<
https://theconversation.com/60-years-of-progress-in-expanding-rights-is-being-rolled-back-by-trump-a-pattern-thats-all-too-familiar-in-us-history-248526>
"For many Americans, Donald Trump’s head-spinning array of executive orders in
the early days of his second term look like an unprecedented effort to roll
back democracy and the rights and liberties of American citizens.
But it isn’t unprecedented.
As we have written, American history is not a steady march toward greater
equality, democracy and individual rights. America’s commitment to these
liberal values has competed with an alternative set of illiberal values that
hold that full American citizenship should be limited by race, ethnicity,
gender and class.
The most famous example of this conflict is the Jim Crow era after
Reconstruction, when many of the political and legal rights gained by African
Americans in the Civil War era were swept away by disenfranchisement,
segregation and discrimination. From roughly 1870 until 1940, democracy and
equal rights were retreating, not advancing, leaving what was described in the
1960s by President Lyndon Johnson as “the crippling legacy of bigotry and
injustice.”
Today, the Trump administration is seeking to roll back America’s commitment to
equality and engaging in a broad effort to limit – if not outright deny – the
rights, liberties and benefits of democracy to all Americans."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
