Daniel O. Jamison is a retired attorney.
“Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!” so declared Senator Daniel Webster in ending his famous 1830 reply in the U.S. Senate to South Carolina Senator Robert Hayne’s angry defense of slavery and of a state’s right to nullify federal law.
Leading up to the Civil War in 1861, Southerners loved an America that they believed included a God-given right to enslave others. To question their way of life was to question everything about them. They hated it.
Not happy with the outcome of the 1860 presidential election of Abraham Lincoln as president, the South rejected the Constitution, rebelled and seceded from the Union to protect their way of life. Lincoln and the North saw secession as dooming our democratic republic and its revolutionary ideals if states unhappy with an election outcome could simply leave the Union.
The South’s beliefs were pernicious. The new vice-president of the Confederacy promptly announced: “ Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea [from all are created equal]; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new Government, is the first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth. ”.
Earlier this year there was again talk of secession if its proponents cannot have their way. The Florida Governor even essentially proposed to nullify the Constitution’s Article IV requirement to extradite the former president to New York.
Have they not learned that the South suffered a devastating military defeat?
Speaking in reply to President Biden’s State of the Union Address, Arkansas Governor Sarah Hukabee Sanders said: “Today, our freedom is under attack. The America we love is in danger.” What America is she referring to?
No one, whether on the left or right, can claim that their way is the only American way of life. The Constitution and its Amendments reflect decisions of “We the People” that the ways of all Americans, whatever their color, religion, or culture, are American ways of life as long as they respect the rights of others under the Constitution and the law.
Something is desperately wrong with American education if large portions of the country, on the right or left, do not understand this.
Each generation holds a great trust for succeeding generations to preserve and build upon the nation’s evolving foundation. The decades-long neglect of American history and civics in our schools has violated that great trust and led to political violence.
State universities can begin to correct this neglect by requiring for admission more history and civics courses in high school. High schools generally require only a few American history and civics courses because that is all that state universities require for admission.
Overemphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has depleted history teachers at all levels. More high school civics and history courses should also cause universities to have and train more teachers of these subjects.
Governor Sanders adds: “our children are taught to hate one another on account of their race, but not to love one another or our great country.” Where this statement may be true, the teaching is wrong, but nothing should be glossed over in the good and bad of our history and civics. Fear that frank discussion of racism in America might cause hatred of white students is unwarranted and prevents progress in dealing with the ongoing consequences of past racism.
Youth need to know what happened, even if some ancestors’ acts were monumentally atrocious (such as participating in savage lynchings). They must also be taught that while they are not responsible for the wrongs of ancestors, they are responsible to know the ongoing effects of what ancestors did and to deal maturely with one another in addressing those effects.
Also, long-delayed before Congress is the proposed Civics Secures Democracy Act, which aims to improve civics and history education. It is fully discussed here. Concerned Americans should contact their senators and representatives to urge them to adopt the Act.
“Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!”
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.