J.D. Vance is a Christian Nationalist and a Danger to Millions of Americans

Who Is an American?

J. D.  Vance is a Christian Nationalist and a danger to every American who is not a Christian. Vance believes that only a Christian can really be an American. He claims that he doesn't really mean that, but his own words belie his claim. In a recent speech, J. D. Vance talks about “the nature of citizenship” and “what it means to be an American.” He tells us that Americans are hungry for answers to the question of American identity. What does it mean to be an American? His answer is,

The only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been and by the grace of God we always will be a Christian nation.

This statement appears to mean that a person must be a Christian to belong to the American nation. Vance tries to deny that by saying, 

I’m not saying you have to be a Christian to be an American. I’m saying something simpler and truer. Christianity is America’s creed. 

What does it mean to say that Christianity is America's creed?

What is a Creed?

A creed is a set of fundamental beliefs. When a group has a creed, the members may be required to profess belief in it in order to claim to be members.  That has been the role of the Nicene Creed in Christianity - especially Catholicism - for centuries. In the diverse world of Christian beliefs, the Nicene Creed is the closest thing to a creed that defines what it means to be a Christian, and it officially defines what it means to be a Catholic. 

Vance must know that. He is a Catholic, and he attends mass regularly.  The Catholic mass includes a long section called the “Credo,” which is a recitation of the Nicene Creed (or an extension of it called the "Apostolic Creed"). Its recitation in every mass underscores the fact that a person cannot really be a Catholic without believing in the Nicene Creed. That is the context of Vance's understanding of what a creed is.

So, when Vance uses the words “America’s creed,” he must understand them to refer to a formal statement of belief to which every American must subscribe. He may say that he doesn’t mean that a person must be a Christian to be an American, but his use of the word “creed” shows us that really, he means exactly that.

Vance says that Americans are hungry for identity. They are searching for the meaning of American citizenship and for what it means to be an American. His answer is that Christianity is America’s creed, which can mean only that an American is a person who believes in that creed. The rest of us may be tolerated here, but we can never be real Americans.

Vance Claims that Christianity is the Basis of the American Political Tradition 

To bolster his claim that Christianity is America's creed, Vance says that Christianity is the basis of the American political tradition, and to make that claim, he says that across our history from its very beginning, our most important debates have always "centered on the question of how we as a people can best please God.” That is a very questionable claim. The Declaration of Independence says nothing about “pleasing God,” and neither does the Constitution. Moreover, the founders of our country included people who were Deists, Unitarians or rationalists who expressly rejected Christianity. 

In his Gettysburg Address, – surely the best-known expression American political ideals – Lincoln could easily have said that the fight to end slavery was pleasing to God or was the work of God, but he said nothing of the kind. Lincoln's ringing declaration that, "It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced" might have said that such a dedication would be pleasing to God or that it would be in accord with God's will. But Lincoln said nothing like that and nothing about Christianity. The closest he came to any religious belief is in the address's closing paragraph, which says,

… that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The Gettysburg Address shows that while Americans share a tradition of belief in "government of the people, by the people and for the people," we do not base that belief on Christianity or any other specific religious tradition. Therefore, when Vance insists that Christianity is the core of American identity and that Christianity lies at the root of our political tradition, he is lying. He wants to convey the idea - without saying it directly - that only Christians can be Americans. So, if you are a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Unitarian, a Deist or an atheist, beware. To Vance and his supporters, you will never be a real American.

Toward a Just Healthcare System That Does Not Bankrupt Us

 A Shared Lack of Realism

A recent podcast  focuses on the current impasse over extending the premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. The podcast says that the impasse reveals the lack of realism in both parties to the debate. Republicans, the podcast says, insist on reforms that help to control costs but do not deliver immediate relief to working Americans. Democrats, on the other hand, insist on relief for working Americans without reforms to control costs. Both are morally and politically unrealistic. The podcast claims correctly that the system as it stands is unsustainable. It cannot survive without continually expanding government assistance because its incentives drive rising costs. 

The Free Market Cannot Solve the Problem

However, the Republican solution to this problem is unrealistic. The Republicans want to give money directly to individuals and to rely market constraints on costs. Markets rely on bargaining between buyers and sellers. Sellers are constrained by the fact that they cannot sell a product above a certain price. The market “clears” when the price is at a level where the amount supplied is equal to the amount that consumers are willing to buy.

Inevitably, in such a system, some people cannot buy a particular good at the market price. It is too high for them, and - according to market theory - they choose rationally not to buy. That system makes sense and works well as long as the goods in question are goods that not everyone needs. If some people can afford to pay $5000 for a designer handbag while others cannot, we do not feel that any serious injustice is involved. (There may be injustice in the distribution of income, but that is a different question.) 

However, not all goods are like $5000 handbags. Some things meet real, universal needs. For example, if the family of a little girl in Wisconsin cannot afford to buy her a warm, winter coat, we feel that one ought to be provided for her in some other way. In Wisconsin’s climate, every child should have a warm coat. Most of us feel that healthcare is like a warm, winter coat. It should be available to everyone. So, if the healthcare market cleared at a level that denied healthcare to some people, almost all of us would see that as unjust.

Health insurance changes the incentives that market depends on. There is another problem with the idea using market constraints to control costs. Healthcare is so expensive that most people cannot provide it for themselves without insurance. However, insurance separates the payer (the insurance company) from the consumer (the patient).  A consumer who does not have to pay has no incentive to bargain over costs. Health insurance prevents the market from controlling costs. 

To solve this problem, deductibles and copays are introduced, but if they are to be large enough to work, they will again place healthcare financially out of reach for many people. If the deductibles and copays are small enough that everyone can pay them, they will be too small to achieve their goal of controlling costs.

So, there is no way to use market constraints to control costs in the healthcare system and at the same time, make healthcare available to everyone. We will have to resort to non-market methods to control costs, and healthcare systems in various parts of the world have found various ways to do that. In Germany, the insurance providers negotiate collectively with the healthcare providers. In Britain, the government itself provides most healthcare services. Health maintenance organizations charge a fixed price per patient and manage the costs internally. Thailand uses a similar system in its government hospitals. All of these methods work to some degree, and none works perfectly, but they all are based on a recognition that market cost constraints are incompatible with the idea that no one should lack healthcare. Republicans must become realistic about cost control in health care and abandon the idea that the market can do what is needed.

Democrats Must Also Become Realistic

Democrats must also become more realistic. Extending the subsidies to make insurance affordable under the ACA is necessary today because healthcare is a human right, but extending the subsidies is not a long-term solution. If the Democrats win the elections of 2026, they must begin to look seriously at making the healthcare system sustainable as well as just.

The Very Moderate Proposals of the "Democratic Socialists"

 Moderate Democrats Have No Vision of the Future

Democrats must support the so-called “left wing” of the Democratic Party because the members of that wing are the only Democratic politicians who have ideas about how we can move our country forward. The party’s leaders have no ideas. Sen. Chuck Schumer’s campaign web site talks about his positions on various issues mainly from the point of view of his legislative achievements, which have been considerable, but he does not present a vision for the future.

If we look at the campaign web sites of aspiring presidential hopefuls Gavin Newsom and J. B. Pritzker, we find a similar void of ideas for the future. Newsom says that he is campaigning to save democracy. Pritzker does not even say that.

Opposition to Trump is not Enough

These politicians are attractive mainly because they are Democrats opposed to the policies of Pres. Trump. They resist the cruelty of his policies toward immigrants. They support the extension of the subsidies that make health insurance if not really affordable at least less ruinously unaffordable than it would be without the subsidies. They supported Pres. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, and they oppose Pres. Trump’s efforts to gut it and to favor fossil fuels over renewable energy, but again, they do not present a vision of the future.

However, opposing Pres. Trump and defending past actions, are not by themselves a vision of the future. These are backward-looking politicians. They want to preserve the American safety net and Biden’s environmental policies from Trump’s wrecking ball, but they don’t have anything to say about today’s problems or about the American future that they would like to see.

The Party's Left Wing Has Ideas But Does Not Know How to Package Them

In contrast, the campaign web site of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is chock full of ideas for the future, and so is the web site of Bernie Sanders. These politicians are not running on the past achievements of the party. They are running on a vision of the future, but as national politicians, they have a major weakness: they describe their proposals as “socialist.” “Socialist” and “socialism” are words that do not play well in most parts of the United States. To millions of voters, these words sound too much like “communist” or “communism.” Democratic socialists like Sanders or AOC are not communists or really even socialists, but their vocabulary is a problem.

Repackage the Ideas in a Realistic Way as Moderate Proposals

What Democrats should do is to take the ideas of the party’s left wing and package them as moderate ideas, which is what they really are. They are in no way revolutionary or even radical. To see what I mean, let us examine a few of those ideas: Medicare for All, Free College and the Green New Deal.

Medicare for All is not a radical idea. On the contrary, it is nothing but the expansion of a successful, existing program to cover more people. It is precisely the sort of pragmatic, incremental change that has always characterized American politics at its best.

Free post-secondary education at public colleges and universities is also a moderate proposal. In fact, we used to have it. When I attended the University of California in 1958, the tuition was free, and the fees were $140 per semester. Today, the idea of free post-secondary education seems radical, but it is not. It is merely a restoration of the normal, American way to pay for the higher education of our people.

The Green New Deal is a moderate, middle-of-the-road proposal that continues our long-standing policy of promoting the development of energy sources.  We have always believed that adequate supplies of energy were crucial to the development of our economy, and the Green New Deal merely redirects our energy policy toward promoting new energy sources that fit our country’s current needs in a time when the use of fossil fuels is endangering our country and its economy. Again, that is not radical. It is precisely the sort of pragmatic, incremental change that has always made our country successful.

Progressive candidates should promote policies like Medicare for All, Free Post-secondary education and the Green New Deal and should frame them as moderate policies . The American far right likes to describe them as "radical" or "socialist," but we should not allow the right to frame the discussion in that way. We should insist on framing Medicare for All, Free Post-secondary education and the Green New Deal as the moderate, middle of the road policies that they really are. We should adopt our party's best ideas, and we should explain over and over again why they are truly moderate proposals in the best pragmatic, American political tradition.

Lilly Ledbetter and Defeating the Tyranny of the Oligarchy

Last week, I watched the movie Lilly, which is the story of Lilly Ledbetter and the struggle to require equal pay for women. The movie reminded me just how awful the political influence of the American Oligarchy often is. The movie also reminded me that when we stick together, we can defeat the oligarchs.

Underpaid Because She Was a Woman

Lilly Ledbetter worked for 19 years at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber plant in Gadsden Alabama. She became a supervisor but was always paid substantially less than men with similar responsibilities. She was fired shortly before reaching 20 years of service, and she sued Goodyear in the federal courts for back pay and punitive damages. She won her case in the district court, but the decision was reversed by the Circuit Court and then by the Supreme Court.

Justice Denied on a Technicality

The decision was reversed on appeal on the grounds that the law requires that a lawsuit for redress of a discriminatory act must be made within 180 days of the act. The Supreme Court held that the act of discrimination was the initial decision to pay her less than the men, and that act had occurred many years earlier than the lawsuit. So, the suit was invalid.

The problem with this logic is that an employee generally does not know what other employees are being paid. Companies do not publish that information, and people generally do not talk about their paychecks. Lilly had obtained the information only because a sympathetic colleague slipped it to her secretly when she was developing the lawsuit. In her dissent from the court’s decision, Justice Ginsberg argued that the initial decision to pay Lilly less than her male colleagues were paid was not the only act of discrimination. On the contrary, each unequal paycheck should be considered a separate act of discrimination, but Ginsburg’s reasoning was defeated in a 5 to 4 decision by the Supreme Court. Thus, the court denied Lilly  justice on the grounds that at the time that she was first underpaid, she did not complain. The Court ignored the fact that she did not then know and could not have known that her pay was less than that of her colleagues. One could hardly ask for a better demonstration of the role of the Supreme Court as the preserver of the privileges of the American Oligarchy.

Changing the Law

Since the courts offered no redress for the injustice that Lilly had suffered, the action shifted to Congress where an effort was made by Democrats to change the law that the courts had relied on to deny justice to Lilly.  The American oligarchs opposed the change of course because paying women fairly might make a dent in the oligarch's profits. Their lobbying group the National Chamber of Commerce pushed the Republican Party to mount a full-court press to defeat the Democratic effort to make the law more just. Big corporations all over the country were afraid that they would be hit by lawsuits alleging pay discrimination. The oligarchs spent millions of dollars to defend their right to discriminate against women by paying them less than men. They were at first successful in their campaign to avoid paying women fairly. The Democrats' bill was defeated in Congress in 2007, but by a quirk of fate, Barak Obama and the Democrats won control of the government in the election of 2008, and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was passed in 2009.

The Oligarchy Continues to Oppose Justice for Working Americans

Today, we see a similar fight playing out in Congress again. This time the fight is over the subsidies that help citizens afford the health insurance that they purchase through the marketplace set up under the Affordable Care Act. The subsidies were instituted during the Covid pandemic, and they are set to expire at the end of this year. The Democrats are pushing to extend the subsidies, and the Republicans oppose the extension. Again, Democrats are pushing to make our society just a little more just, while the Republicans oppose that change. The party opposes the change because it will have to be paid for through taxes, and the oligarchs generally opposes taxation that might minimally reduce their profits.

The Evil of the Oligarchy

The oligarchs oppose any change that would use the resources of government to make life better for working Americans. They fight even small changes like the continuing the subsidies for people’s health insurance. They do so because they know that the real issue is the preservation of their profits and of their power to use our government to their advantage. The real issue is who shall have a say. Should our country be governed by its people or by a small, wealthy oligarchy? Should the wealth of our great country be used to make our people’s lives better, or should it be used to make a small, wealthy minority even wealthier?

Hope for the Future

The American Oligarchs are powerful, but they are not omnipotent. The lesson of Lilly Ledbetter's case is that there is hope for the future because elections really matter. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passed in the end because its supporters won the elections of 2008. Today again we are faced with a government controlled by the oligarchs, and today again we have an opportunity to take back control by winning the elections of 2026 and 2028. The control of Congress by the oligarchs rests on their fragile coalition with the MAGA voters, and that coalition is splintering as we saw in the recent special elections in several parts of the country.

We have an opportunity to take back our country. Let's not waste it. Now is the time for all of us to work to elect candidates for Congress who will truly represent us.