The Death of Civil Discourse

On May 22, 1856, Preston Brooks, a Representative from South Carolina, entered the Senate chamber with two other Representatives: Laurence Keitt, a fellow South Carolinian, and Henry Edmundson of Virginia.  All three men were pro-slavery Democrats, and they had come to the Senate to confront Charles Sumner, an abolitionist Republican from Massachusetts.  Brooks was enraged at Sumner for a vitriolic speech he had given two days earlier in which he leveled scathing (and at times crude) attacks at South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, a second cousin of Brooks.

Two years earlier, Butler, along with Stephen Douglas, a Senator from Illinois, had helped write the Kansas-Nebraska act, which created the Kansas Territory; by 1856, the question of Statehood was being discussed, with particular emphasis on whether or not slavery would be legal within Kansas.  When the territory was created, Butler and Douglas, along with the other authors and supporters of the bill had decided to let the citizens of Kansas decide the issue of slavery for themselves.  In a microcosm of the debate that was dividing the country (and would later lead to the Civil War), a series of violent and lethal clashes (now referred to as the Bleeding Kansas crisis) had erupted between pro- and anti-slavery activists.  Sumner blamed the authors of the bill for the violence because they opted to leave the issue of slavery up to the citizens instead of making a choice themselves.  In addition to attacking their bill and the institution of slavery, he attacked them personally, using lurid insults and allusions to cast them as idiots, amoral hypocrites, and sexual deviants.  Brooks was understandably furious at Sumner for berating his cousin, and he went to the Senate to seek revenge for what he deemed nothing but slander. 

What followed was one of the most shocking incidents to ever occur in any part of our government. 

Trump and the Anonymous Op-Ed

Two weeks ago, the New York Times published a damning,anonymous Op-Ed by a Senior Official in the White House.  The picture the author painted is a terrifying one, showing a White House nearly crippled by an incompetent, amoral, petty president.  They confirmed all the things we feared about Trump, and they showed that those within the White House are just as afraid.  The author attempted to assuage our fears by explaining how they and others in the White House were resisting Trump’s worst urges and behavior; that they were trying to keep him in check for the sake of the country.  But I also feel that this essay was an attempt at bolstering their own conscience.

On the one hand, I think the author was very brave to publish this essay, as was the New York Times for taking the extraordinary step of agreeing to keep their identity secret.  Whoever wrote this has every right to worry about their job (and possibly more than that) as Trump has shown time and again that he is an incredibly vindictive man.  Indeed, within hours of its publication, Trump tweeted a demand that the New York Times unveil the author’s identity, claiming that national security is at stake.  But under the bravery the author showed is cowardice, born of the extreme partisanship that permeates every nook and cranny of this administration.