Allegory: The Lion King (1994)
The lure of fascism: Gabriel Over the White House (1933):
Prophecy: Contagion (2011!)
The rule of law: A Man for All Seasons (1966)
This blog serves the our introductory course on American politics (Claremont McKenna College Government 20) for the spring of 2025. During the semester, I shall post course material and students will comment on it. Students are also free to comment on any aspect of American politics, either current or historical. There are only two major limitations: no coarse language, and no derogatory comments about people at the Claremont Colleges.
Allegory: The Lion King (1994)
The lure of fascism: Gabriel Over the White House (1933):
Prophecy: Contagion (2011!)
The rule of law: A Man for All Seasons (1966)
Will post a practice final this week.
Adjourn at noon for student experience survey
Considering the separation of church and state, how is a president justified in using the word "God" at all? The answer is that the separation of church and state has not denied the political realm a religious dimension. Although matters of personal religious belief, worship, and association are considered to be strictly private affairs, there are, at the same time, certain common elements of religious orientation that the great majority of Americans share. These have played a crucial role in the development of American institutions and still provide a religious dimension for the whole fabric of American life, including the political sphere. This public religious dimension is expressed in a set of beliefs, symbols, and rituals that I am calling American civil religion. The inauguration of a president is an important ceremonial event in this religion. It reaffirms, among other things, the religious legitimation of the highest political authority.
JFK:
Solemn oath
JFK quoted the Protestant King James Bible, not the Catholic Confraternity Douay Bible. Protestant Ted Sorensen actually wrote the speech.
See his 1960 speech to the Houston Ministerial Association (start about one minute in):
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (JFK supported, LBJ saw it become law)
Immigration trends (Mo is a CMC alum)
War
Disability:
For next Monday: http://www.robertbellah.com/articles_5.htm
Also on Monday, bring your devices to complete the Student Experience Survey
Review: Ballot measures: Dialysis example and SEIU
Tocqueville (Lawrence/Mayer ed., pp. 513, 518):
Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types- religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute. Americans combine to give fêtes, found seminaries, build churches, distribute books, and send missionaries to the antipodes. Hospitals, prisons, and schools take shape in that way. Finally, if they want to proclaim a truth of propagate some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form an association. In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association.
...
It often happens in democratic countries that many men who have the desire or directed toward that light, and those wandering spirits who had long sought each other the need to associate cannot do it, because all being very small and lost in the crowd, they do not see each other and do not know where to find each other. Up comes a newspaper that exposes to their view the sentiment or the idea that had been presented to each of them simultaneously but separately. All are immediately in the shadows finally meet each other and unite.
For Wednesday:
In Federalist 10, Madison described the sources of faction
A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions... But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views.
Just about every group has an organization -- even this one.
DO NOT REDUCE INFLUENCE TO CAMPAIGN MONEY
For next time, Lowi, ch. 12
Plunkitt, Tweed, and Machines
Transparency v. Compromise
Super PACs as "Shadow Machines"
Machines and Community Organizing (a week from today)
For Wednesday:
PIE/PO/PIG/POG
"Great Parties"
Tocqueville (175): “What I call great political parties are those more attached to principles than to consequences, to generalities rather than to particular cases, to ideas rather than to personalities... America has had great parties; now they no longer exist”
The line is now drawing so clearly as to shew, on one side, 1. the fashionable circles of Phila., N. York, Boston and Charleston (natural aristocrats), 2. merchants trading on British capitals. 3. paper men, (all the old tories are found in some one of these three descriptions).
On the other side are 1. merchants trading on their own capitals. 2. Irish merchants, 3. tradesmen, mechanics, farmers and every other possible description of our citizens.
Party in the Electorate (PIE)
History
For Monday:
Fourth assignment
Final Exam
For next time,
Choose one:
1. Pick a democratic country with which you are familiar, either through study or firsthand experience. How does that country's party system differ from that of the United States? Consider demographics, ideology, electoral process, and governmental structure.
2. Pick any elected official (e.g., federal or state lawmaker, mayor, supervisor) who serves the area from which you come. (President and vice president do not count.) If you are an international student, just pick one who interests you. How did that person get that office? Consider the official's characteristics and support base, as well as the makeup of the constituency. If that constituency strongly favors one party or the other, consider how the official became the party's choice. Again, pay attention to the local electoral process.
Instructions:
The final exam for this course will take place in our regular classroom on Tuesday, May 13 from 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM. It will have three parts.
Part I: Identifications (4 points each) In two or three sentences each, briefly identify the meaning and significance of 12 out of 14 names or terms. These items will come from the "key terms" list at the end of each Lowi chapter, the topics of other assigned readings, and items we discussed in class. Also see the blog and your own class notes. (If you have not been taking notes, you should start.)
Part II. Short essays. Answer three of four. Each answer should take about half a page. (6 points each). These questions will involve key passages from Tocqueville, the Federalist, and other course readings, as well as topics we discussed in class. Again, the blog and class notes will be an important source.
Part III. Longer essays. Answer two of three essay questions (17 points each). Each answer should take about 2-3 large bluebook pages or 3-4 small bluebook pages. Here you should show that you can discuss some of the broader themes of the course.
Bonus questions. For one point each, identify relatively obscure names from current events or the readings.
For examples, see the "air midterm" that I posted earlier. I shall also post a practice final toward the end of the semester.
For Monday, Lowi, ch. 10.
IF YOU ARE PLANNING ON A JOB AS A JOURNALIST, SOME ITEMS TO CONSIDER:
From Pew:
Trust in media
Peter Navarro managed to get an opinion piece on the Trump tariffs published in the FT (surprising enough in itself). Navarro's rhetoric isn't really new, but the 900+ comments are worth sticking around for – the FT comments are unrelenting (even more so than usual).
Post papers to Canvas
This week, I will put up a guide to studying for the final.
For Wednesday, https://libguides.sandiego.edu/fakenews
What is public opinion?
Attitudes: "evaluative" and "affective" orientations: approve/disapprove and like/dislike
Knowledge (Lowi 288-289): Most people, most of the time, know very little about politics.
For Monday: Lowi, ch. 9.
Now, this bill was of course drafted by a theologian, or somebody versed in apologetics.
There's an amusing bit of evidence on that subject in the very language of the bill.
The bill keeps using... the Act keeps using the term "evidences" in the plural.
We lawyers never speak of "evidences" in the plural. We speak of "evidence", the singular.
And I got nagged by it, and I looked it up the other day.
And of course the only dictionary reference to "evidences" is to Christian apologetics: the evidences for Christianity. This is a matter of theological disputation.
For next time:
Juries invest each citizen with a sort of magisterial office; they make all men feel that they have duties toward society and that they take a share in its government. By making men pay attention to things other than their own affairs, they combat that individual selfishness which is like rust in society.
Juries are wonderfully effective in shaping a nation’s judgment and increasing its natural lights. That, in my view, is its greatest advantage. It should be regarded as free school which is always open and in which each juror learns his rights, comes into daily contact with the best-educated and most-enlightened members of the upper classes, and is given practical lessons in the law, lessons which the advocate’s efforts, the judge’s advice, and also the very passions of the litigants bring within his mental grasp. I think that the main reason for the practical intelligence and the political good sense of the Americans is their long experience with juries in civil cases.