg are profound and timely.
