Dr. Herb Silverman is the Founder of the Secular Coalition for America, the Founder of the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, and the Founder of the Atheist/Humanist Alliance student group at the College of Charleston. He authored Complex variables (1975), Candidate Without a Prayer: An Autobiography of a Jewish Atheist in the Bible Belt (2012) and An Atheist Stranger in a Strange Religious Land: Selected Writings from the Bible Belt (2017). He co-authored The Fundamentals of Extremism: The Christian Right in America (2003) with Kimberley Blaker and Edward S. Buckner, Complex Variables with Applications (2007) with Saminathan Ponnusamy, and Short Reflections on Secularism (2019).

Here we talk about the nature of democracy, polyarchy, plutocracy, and the founding and present of the United States.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In the context of the classism and racism found from the founding of The United States of America, one of the more salient facts in alignment with these titles for generalized analyses of the nature of American democracy amounts to the limit of democratic norms in place, where America was not a ‘democracy’ at the founding inasmuch as a plutocratic polyarchy. White, aristocratic, land-owning, slave-owning, formally educated, and males-as-men running the show from the top down. 

The road upwards for wanting to be free was rather easier for those climbing to the holy ground of more power and privilege found at the Temple Mount at the top of the societal mountain. How have these threads of racist assumptions and classist assertions re-asserted themselves generation after generation in American society in which some aspects of the plutocratic polyarchy have been beaten back while others remain? 

In a manner of speaking, we can scorn some aspects of the founding – and their ongoing legacy – while praising numerous American ideals and progressive developments over time for a wider ethical consideration into a broader moral tribal consideration. How have secular and humanistic ideas been tendencies in thought in American history with greater emancipation and better opportunities for all, at times and over time?

Dr. Herb Silverman: You refer to America as a plutocratic polyarchy at its founding. Let’s first define our terms.

A “plutocracy” is a government ruled or controlled by people of great wealth and income, while “polyarchy” means “rule by many,” and is a government ruled by more than one person (in your case, people of great wealth). A polyarchy may or may not be a democracy. A democracy is a government by all the citizenry who choose their leaders by voting for them in elections.

The founding fathers chose not to have a democracy. Some favoured a democratic popular vote for the president while others argued that Congress should pick the president. Their compromise is known as the Electoral College, a small number of people selected by the masses to vote for president because the founders did not trust the population at large to make the right choice. In modern practice, the Electoral College is a formality. Most electors are loyal members of the party that selected them, and wind up voting for that party. The Electoral College was also part of a compromise to satisfy small states. Each state had at least as many electoral votes as they had representatives in Congress, which means that no state could have less than three votes. In a small state like Wyoming, each elector represents 70,000 votes, while in California each elector represents 179,000 votes.

The Electoral College was not the only Constitutional limitation on direct democracy. States were permitted to ban women entirely. Slaves, of course, were not allowed to vote. However, there was a controversial “three-fifths compromise,” in which black slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of allocating representatives and electors. This compromise was made to ensure that Southern states would ratify the Constitution. After the Civil War (1861-1865), the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in 1868 abolished the three-fifths rule and granted former male slaves the right to vote, while the 19th Amendment (1920) gave women the right to vote.

While America is not now as much a plutocratic polyarchy as at its founding, a case can be made that we are more of a plutocratic polyarchy today than in years past. The wealthiest one percent of American households now own 40 percent of the country’s wealth. The top 0.1 percent own about 25 percent, which is more than the bottom 90 percent owns. This was not the case under President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1908), known as the “trust-buster” for preventing or eliminating monopolies and corporate trusts. He applied the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 to break up the largest railroad monopoly, Northern Securities Company, and regulated the largest oil company, Standard Oil. He also broke up other monopolies. Roosevelt said, “We had come to the stage where for our people what was needed was a real democracy; and of all forms of tyranny, the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy.”

Today, most Americans are entitled to vote, but there has been intimidation by those in power against voting by poor people, African-Americans, and immigrants. Many eligible people don’t vote because they think that their vote doesn’t matter. It’s true that most Americans have little influence over the policies our government adopts, especially those at the lower end of the income spectrum who are effectively disenfranchised. Congressional representatives pay little or no attention to their opinions. Moving up the income ladder, influence increases slowly, but it’s only at the very top that it has a real impact (plutocracy). Politicians of both parties receive substantial financial support from corporations, whose leaders demand that politicians reciprocate with favourable policies, including tax breaks that help increase the donors’ wealth.

As far as secular and humanistic ideas, I think secular humanists have always been on the side of the better angels of our nature. Humanists have opposed racism and misogyny in America. On the other hand, some people who say we need to “Make America Great Again” hearken to the days of white privilege when they could discriminate against those of a different race and those who had non-Christian religious beliefs or no religious beliefs. They would also like to use their privilege to take away rights from gays and lesbians. Secular humanists are fighting against a plutocracy of powerful white evangelicals who want to turn America into a Christian nation, instead of the secular nation we are. White evangelicals represent the base supporters of our Republican president. I know some atheists and humanists who consider themselves Republicans, but I have yet to meet one who supports President Donald Trump.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Dr. Silverman.

Photo by Davorin Pavlica on Unsplash

Dr. Herb Silverman is the Founder of the Secular Coalition for America, the Founder of the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, and the Founder of the Atheist/Humanist Alliance student group at the College of Charleston. He authored Complex variables (1975), Candidate Without a Prayer: An Autobiography of a Jewish Atheist in the Bible Belt (2012) and An Atheist Stranger in a Strange Religious Land: Selected Writings from the Bible Belt (2017). He co-authored The Fundamentals of Extremism: The Christian Right in America (2003) with Kimberley Blaker and Edward S. Buckner, Complex Variables with Applications (2007) with Saminathan Ponnusamy, and Short Reflections on Secularism (2019).

Here we talk about the British and the Americans, and the American Revolutionary War.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: One of the groups of people who received more universalized rights as persons within the United States apart from the aristocratic, white, wealthy, slave-owning males were white women. What were some of the firmaments of women’s anger at the injustices? Who were some of the original movers of this anger into positive action and progressive change? How has women’s anger been a catalytic force for women’s self-empowerment? Also, how has women’s anger been an unacknowledged, potentially, force for other positive movements for greater societal provision of equal rights and treatment to all constituents of the United States of America?

Dr. Herb Silverman: White women certainly had more rights than black slaves, but I don’t think women in general have ever been privileged. There are even some parallels between how women and enslaved people were treated. Both were expected to be passive, cooperative, and obedient to their master-husbands.

Next to my wife Sharon, my favorite women are Sarah and Angelina Grimké, sisters from Charleston, South Carolina, who lived in the 18^th century and deserve to be better known than they are. Their father, Judge John Grimké, was a strong advocate of slavery and of the subordination of women. He had hundreds of slaves, and served as chief judge of the South Carolina Supreme Court. Though raised with slaves, the Grimké sisters grew to despise slavery after witnessing its cruel effects at a young age.

In 1836 Angelina wrote her Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, imploring white southern women to embrace the antislavery cause. She said, “I know you do not make the laws, but I also know that you are the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters of those who do; and if you really suppose you can do nothing to overthrow slavery, you are greatly mistaken.” Her writing drew the ire of many southerners. By the late 1830s, Sarah and Angelina were known not only as abolitionists but also as proponents of women’s rights.

The Grimké sisters left the South in the 1820s and moved to Philadelphia, where I was born, and became Quakers. At a time when it was not considered respectable (even in the North) for women to speak before mixed audiences of men and women, Sarah and Angelina boldly spoke out against slavery at public meetings. Some male abolitionists, like Frederick Douglass, supported the right of women to speak and participate equally with men in antislavery activities.  

The Grimkés grew up in a Charleston house built in 1789, three blocks away from where I now live. In 2015, the Friends of the Library at the College of Charleston (where I was a math professor) unveiled a much-deserved historical marker outside the Grimké home.

The Grimké sisters were good friends with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an abolitionist and a leading figure of the early women’s rights movement. Her Declaration of Sentiments, presented at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, parallels the American Declaration of Independence, but with women included. It asserts that both men and women are endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It explains how women are oppressed by the government and a patriarchal society. Stanton calls for women’s suffrage as well as participation and representation in the government. She also refers to women’s lack of property rights, and inequality in divorce law, education, and employment opportunities. The document insists that women be full citizens, granted all the rights and privileges that are granted to men. The Seneca Falls Convention marked the start of the women’s rights movement in the United States.

Suffragette Susan B. Anthony was a good friend and collaborator with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. However, even though Anthony was an agnostic, she didn’t like Stanton’s open criticism of religion because she feared it would lose supporters for the suffragette movement. In particular, Anthony was displeased with Stanton’s publication of The Woman’s Bible, which was justifiably critical of religion. Stanton said, “The Bible and the church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the emancipation of women,” and “Surely the immutable laws of the universe can teach more impressive lessons than the holy books of all the religions on earth.” Stanton also said, ‘I have endeavored to dissipate religious superstitions from the minds of women, and base their faith on science and reason, where I found for myself at last that peace and comfort I could never find in the Bible and the church.”

After a 72-year battle for women ‘s suffrage, women finally got the vote in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Women fighting for equality during the early part of the twentieth century focused on political equality. Yet to come were issues like workplace inequality, gender pay gap, sexual harassment, violence against women, and #MeToo.

Wifehood and motherhood are no longer regarded as women’s most significant professions. Women now have more educational opportunities than ever before. Nurse and teacher (and maybe Catholic nun, if you consider this a profession) used to be pretty much the only professional positions open to women. In 1900, women earned only19 percent of bachelor’s degrees. Since 1980, women have surpassed men in the number of bachelor’s degrees conferred annually in the United States.

Regarding the question of women’s anger, women have been socialized to suppress anger and even question whether their anger is justified. A case can be made that getting angry might first be necessary before being motivated to work for change. People don’t change the world by being apathetic; they do it by getting angry and refusing to take injustice any more. Anger can be used constructively by women (and men) to fight intolerance and discrimination. Recently, female anger at Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential win spurred historic numbers of women to run for public office in 2018 and today.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Dr. Silverman.

Photo by Julia Caesar on Unsplash