American Empire, 1898-2018

We all know who POTUS #45 is, but do you know who was #25? That would be William McKinley, who was born 175 years ago this month—and who became President 121 years ago, in March 1897.

Learning about McKinley

June and I have the good fortune of living only about 12 miles from the Truman Presidential Library and fairly often are able to hear talks given there by guest lecturers. Such was the case last fall when were able to hear author Robert Merry talk about his new book President McKinley, Architect of the American Century.

Perhaps like many of you, I have never known (or cared?) much about McKinley, except that he was the third President to be assassinated in office (all within the space of 36 years!).

Even five years ago when I posted a blog article titled “Remember the Maine,” I didn’t mention the President when that event took place 120 years ago on February 15, 1898.

Merry titled the Introduction to his book, “The Mystery of William McKinley,” and it is somewhat mysterious that McKinley has not been more highly regarded—especially if, as Merry thinks, he can rightly be considered to be the “architect of the American century.”

Achievements of McKinley

While there are certainly other aspects of McKinley’s presidency that are noteworthy, none are more significant that the expansion of American power during his time in office. In fact, the events of 1898 initiated the beginning of what some call the American Empire.

The Spanish-American War began in April 1898 and ended with the Treaty of Paris, signed on December 10 of that year. Merry summarizes the benefits received: “The president [McKinley] got all he wanted: the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, Spain out of Cuba and the Caribbean, with no debt assumed by the United States” (p. 340).

It was also in July 1898 that the U.S. annexed the Republic of Hawaii, which had formerly been known as the Sandwich Islands.

McKinley was serving “Uncle Sam” new territory for his enjoyment, as is expressed by the following cartoon by Boz in the May 28, 1898, issue of the Boston Globe newspaper. (The cartoonist could see which way the winds were blowing.)  

By the end of 1898 it looked as if the U.S. had, indeed, become an empire, which Merry recognized by titling his 21^st chapter “Empire.”

Questioning McKinley’s Achievements

There was strong opposition, however, to what seemed to be the surge of American imperialism under McKinley. On June 15, 1898, the Anti-Imperialist League was formed especially to fight U.S. annexation of the Philippines. It included among its members such notables as Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, and William James. 

It was in that context that James, the eminent American philosopher and Harvard professor, exclaimed, “God damn the U.S. for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles” (cited in Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, p. 307).

(With reference to his much-criticized remarks back in 2008, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s former pastor, said he was quoting James. See my brief article about that here.)

The U.S. relinquished its sovereignty over the Philippines in 1946. Then in 1959 statehood was given to Hawaii, even though it is not in North America.

Guam and Puerto Rico still remain U.S. territories and their inhabitants are citizens of the U.S.—although they seem to be treated as “second-class” citizens as the insufficient response to last year’s hurricane destruction of Puerto Rico has shown.

In recent decades the American “Empire” has been seen primarily in its global leadership and international influence, positions now being considerably weakened because of the words and actions of #45.

Is the President a Muslim?

Most of you probably saw or heard the results of the Pew Forum’s poll about the President’s religion. An incredible 18% of all those surveyed and 31% (!) of Republicans surveyed say the President is a Muslim.

On the one hand, we might say, What difference does it make? The nation (and especially all the nay-saying Protestants) found out after the presidential election in 1960 that it doesn’t particularly make a difference if the President is a Roman Catholic. Moreover, the Constitution declares that there is no religious test for public office.

But the fact is, the President is a Christian—in spite of the fact that only 34% of those polled (and only 27% of the Republicans) think so. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel got it right the other day when he said, “A new poll finds that more and more Americans believe that President Obama is a Muslim. . . . Which is crazy. Remember . . . during the election, when all anyone could talk about was his crazy friend, Reverend Wright, and how he couldn't be trusted because he belonged to this guy’s church for 20 years? What happened to that?”

Some of my first blog entries were about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who had been Barack Obama’s pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for twenty years. (To see those postings, click on the “Jeremiah Wright” label on the right.) Do some people really think Obama became a Muslim after (or because) criticism caused him to leave the church where Wright was pastor?

In contrast to Kimmel, political satirist Stephen Colbert made this inane and highly misleading statement the other day: he said the President “endorsed jihad!” and then quoted the President’s statement: “I believe that Muslims have the right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan.” Then Colbert said, “You know what? I’ve been wrong, and I owe the President an apology. You’re not a secret Muslim.”

Colbert, of course, was just trying to get a laugh. What worries me is the people who are serious in labeling the President a Muslim. In her August 20 blog posting titled “Are One-Quarter of Americans Freakin’ Morons?” Time senior editor Amy Sullivan points out that “calling Obama a Muslim has become a way for some conservatives to express their distrust of and opposition to him. The idea that ‘Muslim’ is being used as that kind of pejorative shorthand is a disturbing development on its own.” I think that is certainly true.

I am particularly disturbed by the many conservative Christians who seek to denigrate the President by labeling him a Muslim even though they claim to uphold the Ten Commandments, one of which, of course, is “Thou shalt not bear false witness.”

The late senator Daniel Moynihan (1927-2003) made an important point when he famously said that people are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Even those who have a negative opinion about the President have the responsibility to get their facts straight about his religion.

Rev. Wright's Controversial Statement

In Rev. Wright's talk that I heard on January 9, he said he was quoting William James in his controversial statement ("God damn America"). Here’s what I found in that regard:

“James was part of a movement of prominent American businessmen, politicians, and intellectuals who formed the Anti-Imperialist League in 1898 and carried on a long campaign to educate the American public about the horrors of the Philippine war and the evils of imperialism. It was an odd group (Andrew Carnegie belonged), including antilabor aristocrats and scholars, united in a common moral outrage at what was being done to the Filipinos in the name of freedom. Whatever their differences on other matters, they would all agree with William James's angry statement: ‘God damn the U.S. for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles’” (“The Empire and the People” by Howard Zinn.)

According to Michael Fellman in “American Expansionists Greet the Filipinos, 1898-1902,” William James, who wrote to Charles Francis Adams in 1902, “God damn the U. S. for its vile conduct in the Philippines,” proclaimed that he was certain that American intervention would only kill Filipino national life: “we can destroy their old ideals, but we can’t give them ours.”

(James, 1841-1910, of course, was a very influential psychologist, philosopher, and author who taught at Harvard University from 1873 until 1907.)

Dr. Cone and Rev. Wright

It seems that Dr. James Cone was Rev. Jeremiah Wright's mentor mainly through his books, particularly Black Theology & Black Power (1969) and A Black Theology of Liberation (1970). Rev. Wright was born in September 1941, so he is only three years younger than Dr. Cone and, thus, was not formally a student of Dr. Cone. But he learned "black theology" from Dr. Cone and that theology was central to mission statement of Trinity United Church of Christ.

In 2008, Dr. Cone was interviewed by Hana R. Alberts, and that interview was posted under the title "A Paradoxical Feeling" on March 24 on www.forbes.com. In the interview Dr. Cone explains his ideas and how they appear in Rev. Wright:

"Black liberation theory emerged out of the ministers: out of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in the late 1960s."

"So black liberation theology is an attempt to bring Martin and Malcolm together. The 'black' in black theology stands for Malcolm X. The 'theology' stands for Martin Luther King."

Also, "black liberation theology was an attempt to make the gospel accountable to the black community, who were struggling for a more just society in America.

"What you have in Jeremiah Wright is someone trying to bring together Martin and Malcolm. He's a Christian preacher in a white church, by the way. He is speaking to the hurt in the African-American community. The suffering.

"You know, when King spoke to the black community, he spoke with language very similar to Jeremiah Wright."

"I think Rev. Wright is a perfect example and expression of black liberation theology. He's part of a progressive black ministerial community."

One More Thing about Dr. Cone

In January of this year I attended the annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics (SCE), which was held in Chicago. I flew to Chicago on an early morning flight, and when I arrived at the meeting site, Rev. Jeremiah Wright had just begun speaking. (Actually, it was partly because of his scheduled talk that I decided rather belatedly to make the trip to Chicago and to attend the SCE meeting.)

Rev. Wright, of course, is the former pastor of President Obama; he was pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago from 1972 to early 2008. (At the time of his retirement, the TUCC had about 8,500 members; it was the largest church in the UCC, a primarily white denomination.)

I found most of Rev. Wright's presentation to the SCE very interesting--also quite powerful, but not particularly controversial. In particularly, I was interested in hearing him say that Dr. James Cone was his mentor.