By Andy Taggart. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (July 1)
Already a Pulitzer Prize-winning and presidential biographer, Jon Meacham just made an important additional contribution to the civic and cultural health of the nation.
In The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels (Random House), Meacham reminds us that intense political turmoil and dissent are not new to the American scene, and however out of sorts might seem the body politic today, we’re going to come through it just fine.
More timely encouragement can hardly be imagined.
Meacham has made much in his prior best sellers and frequent public appearances of the power of the presidency, for good and for ill. And his keen grasp of American history spread large–he’s currently a distinguished visiting professor of history at Vanderbilt University–instructs his optimism and sense of humor even in the face of what he perceives as poor leadership and bad policy decisions.
Mississippians were the beneficiaries of his good cheer at the 2016 Mississippi Book Festival held at our State Capitol, and he will be returning in August for the 2018 edition.
His newest work is a review of major times of turmoil in the nation’s history, spanning about a generation per chapter. Not surprisingly, the Civil War and its antecedents, aftermath and legacy is his starting point, but what follows might be less familiar reminders of the nation’s resiliency in the face of painful periods of political enmity.
Did you know that a group of wealthy Wall Street players in the early 1930s tried to recruit a retired general from the U.S. Marines to stage a coup against FDR?
Or that the New York Assembly refused to seat five newly elected legislators because they were members of the Socialist Party?
Do you remember ever knowing that an anarchist tried to blow up the home of the attorney general of the United States, but succeeded instead only in blasting himself into little pieces all over the AG’s front yard?
Throughout, Meacham sounds the drumbeat of the soul of America, by which he means the “collection of convictions, dispositions and sensitivities that shape [our] character and inform [our] conduct.”
While it is clear from his writings and many of his allusions that Meacham is a man of personal faith, it is not a religious reference he intends when he writes of the nation’s soul. It is, rather, his conviction, and the witness of history, that there is an inner core that has made America into America and Americans into Americans.
Meacham frankly acknowledges and clearly documents the times that our core has responded to its dark side, when the nation as a body acted primarily out of fear, anger, and or even hatred. but he also revels in the many, and more frequent, examples of how the core–the soul–of America responded to our better angels and moved forward into improved human relations and quality of life, and devotion to causes higher than self-interest.
Often, he notes, significant steps toward the light have resulted directly from the nation’s revulsion at seeing itself at its darkest.
We conducted the affairs of our nation for a century after the signing of the Declaration of Independence as if it were not imprinted on our corporate soul that all men are created equal. To our shame, and as Meacham painfully reminds us, we conducted the affairs of our state for yet another century still ignoring that soul-stirring promise of our nation’s founding.
Now, at the beginning of our third century as a state, may the soul that Jon Meacham also reminds us has responded so often and in so many ways to our better angels be the one that marks our identity as Americans and as Mississippians. And what better way to start on the path of a new century than with a new state flag?
Andy Taggart is CEO of the law firm of Taggart, Rimes and Graham, PLLC in Ridgeland and co-author of Mississippi Politics: The Struggle for Power, 1976-2008 (University Press of Mississippi 2009). His public service has included roles as chief of staff to Gov. Kirk Fordice, president of the Madison County Board of Supervisors and the chairman of the Greater Jackson Chamber Partnership.
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