President Donald Trump’s administration is rolling out controversial policies nearly every day while the nation and the world attempt to keep up. The executive orders may seem unprecedented, but Saint Louis University history professors say they can be understood by learning from the politics of the past.
Assistant professor Torrie Hester and professors Lorrie Glover and Mark Ruff each bring unique viewpoints to the discussion regarding 1800’s American History, U.S. citizenship and studies of the Cold War and World Wars, respectively. They spoke with The University News’ Andy Cullinane. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Many critics argue that the Trump administration is challenging our country’s democratic norms. From a historian’s perspective, how does his approach to government compare to past presidents in terms of upholding or breaking democratic principles?
Lorri Glover: Well, I think it’s quite a radical turn away from tradition and interpretation of the law. The power that Elon Musk is exerting on a day-to-day basis on really intricate parts of the federal government is extraordinarily unusual. The transition in foreign policy is a result of about a 60 or 70-year turn. The larger cultural expressions of Trump as president are, to my mind, radically different compared to the whole long history of the presidency of the United States. If you go back to the first president, George Washington, he was extraordinarily concerned about upholding a particular kind of image of commitment to civic order.
Are there any trends that the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement is following that reflect past political groups in the U.S. or abroad? Do you notice anything about this movement based on historical fact?
LG: George Wallace, who was the governor of the state of Alabama in the 1960s, ran as a kind of alternative third-party candidate and had quite a rise to power on the national stage. He did not, of course, secure the presidency, but the condemnation of the media, the weaponization of white nationalist sentiment, even some of the language about “America first” is quite similar to George Wallace, who, again, was not successful in securing the presidency.
Torrie Hester: Make America Great is tricky, because if you are a person of color, if you’re African American, if you’re a woman or even a woman of color, going back in time doesn’t mean a great time for us.
In a very polarized political environment, how important is civic education for creating an engaged and informed voting community? What improvements would you suggest for the current system of teaching U.S. history and politics?
LG: The significance of civic education to a representative democracy is hard to overestimate. The theory of Republican government is that citizens will reason together and choose elective officials who will reason together and try to pursue the greater common good of the country. And so, if we cannot reason together, if we can’t start with a foundation of facts about the contemporary world, about the past, and if we can’t engage in reasoned conversation with one another, then we’re outside the theoretical bounds of representative government. It seems to me, civic education is critical in our society today, even though the 21st-century “we the people” is very different from the 18th-century “we the people.” We can’t simply fall back on our origins because that doesn’t really fit our culture and our society today.
Mark Ruff: We have to know how our governmental system functions. We have to know the basics: there are three branches of government. We have to know that the Founding Fathers intended the different branches to check and balance each other, and there were specific historical reasons why they wanted this. They were opposed to tyranny. They were also, for the most part, extremely opposed to the establishment of a particular religion.
What do you think Americans misunderstand most about our history? How does that affect society today?
MR: I think there’s a very large civic ignorance about history; A lot of states have cut back [on] the teaching. The reality is that people teach history in very different ways. The way we teach history reflects our values in the present and where we seek to have the country go in the future.
LG: When I hear somebody say, “the founders said,” I always ask them to tell me who they’re talking about and when. You can’t go back to some iconic, clear, romantic [and] uncontested past and follow that. [This] also erases all of the other people who are shaping 18th century society, culture, law, communities and so on and so forth, because it’s blending them all into one body that is “the founders,” not giving them their own ideas and beliefs. And their ideas were evolving over time. If you asked James Madison in 1787 what he thought about a Bill of Rights, he would have said it’s unnecessary, counterproductive [and] probably dangerous… By 1790, he’s the architect of a Bill of Rights. So, even to say James Madison thought X about the Bill of Rights, you have to say, do you mean 1787 or 1790? This is a big difference, and that’s just one person and one topic.
Have there been any times when someone who’s an unelected official has had as much power as Elon Musk has at the moment?
LG: Well, sure, but unelected officials usually go through a process of appointment and confirmation through the legislative branch. So, there have been plenty of people who were unelected who held positions of tremendous power in the government from the 18th century through the 21st [century]. But again, usually those people go through a pretty elaborate vetting process.
Are there points in our history where we’ve seen this great of a divide in the two-party system?
LG: There was a tremendous divide in the election of 1800… [and] during the Civil War, when the Democratic Party led an attempt to overthrow the American Republic, that was undermined. And then there were tremendous divisions in the 1960s in the wake of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. We’re still in the wake of that history of that division and the realignment of the two national parties then. The degree to which the media has become politicized and radicalized is unusual in our history. That works against any kind of consensus and a building of trust, which is necessary for shared governance.
Could you define the concept of “jus soli” and explain how birthright citizenship works?
TH: The U.S. practices two kinds of citizenship: Jus soli and jus sanguinis. Jus soli is if you’re born on U.S. soil. Jus sanguinis is birthright citizenship by transmission through parents. Jus soli and jus sanguinis citizenship are clearly rooted in the 14th Amendment which clarified that African Americans were citizens. It also had a broad effect, which meant that all people born on U.S. soil are U.S. citizens. This was tested during a particularly racist era of immigration policy called Chinese Exclusion in which immigration authorities thought that the 14th Amendment didn’t apply to people of Chinese descent.
In the case of Wong Kim Ark, eventually the Supreme Court said, even in spite of the terrible racism against people of Chinese descent, people born on U.S. soil, regardless of their race, were U.S. citizens. One of the misunderstandings about citizenship, or maybe something that people don’t puzzle through, is that in many ways, having birthright citizenship means that there is not an expanding group of stateless people in the United States. So in some ways, [birthright citizenship] prevents a caste system. If you’re born on U.S. soil, you might not have Jus Sanguinis citizenship through another nation. That would make you stateless. But the U.S. and its long commitment to Jus soli citizenship mean it’s not adding to stateless populations. And that is enormously good for not only the United States, but for the world. What matters in terms of today’s discussion of the 14th Amendment is that if Jus soli citizenship is restricted, it will create a class of vulnerable people.
People often refer to the U.S. as a nation of immigrants. How does Trump’s hard stance on immigration compare to past U.S. immigration policies?
TH: Wave Two immigration [in the U.S] ends with a law called the Immigration Act of 1924. This law is an incredibly anti-immigrant, nativist [and] racist piece of legislation. In Wave Two, immigration authorities had two priorities: one, to get as many immigrants as possible into the country to do the labor. And then its smaller priority, two, was immigration enforcement, keeping out some of the racially restricted categories. In 1924, the Federal Government… puts restrictions on the number of people who can migrate from the Eastern Hemisphere, not the Western Hemisphere.
The United States has long been a place where immigrants have come for economic opportunities, fleeing persecution and death. Over the 20th century, the immigration enforcement has become much tougher. And so, the United States has this kind of contradictory history. On one hand, millions and millions of people have come to the United States and built good lives. Sometimes, though, if you’re an immigrant, especially an immigrant of color, it’s tough in the United States. You face all kinds of levels of racism.
I think that that is a deep part of this country’s history. So, is it a nation of immigrants? Yes. Is anti-immigrant racism new? No.
Do you have any of your own questions, comments, or concerns influenced by your expertise in this area that you think students should be informed about regarding our current state of government?
MR: History doesn’t usually repeat itself exactly, but it rhymes.
LG: One of the reasons why the Constitution was so controversial was because it created a powerful chief executive, and people were deeply worried about one person having authority over a standing army, you know, to have the power of a veto. It was a radical shift from the governments of the states and the Confederation Congress. We trusted George Washington to set the right example, and he was very committed to doing that. But, one of the things that concerns me most is [that] the imbalance of the legislative and executive branches has gotten completely off balance. The degree to which the U.S. Congress is simply either capitulating to Trump’s policies or refusing to even discuss them and not talking to their constituents about what’s going on, that concerns me a great deal.
