Richard Cohen,writing in the New York Daily News, speaks to the curious position of the right wing on health care.

But, more interesting and deeply troubling is a new argument that the “right” and “center” (where I reside) should fight a “Civil War” with the left. Really? Does the author, Dennis Prager, really believe the passage of health care legislation rises to the level slavery as a pox on America? Does he really wish for carnage on the scale of the Civil War, when over 600,000 Americans were killed by fellow Americans? Does this mean that he wants to kill our friends and neighbors whose politics are different? Does this mean he wants to off my wife, who is so clearly on the left?

Oh, wait, wait, wait, there’s a there’s that throwaway line at the end about non-violence. I see. My bad. Prager thinks that using over-the-top rhetoric in the opening paragraphs and title is somehow mitigated with that ending caveat.

Give me a break. The caveat does not do it for me. I am tired of the ridiculous, false, and hyperbolic hyperventilating from the right wing, as if words don’t matter. And, I think that with this piece Prager and his right-wing buddies are just inviting more bullying behavior by zealots (and other unstable folks) whose mob mentality, hatred, and anger has become the defining characteristics of their politics. (Obviously, the publishers of this piece, RealClearPolitics, TownHall, and Creators, have no problem in posting such incendiary swill, and it would appear that they a certain amount of self-restraint. Interestingly, though, these folks have comments policies that allow them to remove offensive posts… One wonders, especially after the shameful behavior of Republican members of Congress and tea-party protesters, what would would be deemed offensive enough to remove.)

Still, this piece draws my attention for reasons other than its hostility, which has become the stock-in-trade of the right wing.  No indeed, it is the absolute incoherence of the historical claims made by Prager, beginning with his first bit of cleverness. Prager argues for some sort of “trinity” at the core of American life. Clever. It is almost as clever as George W. Bush’s description of the War on Terror as a “crusade,” both with their evocation of the United States as a fundamentalist Christian state.

Anyway, let me offer a couple quick thoughts about the core elements of his “trinity,” pulled from my historians’ pinhead.  The first of these elements is liberty, which he seems to define as being fixed in the concept of individual freedom, and NOT tied to “equality.”   First, the boundaries of liberty have been debated over the course of American history. The concept has, at best, been fluid, but always a point of public debate–sometimes civil debate sometimes not–but this debate about liberty’s meaning has been central American democratic life.  Indeed, what liberty meant was widely debated in the years leading up to the Civil War.  As we know, southerners’ defense of slavery frequently invoked the loss of “liberty,” of the right to own slaves, as a moral basis for secession–as  core reason for Civil War. It is possible that Prager knows this, but does he really want to ally himself with southern slaveowners? Either way, ordinary Americans demands for and efforts to expand liberty is actually what has made the “equality” that Prager so abhors possible for successive generations of Americans: first, those who did not own property obtained equality; then African American men held as slaves obtained some measure of equality; and finally women obtained equality. Now Prager claims that the left has substituted “Equality (of result)” for “liberty.” I am not quite sure what he means, as there clearly has never been equality (of result) in America. My evidence: income inequality; continued discrimination against and failure of minority communities of all sorts; women earn about $0.70 per dollar earned by men.  I am not sure, then, what Prager is precisely upset about, other than the fact the lines of inequality are less sharply drawn than they were in the nation’s halcyon days.

Even so, it is clear that Prager does not have any appreciation for the historical character of liberty and freedom in America. Indeed, for a very long time many Americans have argued that freedom or liberty could not be achieved without some basic social supports, often provided by the state. For example,  Franklin Roosevelt argued that freedom and liberty should be understood rather expansively, articulating that liberty meant freedom from fear, want, expression, and worship. (Prager should note that the freedom to worship was understood broadly not in narrow fundamentalist terms.) Of course, the pendulum has swung back and forth as Americans have debated liberty, freedom, and equality, and it is also true that Americans have debated where and how these ideals should be obtained. Surely, Prager can’t be articulating a vision of liberty that would return us to a time when liberty did not include some measure of equality and/or security from an impersonal marketplace, can he?

Secondly, Prager contends that “In God We Trust” is another fundamental part of the trinity that is America. Since when, you ask has this been the case?  The motto “In God We Trust,” first appeared on American coins during the Civil War, but then it disappeared for fifty years between the 1880s and 1930s, after which it became standard fare on American money. “In God We Trust,” did not become the nation’s motto until 1956, at which time it replaced E. Pluribus Unum (see below) which had been the nation’s informal motto. (See, for example, the US Treasury’s discussion of this issue.) Interestingly, the notion of religiosity trumped unity in 1956, at the height of the Cold War, suggesting perhaps a much narrower basis for American  unity than had ever been celebrated previously. Either way, it is pretty clear that the so-called principle of “In God We Trust” is hardly timeless. In fact, it turns out that it is not Prager’s secular humanist bogeymen who are seeking to revise the principles of the nation’s founders. No indeed, it is fundamentalists who are seeking to transform the founders into twenty-first century bible thumpers.

And, finally, Prager argues that we should adhere to E. Pluribus Unum rather than the multicultural agenda of the left. Apparently, for Prager, American unity is not possible without intolerance for our differences. It would be a pathetic sentiment, if it weren’t based in a false dichotomy, as E. Pluribus Unum (or, Out of Many, One) is not the opposite of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism has its foundations in the second half of the twentieth century and is usually associated with cultural identity.  E. Pluribus Unum, by contrast, was appropriated by American Revolutionaries, as an eighteenth-century statement of federalism. With the phrase, the founders asserted the centrality of a single national (federal) identity over state interests and sovereignty, seeking to create a nation out of thirteen disparate political and cultural units. Here, too, Prager’s argument is curious because generally speaking the re-emergent states’ rights folks like Prager would see this original meaning as antithetical to their own claims about “liberty.”  More troubling, though, is that E. Pluribus Unum did not deny the particularity of place or people. In fact, the original seal of the United States included on it the particular national states, or multiple identities, of the founding peoples of the American nation. E. Pluribus Unum celebrated the strength of American diversity, surely a multicultural ideal if there ever was one. At least, I should say, it celebrated a European multicultural ideal. Notably, the seal excluded about 18% of Americans who were enslaved (and unequal) in 1776 when it was original adopted. Prager may not value African Americans’ contributions to the United States, but their influence and contributions are incontrovertible and well-documented historically.  Here, too, it is obvious that Prager has a weak understanding of the origins of the seal and its components, as well as an absolute disregard for the inequality embedded in this symbol. But, then again, he already has decried his lack of interest in equality.

Dear readers, celebrate the nation and its complex history, debate it, and enjoy being American. Believe that America is exceptional or don’t. Love it or leave it. But don’t allow yourself to be taken in by a charlatan preaching about some false trinity of American values.  Inspired by the expansion of the social safety net, the belief that access to health care is a right and a responsibility, this guy wants you to go to war with your neighbors. Really, when some fool wants you to make war on your neighbors–your fellow citizens, your brothers and sisters–you need to stand up and say enough is enough. Worse yet, what sort of person would Americans to relive the Civil War? What sort of media outlet would publish such drivel?  These are disturbing times indeed!