I’ve made no qualms about my love for most things Disney. I grew up on their animated features and television programming. Mom painted me a mural on my early childhood bedroom wall that had all the characters coming out of the castle. I’m fascinated by the theme parks and what makes certain areas successful. How they operate and grow through the years. And I’ve grown to appreciate the life of Walt Disney. His desire to continue to evolve and grow, tackling new and more challenging projects at each step, from animated shorts, to animated features, to live action features, to combining live action and animation, to theme parks, to television, and even to urban planning.
One part of my love is a great appreciation for theme park music, both ride attraction soundtracks and area music. It’s something I can put on in the background while I work and continue to appreciate. In particular, I greatly appreciate those Walt-era attractions, both the ones I’ve been able to personally experience and those that have not existed for years.
A particular favorite album collection is the 1964 World’s Fair attractions. A four disc set, with each disc covering a different attraction and experience at the fair created by Walt and his team. Ford’s Magic Skyway, GE’s Carousel of Progress, Pepsi’s it’s a small world, and Great Moments for Mr. Lincoln for the Illinois state pavilion.
That last album has been getting a lot of play recently, as the words of Lincoln continue to remain relevant today. The show begins with a state song and summary of Lincoln’s life, before transitioning into the more familiar part of the show, an animatronic figure of Lincoln rising from a chair and delivering a five minute speech.
The speech is actually a combination of five famous speeches made by Lincoln through his life, performed by actor Royal Dano. The collection of speeches is designed to greatly reflect the challenges Lincoln faced in holding the country together in perhaps its most tumultuous time to that point. To convey the weariness and stress of the President, Dano was required to provide take after take, with the last one ultimately being chosen; the weariness, soreness, and tiredness in his voice being just right.
My favorite section of the attraction comes from the Young Men’s Lyceum Address of January 27, 1838. In this segment, Lincoln highlights the strength and fragility of the nation, ultimately revealing the only way our country can fall. A statement that still proves true today.
How then shall we perform it?--At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
In this segment of the speech, Lincoln is highlighting a truth we know today. Against a foreign invader, a foreign enemy, we will coalesce and unite. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 both remind us of this fact, pushing us together for the defense of the nation. I remain convinced, no external threat could take America by force.
They would first have to achieve Lincoln’s second truism. To cause us to destroy ourselves from the inside. Partisan fighting, tribalism, nativism, nationalism. Isolationism. America First, damn the consequences.
When America falls, it’s at our own hands.
In the attraction, Lincoln skips to a later section of the speech, a plea for unification and dedication around the central unifying ideal at the foundation of the country: the rule of law.
Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap--let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;--let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.
Here, Lincoln isn’t speaking of specific letters of the law, not individual minutiae of specific legal provisions and regulations. Rather, he is referring to the spirit of the law. The idea of the rule of law and of the laws which underpin the foundation of our nation. A reverence for the basic ideal of America.
For America has always been unique among countries. Perhaps most striking in that there is really no true native child of the United States of America; there is no national identity of American. What I mean by that, is that the nation, as a country again, has always been a collection of immigrants and their children united not by race, religion, ethnicity, or any of the traditional markers of a country, but instead united by a set of ideas. The borders of our country outlining primarily the bounds of the people held together by those ideas.
Chief among those ideas is the rule of law - the idea that everyone is held accountable under the law. We have no king that can claim privilege. No notable exceptions. We’re not perfect in execution, but as a principle, everyone from child to president is held accountable under the law.
To allow otherwise is to foster tyranny, and we were literally founded as a country to escape tyranny.
We wrote it in the Declaration of Independence and our foundational documents.
We recognize these rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, belong to every person (not citizen), every human being on the planet because they are provided to them by God, foundational to their creation. They are not granted by a government and thus subject to being taken away by the whims of that government, but part of our birthright from the Divine.
Because of that, everyone is equal and accountable to the law. Again, sometimes we have forgotten and not acted accordingly. We’ve spent way to much of our history trying to define exactly who was included in “all men,” but the consensus and recognition now and continuing is that it means every human being.
Beyond those foundational human rights outlined in our Declaration, we highlighted other rights of people in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
In the Constitution, we outlined a system of government with extensive checks and balances to make sure that no one branch or no individual could hold themselves above the law. The Legislature writes the laws and brings them into effect. The Executive can put a check on that by vetoing the bill, but that can be overturned by the Legislature if there is sufficient agreement. The Executive then enforces the law as written, but can determine implementation. The Judiciary can check both the law as written and evaluate its Constitutionality, as well as weighing the Executive’s implementation of the law. Did the Executive overstep its authority, etc? All parties keep each other in check and those checks are to be respected. If the court deems something unconstitutional, the Legislative can try to write another law addressing the issues, or the Executive can try alternative enforcement. The checks cannot just be ignored.
Likewise, we wrote into the Bill of Rights limitations on any government branch acting against people’s rights. It is imperative to remember, these rights apply to people within the borders of the United States or its jurisdictions, not just citizens. These are fundamental human rights, and the Bill of Rights outlines limitations on how the government can act in response to them.
Rights of free speech and association
The right to a free press
The right to be secure in your personal, house, papers, and effects from unreasonable search and seizure
The right to due process
These last two are especially important, as we recognized that it is not enough for us to achieve a “right” outcome in any legal proceeding. We demand that things be done in the right manner.
These are what make America - not color, not race, not ethnicity, not status or any other defining characteristic. Our recognition of these rights as human rights and our protection of them are what define us.
And when we begin to systematically dismantle them, we are no longer America.
When we refuse to allow protest on college campuses because of the topic being protested and prosecute private universities because of their curriculum and policies which disagree with the administration’s thoughts.
When we strip access of the Associated Press to the White House press pool and install a cherry-picked group of “media” personnel
When the administration threatens suit against news organizations that have provided unfavorable coverage
When we allow ICE to invade churches and schools to “pursue” non-citizens, placing children in handcuffs to remove them from the country
When we deport individuals not to their country of origin, but to a gulag in El Salvador
When we deport individuals without any pretext of a hearing or judicial process
When we detain individuals including citizens because of the color of their skin matching the undocumented profile
When we turn away tourists at the door because their plans didn’t match government expectations
When we go through individuals phones to determine their eligibility to re-enter the country based on their social media posts regarding the current administration
Especially when the administration ignores the rulings of the Judiciary which have determined executive actions to violate these fundamental rights and proceeds anyway.
The deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia should be chilling to every single person in America. When any person, citizen or not, under the jurisdiction of the United States is sent to a foreign gulag admittedly by mistake and the government spends weeks minimizing its error, ignoring lower court orders to return him (especially given his protected status from his 2019 immigration hearing), ignores the part of a unanimous Supreme Court decision that direct the administration facilitate his return, and then digs in its heels, determined to leave him there, the entire populace of the country should be outraged. We should demand the administration correct its mistake and do things properly.
For that’s the point - it doesn’t matter if ultimately under the current administration, Garcia would be in line to be deported anyway. We demand something better of our government. Our foundational documents demand something better of our government. We demand that the government do things in the correct order, in the correct manner.
It’s the same in any criminal prosecution. It doesn’t matter whether the accused truly did the crime or not, if law enforcement and the prosecution do not handle the case in the appropriate manner. If law enforcement obtain the evidence illegally, it’s inadmissible. If the prosecution tampers with the jury pool, their verdict is null.
This stems from a fundamental principle that we would rather a guilty man go free than an innocent man be imprisoned. We feared the abuse of the Executive power that much. We feared that without proper restraint on the Executive, without risking guilty men going free because of improper methods in prosecution, that there would be far too many innocent men imprisoned, because its easy for the Executive to do.
It is what happens under tyranny. The Executive is able to penalize and imprison anyone they wish.
It’s what Washington feared in his farewell address. It’s what Lincoln immediately addressed after noting the country would only perish at its own hands.
I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth, and an insult to our intelligence, to deny.
The dismantling of due process, the determination that a subset of the populace does not deserve due process, is beyond a Constitutional Crisis. We’ve long crossed that threshold.
It’s an attack on the fundamental character of the nation.
And we know the administration recognizes this. They’ve admitted they are dismantling due process. Trump has stated that if he were to actually follow the requirements of due process for all those they intent to deport, it would take 200 years.
They don’t care and they are doing it anyway.
What remains is to see how long they continue to ignore court orders to do so. As of now, it seems our checks and balances are failing. The administration has decided to play chicken with the courts arrogant in its position. So far, we’ve had no punitive action from the court - no contempt finding, no removal of licensure, etc. It remains unseen whether they have the will to do so, or the power.
This used to not be a political issue. The idea that character mattered; that how things are done matter as much as the outcome used to be a Conservative rally point.
What changed?
In 1787, when Benjamin Franklin left the Constitutional Convention, a lady famously asked Franklin, “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic, or a monarchy?” Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
And keep it we have, for nearly 240 years. It’s been tried and tested, but keep it we have.
I don’t know how much longer we can continue. It really feels like our government is no longer trying to keep the republic, but actively dismantling it.
We have witnessed in just 93 days, a constant undermining of the rule of law and of fundamental rights of people by the current administration. And by many it has been met with thunderous applause. The urge for authoritarianism has proved too seductive, too appealing, such that we are sliding back into authoritarianism and there appears to be no stop to this progression - only forward momentum.
For the rest of us, we mourn.
To quote Lincoln again, “the bottom is out of the barrel.”
Oh the country will remain, but can we keep the ideal any longer?
Our questions now are whether it is possible to win back, what is the cost to restore it, and are we willing to pay that steep of a cost.
Is there anyone left willing to fight?
*Threnody is a fun word and was almost not the choice for today. It refers to a work of mourning composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person. I almost chose requiem, but that refers to music and there is no music here. Since threnody covers a greater variety of media, it seems more appropriate.
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