April 30, 2025
Reflections on the Current Revolution Against Modernity
Stan Katz
Professor of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, President Emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies
Reflections on the Current Revolution Against Modernity
Stan Katz
Professor of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, President Emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies
Stan Katz and George Bustin, introducer
Minutes of the 29th Meeting of the 83rd Year
President George Bustin convened this 30th meeting of the Old Guard’s 83rd year. Frances Slade led the invocation.
One hundred forty-three persons attended the session, including twelve guests (with hosts following), six of whom are candidates for membership: John Cory (Ric Fernandez), Margaret Lancefield (Charles Clark), Mark Holmes (John Cotton), Rush Holt (Daniel Shapiro), Terese Rosenthal (Cynthia Maltenfort), and Bharat Mehta (John Ryan). George Bustin asked these candidates to stand and then all other guests to rise and be recognized as well. They were Alan Poritz (Deborah Poritz), Barbara Abramson (Bernard Abramson), John Fleming (Joan Fleming), Glenn MacEwen (Michael Kaplan), Kristina Mathews (Cecilia and Michael Mathews), and Michael Spezio (Eliot Daley).
He then announced that election of officers and committee chairs for the coming year will be held at the next meeting. Paul Fitzgerald, Chair of the Nominating Committee, presented the committee’s nominations
:
OFFICERS
President: George Bustin
Vice President: Miquelon Weyeneth
Secretary: Richard Ober
Assistant Secretary: Julie Elward-Berry
Treasurer: William Katen-Narvell
Assistant Treasurer: Michael Kingston
Recording Secretary: Julie Denny
Past President (ex officio): John Cotton
Past President (ex officio) Steven Schreiber
Committees
Audio-Visual: Cynthia Woolston Maltenfort
Communications: David Long
Historian: Christine Danser
Hospitality: Carol Wehrheim
Membership: Kateri Moore Lemischka
Nominating: Paul Fitzgerald
Program: Barry Breen
University Relations: Joan Girgus
Venues: Lynne Durkee
George Bustin also reported that the many responses to the survey of members about the Old Guard website were very helpful. Changes recommended by the ad hoc committee will be circulated in a few days and a full report will be presented on May 14th. Changes to the site will be implemented on May 21. None will affect or complicate access to the basic information already available.
Larry Hans then read the minutes of the previous meeting.
President Bustin introduced Old Guard member Stanley Katz, Professor of Public and International Affairs and Professor Emeritus of the History of American Law and Liberty at Princeton University, who has addressed the membership several times. A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard, he taught there and at the University of Chicago and other institutions before joining the Princeton faculty more than thirty years ago. He is President Emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies, Editor-in-Chief of the recently published Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History, and Editor Emeritus of Oliver Wendell Holmes’ history of the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded Professor Katz the National Humanities Medal.
Professor Katz opened by saying that he hoped to spark a chat by providing an overview of our current Constitutional crisis and the resultant mess in the U.S. and the world as he sees it—that is, as a challenge based upon a profound misunderstanding about who we are as Americans and of modernity in today’s world.
The roots of this modernity stretch back to the 17th century with the end of the Reformation and the Church Universal, the emergence of capitalism, the first scientific revolution, and the beginnings of the rule of common law and constitutionalism. In the 18th century, the American and French Revolutions introduced written constitutionalism, the notion that governments should be constituted through “consent of the governed” by elections and that limits should be placed upon the powers of those who do govern. Americans took those arguments a step further. Our forebears argued that, if individual rights were protected in the United Kingdom, they should be protected for us, too: thus, our special constitutional stress upon individual rights of association and free speech rather than upon communal interests, as is the case in other countries. Americans also introduced the concept of federalism—the areal distribution of political power rather than concentration at the center.
In the 19th century, mercantilism—macro-economic efforts to generate national wealth through monopolization of trade and competitive imperialism—dominated relations between the great powers. Donald Trump is a mercantilist.
But in the aftermath of World War I, America began to challenge the basic premises undergirding mercantilism. It argued that for the right of national self-determination. Then, following World War II, it organized and led a global effort to establish a rules-based international order based upon free trade, protection of universal human rights, and dismantling colonialism.
Donald Trump rejects this modern, liberal, internationalist order; aspires to return to the zero-sum mercantilist world of the 19th century, and to diminish or eliminate many of the roots of our modernity. Through a flurry of executive orders, appointments of totally unqualified individuals to key posts, firing civil servants and replacing them with those who pledge strict loyalty to him, and eliminating Congressionally authorized agencies and programs, he has launched a frontal attack on many aspects of who we are in this modern world.
He disdains organized, expert knowledge, most especially science, including research in medicine, climate, and economics housed in large part at the nation’s universities. He has launched an attack upon public education, a bedrock of our democracy. He has attempted to interfere with constitutional protections of freedom of speech and a free and independent press. He is attempting to ignore constitutional limits on his powers by employing retribution of his personal critics and perceived enemies as a legitimate aim and use of government. He has launched attacks on civil society by weaponizing the IRS, raising profound concerns in the philanthropic community. Without recourse to Congress, he is attacking the social safety net and eliminating regulations that protect human lives. And, to the consternation of many throughout the world, he is dismantling the central role of the U.S. as leader of a rules-based international order. Trump argues that international organizations constitute a veiled plot to weaken the United States.
He employs the culture wars, including antisemitism, to mask all this.
We are backsliding into what political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way define as “competitive authoritarianism”— “a system in which parties compete in elections, but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition.” The checks and balances built into the Constitution are weakened.
We need two competing political parties that broadly reflect the aspirations and interests of the people, but the Republican Party as we have known it, is dead. No longer a party of conservatives, it is in thrall to one man, unwilling or unable to act as a check on his usurpation of Congressional powers. On the other hand, the Democratic Party has become the party of the college-educated, viewed by many non-college-educated workers as “the elite” who don’t care about them. The old Roosevelt alliance is dead. So, the Democrats must find their way out of this.
The judiciary—the remaining check—is being sorely tested as Trump attacks “radical judges denying the powers of the president.” We are yet to see how this tug of war will turn out.
This is not like Germany in the early thirties. It is not fascism. Trump cannot re-write the constitution. But the outcome is impossible to predict right now. And some already question whether some of the damage that has been done can be reversed.
Respectfully submitted,
Ralph Widner
One hundred forty-three persons attended the session, including twelve guests (with hosts following), six of whom are candidates for membership: John Cory (Ric Fernandez), Margaret Lancefield (Charles Clark), Mark Holmes (John Cotton), Rush Holt (Daniel Shapiro), Terese Rosenthal (Cynthia Maltenfort), and Bharat Mehta (John Ryan). George Bustin asked these candidates to stand and then all other guests to rise and be recognized as well. They were Alan Poritz (Deborah Poritz), Barbara Abramson (Bernard Abramson), John Fleming (Joan Fleming), Glenn MacEwen (Michael Kaplan), Kristina Mathews (Cecilia and Michael Mathews), and Michael Spezio (Eliot Daley).
He then announced that election of officers and committee chairs for the coming year will be held at the next meeting. Paul Fitzgerald, Chair of the Nominating Committee, presented the committee’s nominations
:
OFFICERS
President: George Bustin
Vice President: Miquelon Weyeneth
Secretary: Richard Ober
Assistant Secretary: Julie Elward-Berry
Treasurer: William Katen-Narvell
Assistant Treasurer: Michael Kingston
Recording Secretary: Julie Denny
Past President (ex officio): John Cotton
Past President (ex officio) Steven Schreiber
Committees
Audio-Visual: Cynthia Woolston Maltenfort
Communications: David Long
Historian: Christine Danser
Hospitality: Carol Wehrheim
Membership: Kateri Moore Lemischka
Nominating: Paul Fitzgerald
Program: Barry Breen
University Relations: Joan Girgus
Venues: Lynne Durkee
George Bustin also reported that the many responses to the survey of members about the Old Guard website were very helpful. Changes recommended by the ad hoc committee will be circulated in a few days and a full report will be presented on May 14th. Changes to the site will be implemented on May 21. None will affect or complicate access to the basic information already available.
Larry Hans then read the minutes of the previous meeting.
President Bustin introduced Old Guard member Stanley Katz, Professor of Public and International Affairs and Professor Emeritus of the History of American Law and Liberty at Princeton University, who has addressed the membership several times. A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard, he taught there and at the University of Chicago and other institutions before joining the Princeton faculty more than thirty years ago. He is President Emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies, Editor-in-Chief of the recently published Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History, and Editor Emeritus of Oliver Wendell Holmes’ history of the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded Professor Katz the National Humanities Medal.
Professor Katz opened by saying that he hoped to spark a chat by providing an overview of our current Constitutional crisis and the resultant mess in the U.S. and the world as he sees it—that is, as a challenge based upon a profound misunderstanding about who we are as Americans and of modernity in today’s world.
The roots of this modernity stretch back to the 17th century with the end of the Reformation and the Church Universal, the emergence of capitalism, the first scientific revolution, and the beginnings of the rule of common law and constitutionalism. In the 18th century, the American and French Revolutions introduced written constitutionalism, the notion that governments should be constituted through “consent of the governed” by elections and that limits should be placed upon the powers of those who do govern. Americans took those arguments a step further. Our forebears argued that, if individual rights were protected in the United Kingdom, they should be protected for us, too: thus, our special constitutional stress upon individual rights of association and free speech rather than upon communal interests, as is the case in other countries. Americans also introduced the concept of federalism—the areal distribution of political power rather than concentration at the center.
In the 19th century, mercantilism—macro-economic efforts to generate national wealth through monopolization of trade and competitive imperialism—dominated relations between the great powers. Donald Trump is a mercantilist.
But in the aftermath of World War I, America began to challenge the basic premises undergirding mercantilism. It argued that for the right of national self-determination. Then, following World War II, it organized and led a global effort to establish a rules-based international order based upon free trade, protection of universal human rights, and dismantling colonialism.
Donald Trump rejects this modern, liberal, internationalist order; aspires to return to the zero-sum mercantilist world of the 19th century, and to diminish or eliminate many of the roots of our modernity. Through a flurry of executive orders, appointments of totally unqualified individuals to key posts, firing civil servants and replacing them with those who pledge strict loyalty to him, and eliminating Congressionally authorized agencies and programs, he has launched a frontal attack on many aspects of who we are in this modern world.
He disdains organized, expert knowledge, most especially science, including research in medicine, climate, and economics housed in large part at the nation’s universities. He has launched an attack upon public education, a bedrock of our democracy. He has attempted to interfere with constitutional protections of freedom of speech and a free and independent press. He is attempting to ignore constitutional limits on his powers by employing retribution of his personal critics and perceived enemies as a legitimate aim and use of government. He has launched attacks on civil society by weaponizing the IRS, raising profound concerns in the philanthropic community. Without recourse to Congress, he is attacking the social safety net and eliminating regulations that protect human lives. And, to the consternation of many throughout the world, he is dismantling the central role of the U.S. as leader of a rules-based international order. Trump argues that international organizations constitute a veiled plot to weaken the United States.
He employs the culture wars, including antisemitism, to mask all this.
We are backsliding into what political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way define as “competitive authoritarianism”— “a system in which parties compete in elections, but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition.” The checks and balances built into the Constitution are weakened.
We need two competing political parties that broadly reflect the aspirations and interests of the people, but the Republican Party as we have known it, is dead. No longer a party of conservatives, it is in thrall to one man, unwilling or unable to act as a check on his usurpation of Congressional powers. On the other hand, the Democratic Party has become the party of the college-educated, viewed by many non-college-educated workers as “the elite” who don’t care about them. The old Roosevelt alliance is dead. So, the Democrats must find their way out of this.
The judiciary—the remaining check—is being sorely tested as Trump attacks “radical judges denying the powers of the president.” We are yet to see how this tug of war will turn out.
This is not like Germany in the early thirties. It is not fascism. Trump cannot re-write the constitution. But the outcome is impossible to predict right now. And some already question whether some of the damage that has been done can be reversed.
Respectfully submitted,
Ralph Widner