Juneteenth

 During World War I, Congress approved the Espionage Act, which made criticism of the president during wartime a crime. It was illegal for Americans to express opinions that violated the dignity of the president.

The attorney general saw the law as an opportunity to shut down any criticism of the White House. The law meant that an expression of an opinion could be prosecuted. Reporters who questioned the president’s representation of the facts could be arrested. Newspapers that stood behind their reporters could be shut down.

I think the current occupant of the White House is a threat to the democracy. But I also think we Americans have a dim sense of our own history. Our democratic institutions have been outraged before. The rights of human beings have been trampled before. Native Americans were nearly exterminated. African Americans were enslaved and then subjected to Jim Crow. Time and again, we Americans have failed to live up to our ideals.

The longer I live, the more I appreciate and celebrate Juneteenth. The holiday captures the peculiar disparity between ideals and performance in the American experiment, the difference between what’s practiced and what’s preached.

This holiday seems particularly important, especially valuable, today.