A Book Analysis of “We the Fallen People” by Robert McKenzie… (my own commentary)

It has been a week, and I now am getting around to writing my commentary and thoughts to Robert McKenzie’s book, We the Fallen People (which I summarized in Part 1). At the beginning of his book, McKenzie spoke of the need to think critically about core issues involving American democracy if we want to American democracy to continue to thrive: “We have more than enough slogans. To thrive, democracy requires grownup conversation” (11). This is no doubt true. And in the course of his book, McKenzie not only gives a very good history lesson regarding how the Founding Fathers viewed democracy and the best way to fashion the United States government, but also an insightful history lesson regarding the transformative Jacksonian presidency and its differing take on American democracy. On that alone, the book is well worth reading.

What I want to do, though, in this post is focus on two things. First, I want to comment on a few points McKenzie mentions about the original intent of the Founding Fathers and how we have pretty much discarded them. Second, I want to comment on where I think McKenzie’s final analysis falls short.

Some Interesting Constitutional Nuggets to Consider
The first thing I found interesting in the book was the rationale the Founding Fathers had for the issue of voting, particularly how they viewed voting as a privilege that should be granted to people who would exercise it responsibly. Yes, originally, that meant white, male landowners, and I don’t think anyone in their right mind wants to go back to that. But I think the idea of viewing voting as a privilege and not a right has some merit, to be quite honest.

Let’s admit it, this idea that any citizen over 18 with a pulse automatically has the “right to vote” (and in some parts of the country, this “right” has been extended to non-citizens) is something that flies in the face of the bedrock principles of the Founding Fathers. To be quite honest, it invites politicians to manipulate the ignorant masses. Perhaps we should ask ourselves if it really is a good thing to allow an uneducated citizen who knows nothing about how the government and our Constitutional republic is set up to work to actually vote? An ignorant electorate is not a good way to choose a country’s leaders—and the Founding Fathers knew it.

This is where it would mean that the government would have to take on the responsibility to properly educate its citizens basics Civics—a subject that has, for some inexplicable reason, been largely cut out of many school curriculums. This also impacts a lot of the current “voting rights” debates in this country. I think conflicts over voter I.D., mail-in voting, extended voting times, etc., although all issues that need to be worked out, are nevertheless premised on an assumption that the Founding Fathers would have rejected. Like McKenzie said, for democracy to thrive, it requires a grown-up conversation. I doubt, though, anyone (much less a politician) will dare bringing this issue up for public conversation.

Secondly, it was interesting to realize just how much the Founding Fathers despised the idea of political parties, seeing them as factions that would tear at the fabric of democracy. Now, truth be told, I don’t share the same aversion to the idea of political parties—they do offer somewhat of an organizational structure that can aid the political process. Nevertheless (and I think this is what we are seeing today), when the influence of Christian virtue wanes in a society, political parties easily end up taking on their own “religious flavor,” to the point where many people’s real religion these days is their particular political party. And when we get to that point, we are just a step or two away (to use an image from Revelation) from a “beastly” combination of church and state—not the Christian church, mind you, but a political “church” that uses the levers of government to enforce obedience and a kind of political “worship” of the state.

Thirdly, almost as a side note, upon reading the utter vitriol surrounding the 1828 election between Jackson and Adams, it actually made me feel a little less anxious about the recent vitriol that has gone on in America over these past 5-6 years. I mean, wow, both Jackson and Adams, through their preferred “media networks,” hurled the kind of vile and nasty accusations at each other that could easily have been uttered by our most recent political candidates and run on a 24/7 news loop by every news station and newspaper. Some things never change.

Fourthly, McKenzie points out that in the early 19^th century, one of the reasons why there was so much “moral reform” going on in America was precisely because, “American clergy in the 1830s recognized what so many contemporary Christian leaders have forgotten—namely, that political influence always comes at a cost to the church. When Christians ally themselves with a particular political leader or party, the church ‘increases its power over some but gives up hope of reigning over all’” (239). Simply put, Christian leaders didn’t jump into the bandwagon of either political party. Their concern was with improving the lives and morals of the people, and not with pushing certain political agendas, as if they were religious crusades.

I think that is something very important to realize. Having said that, I’ve seen over the past few years a mounting condemnation of certain Evangelicals who have become hopeless political partisans for the Republican party—this is absolutely true. And it is absolutely true that this has incredibly damaged the reputation of Christianity as a whole. At the same time, though, I find that those leveling such criticism against Evangelicalism on this issue often tend to show themselves to be just as politically partisan on the liberal/Democrat side themselves. In addition, if we are going to criticize Evangelical leaders for getting too wrapped up in the “politics of the right,” we should also criticize other Christian leaders and churches who have gotten too wrapped up in the “politics of the left.”

McKenzie’s Blind Spot…Where He Falls Short
To cut to the chase, the one area where I take issue with McKenzie’s book explicitly comes in his final chapter, where (as I said in my first post) he basically unloads on Donald Trump. In fact, once you read that final chapter, you can easily go back through McKenzie’s book and see little hints of this early on. To be clear, his criticism of Trump is largely very fair. In addition, it really is fascinating to see just how much Trump’s rhetoric mirrors that of Andrew Jackson. Both men essentially put out the same kind of message: “Politicians in D.C. are corrupt, the government is corrupt, and I alone can fix it.”

That being said, the biggest shortcoming in McKenzie’s book is that, although he does have a few comments here and there about how Christian “conservatives” and Christian “liberals” can fall into the trap of political partisanship, the vast majority of his criticism falls squarely on Trump and any Evangelical who voted for Trump. In that respect, his critique is incredibly lopsided. Again, that is not to say that there are problems with Trump, and that is not to say that there were Evangelicals and Evangelical leaders who went way overboard in their veritable worship of Trump—all that is true. But my, oh my, has there been some pretty horrible stuff going on, on the other side of the political aisle. And, for all his warnings against political partisanship, I think McKenzie falls a bit into that trap himself, being so fixated on the “big, bad, orange man,” that he completely ignores some pretty bad behavior on the other side of the political aisle that is just as much of a threat to our democracy. So, allow me to run down a few examples.

First, an early, but I believe subtle “jab” at Trump, came when McKenzie was discussing Jackson’s policy to remove the Creek and Choctaw Indians. Even though at the time, that policy had wide support, we all now look back on those actions with disgust. When discussing that policy, McKenzie says this: “By all appearances, Jackson genuinely believed that removal would enhance national security by strengthening the country’s southern border, although that potential benefit applied more to the Creek and Choctaw lands closer to the Gulf of Mexico than to the Cherokee lands in northern Georgia” (140).

Now, on its face, that seems like a straightforward assessment of Jackson’s bad policy, but when read in light of McKenzie’s final chapter, I can’t help but see it as a subtle attempt to equate Jackson’s horrible “Indian Removal” policy with Trump’s border wall and his policy to try to secure the southern border. Of course, objectively speaking, the two policies are completely different. Jackson was forcibly removing people who had a rightful claim to their lands and who were here long before Americans were. Today’s issue with the southern border involves foreigners, not only from Central America, but from all around the world, illegally sneaking into the United States. To attempt to equate the two is rather uncritical and simplistic.

Second, McKenzie has some harsh words for the kind of “populism” that both Jackson and Trump championed. He writes, “What populism adds to the mix, above all, is fear—fear that the people are being attacked, that they are being threatened by an enemy, that defeat at the polls will mean the downfall of the republic or the ‘end of the country as we know it.’ The heart of their message is that only one of these two groups is legitimate. One of them consists of ‘the people’ and is righteous. The other consists of the people’s enemies—of ‘the Monster,’ however defined, and its malevolent allies and unwitting accomplices” (263).

Now, again, that tends to be true with populist movements. But let’s face it, that kind of rhetoric has been going on in both parties and the media for a long time, long before Trump’s candidacy. As someone who is generally conservative, every presidential election, it was just expected that the Republican nominee was going to be accused of being racist and corrupt, and if he got elected, it would be the end of our democracy. And, my goodness, I remember on Trump’s inauguration day, certain news anchors were already equating him with, you guessed it, Adolf Hitler, and saying he colluded with Russia, stole the election, and was an illegitimate president.

That isn’t to dismiss similar things that Trump has said and certain actions some of his supporters have done—but my point is that McKenzie only expresses disgust at Trump’s comments and the actions of some Trump supporters. To that, I say, “If you really are concerned about toxic rhetoric and that ‘populist sentiment’ that sees your own side as virtuous and the other side as evil, if you insist on critically thinking through these issues, then you have to be a bit more critical and a bit more objective, because you’re completely ignoring the sins of one side of the political aisle.”

Related to this is McKenzie’s criticism of Trump’s rhetoric, when he writes, “Trump gushed that Americans on the whole are ‘good and virtuous people,’ but his political opponents were ‘bad people’ who ‘hate our country’—‘cowards,’ ‘traitors,’ and ‘human scum,’ ‘unpatriotic,’ ‘deranged,’ ‘crazy,’ ‘wacko,’ and ‘crooked as hell’” (277). Again, yes, I agree, such rhetoric is divisive, inflammatory, and very unpresidential. But so is rhetoric that accuses those in the other party of being racists, white supremacists, terrorists, traitors, Bull Connor, Jefferson Davis, and (in the case of Joe Biden speaking about Mitt Romney in 2012) of, if elected, intending to put black people “back in chains.”

So yes, McKenzie is right when he writes, “Rather than excusing or ignoring Donald Trump’s contemptuous language (and possibly our own?), we would do better to echo James’s conclusion: “My brothers and sisters, this should not be” (276). But he has conveniently excused and ignored a whole lot (if not all) of the contemptuous language coming from the Left.

Finally, McKenzie (rightly) shines a light on the more partisan Evangelical Christian leaders who have not simply supported Trump but have had the gall to suggest that Trump was a true Christian and have excused his clearly immoral behavior throughout his life. But at the same time, McKenzie seems to broadbrush any “white Evangelical” who voted for Trump or who is solidly in the GOP camp. He writes, “We are so “locked in” “…that seemingly nothing can shake our allegiance, not even the GOP’s nomination for president in 2016 of a serial adulterer and casino owner with no experience in government and no apparent qualifications for the office beyond impersonating a successful businessman on TV. For a vast swath of white American evangelicals, a key component of our identity as Christ followers is that we vote for the Republican Party, come hell or high water” (268).

Again, yes, that is true for some Evangelicals. But that simply is not the case for all. In fact, I would say that broad-brushed description betrays a rather uncritical and partisan attitude as well. In fact, if we’re honest, the same broad-brushed description could be leveled at, let’s say, “a vast swath of black American Christians,” who openly embraced the likes of Bill Clinton, or any other corrupt Democrat politician. Of course, I don’t think such a broad-brushed should be leveled in either instance, because it is wholly simplistic and uncritical.

There are a host of complex, interlocking reasons why certain demographics (and this includes “white Evangelicals” or “black Protestants”) generally vote the way they do. Therefore, to say, as McKenzie does, “Another common tack was to focus on policy as paramount. By this line of thinking, the right candidate is simply the candidate whose platform most closely aligns with our priorities. Rather than focusing on political outcomes, we should be asking ourselves constantly, ‘What is the vote I am casting (or the opinion I am registering, or the post I am liking, or the tweet I am sharing) proclaiming about what it means to follow Jesus, about the nature of the gospel, about the heart of God?” (269)—is rather simplistic, and dare I say, a bit off-putting.

A candidate’s political policies, and his/her perceived trustworthiness to implement those policies, is what every voter should be focused on. Yet, McKenzie criticizes “white Evangelicals” who voted for Trump because they agreed with his policies—why? Because he was personally immoral and not Christ-like. So, (to keep in the “Trump era”), does he think Hillary Clinton was particularly Christ-like? How about Joe Biden? I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, largely because of the reasons McKenzie articulates in his book, namely Trump’s reckless and divisive rhetoric. But in the course of his presidency, I noticed two things: (1) The corrupt and immoral lengths certain politicians and media-types went about trying to undermine a legitimate election and presidency (I mean, how is trying to undermine a free and fair election not a threat to democracy?), and (2) To my surprise, many of Trump’s policies actually worked and improved the lives of the traditionally unfortunate.

So, let me be blunt on two points. If Trump’s policies brought more minorities out of poverty and unemployment, and if he was the first president in a long time to not get American into a new war, are those policies more or less Christ-like than the policies that impoverish more minorities and start endless wars?

All that said, as I bring this to a close, McKenzie’s book is certainly worth reading. Not only is it an excellent historical analysis of the Founding Fathers and Andrew Jackson’s presidency, it also is a pointed challenge for everyone (and Evangelical Christians) to think more deeply and critically about what our American democracy is and the importance of not blindly accepting the “supposed virtue” of a political party, or of “the people” in general. That being said, I don’t think he thinks critically enough about our current state of democracy in America. He has allowed Trump to suck all the oxygen from the room, and because of that, he has failed to see that the “lack of virtue” that is such a threat to our democracy isn’t confined solely to Trump and the Republican Party.