The New American Crisis

In the winter of 1776, Tom Paine wrote a pamphlet called The American Crisis to rally the citizens of the United States at a turning point in history. It was just after the Declaration of Independence, when the British empire responded by sending the most powerful army on the planet to crush the American insurgents. The troops of King George forced George Washington’s soldiers to retreat from New York and then pursued the Americans until they finally sought safety across the Delaware River, with many wounded, their uniforms in tatters, and few provisions and little shelter for the harsh winter to come. 

Tom Paine, author of The American Crisis

That was the moment when Tom Paine wrote his famous words, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” It was a low point in the battle for liberty and democracy in the United States, just as we are at a low point today. Now, in 2026, the enormous gains of several generations have been shoved aside in the space of two nightmarish years. Each day, the news is like multiple slaps in the face to all those who hold dear the principles of liberty, justice, equality, diversity, and sustainability.

Our souls are being tried, as we withstand a hurricane of negative news—medical benefits denied to the most needy while billionaires are lavished with tax breaks; hardworking, law-abiding people ripped from their homes and deported, often separating family members; U.S. citizens protesting peacefully who are murdered in the streets; United States threatening our closest and most loyal allies with colonizing their lands and denying them the support that they have given us in wartime; the federal government attempting to undermine the most sacred rituals of democracy, the ballot and the right to equal and fair representation; the leaders of the USA and their cronies indulging in a rampage of corruption on a scale never seen before in history; this regime denying the indisputable evidence of an environmental emergency that we have the power and technology to reverse if we will only recognize and act on the science; the officials who should be the guardians of public health embracing crackpot theories that no responsible doctor or researcher gives credence to, endangering countless infants and children. And that is only the visible surface of a wound that goes deep into the body politic of the United States.

It’s not surprising that so many are losing hope in the ability of the United States to turn itself around, to recover faith in its national mission. But the United States has withstood many crises, the advances of King George’s army in Tom Paine’s time being just one in American history. There was the challenge of the Civil War that threatened to slice the United States in half, with one part taking up arms to try to perpetuate slavery and the lie of racial superiority. There was the advance of fascism in the middle of the twentieth century that saw the U.S. Pacific fleet decimated at Pearl Harbor, and Nazi troops only a channel away from subjugating all of Western Europe.

 

Yes, the United States of America is no stranger to crises. But crises require leadership, vision, and eloquence to counter the opponents of liberty, who have a way of hypnotizing the desperate. These are the times that try our souls, and Americans have to be equal to the challenge, to protest peacefully, vote, file lawsuits, pass legislation, write postcards, donate, phone representatives and voters, canvas door-to-door, poll-watch, and talk to neighbors and friends about what is really going on, and how much better the United States can be.

 

We say to those now in power in every branch of the U.S. federal government, and in so many of the states of the USA: our love of humanity will soar above your hatred; our soul is mightier than your denial of common decency to strangers; our grit and passion for justice will outlast your lust for personal plunder; our faith in a beautiful United States with every race, religion, national origin, and gender quilted together shall overcome your narrow, superannuated bigotry; and the USA will once again be a lighthouse that shows that diversity, equality, and justice are the foundation of the United States and of the family of nations.

 

Zack Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of more than twenty books or plays. www.zackrogow.com

_________________________________

Why Ron DeSantis Is Wrong about Western Civilization

In a January 2023 press release, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called for legislation to “ensure Florida’s public universities and colleges are grounded in the history and philosophy of Western Civilization…” Some of DeSantis’ ideas were then incorporated in to Florida Senate Bill 266, which passed the legislature and was signed into law by DeSantis in May 2023. What DeSantis’ views and the Florida law ignore is that a university education cannot be complete or true if the curriculum emphasizes only “Western Civilization.”

To begin with, “Western Civilization” cannot be properly understood or appreciated in isolation from the rest of the world. Take one key facet of “Western Civilization”: Christianity. That religion began in the Middle East, and it developed primarily out of spiritual traditions outside the West, including Judaism. In fact, none of the world’s major religions started in Western Europe or the United States, so a university education “grounded in the history and philosophy of Western Civilization” leaves out most spiritual traditions, among so many other things.

Take another example, this one from literature. What could be more quintessential about the literature of “Western Civilization” than the work of Shakespeare? The sonnet structure that Shakespeare used for most of his poems developed in Sicily during the 13th century CE. It was highly influenced by the ghazal, a poetic form created in neighboring Arab lands, a form that dates from the five centuries earlier than the sonnet. Not only that, rhymed poetry like the sonnet didn’t even exist in “Western Civilization” until the Middle Ages—Homer and Virgil didn’t write in rhyme. Western European poets borrowed rhyme from Arabic poetry, and from the verses of the Qu’ran, when Muslim civilization was flourishing in Spain.

Don’t even get me started on Shakespeare and the ridiculous set of laws that conservatives have enacted or proposed to limit drag shows. Do the reactionaries advocating that censorship realize that every female character in a Shakespeare play was performed in the Bard’s time by a man in drag, from Juliet to Cordelia to Queen Gertrude? If you really want to talk about “Western Civilization,” you can’t possibly discuss it without talking about the importance of female impersonators.

Another example: the democratic system in the United States, presumably a feature of “Western Civilization” that DeSantis believes in, was highly influenced by the organizing principles of the Iroquois Confederacy, which date back to the 12th century. To explain American democracy without that context is misleading and untrue.

Not only is it wrong intellectually to view “Western Civilization” in a vacuum, it is also extremely limiting for students. Why should students not learn about many of the world’s religions, philosophies, and cultures, and grow to appreciate the best in each tradition? If those in the West want to understand their own culture in three dimensions, one great way to do that is to step outside it and see it from the standpoint of other societies.

The current right-wing obsession with “Western Civilization” has little to do with education and truthfulness, and everything to do with race. By “Western Civilization,” politicians like DeSantis really mean White culture. The phrase “Western Civilization” serves as a dog-whistle to inform reactionary Caucasians that their interests and culture will be favored under a Republican administration. Not only that, the campaign of reactionaries in the United States and elsewhere to favor “Western Civilization” is scarily reminiscent of the Nazis banning culture that they considered “decadent,” namely any art not created by Aryans.

The Republicans and their allies outside the United States are hawking a myth. “Western Civilization,” like all civilizations, has great strengths and weaknesses, but it cannot have meaning and depth without understanding it in the context of world culture. Why deprive students of the full spectrum of global history and philosophy? By expanding the latitudes and longitudes of our knowledge, we only deepen our understanding of all cultures. And that should be the goal of a university education.

Zack’s memoir about his father, the writer Lee Rogow: Hugging My Father’s Ghost

Zack’s most recent book of poems, Irreverent Litanies

Other posts of interest:

How to Get Published

Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop

How Not to Become a Literary Dropout

Putting Together a Book Manuscript

Working with a Writing Mentor

How to Deliver Your Message

Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?

Why Write Poetry?

Poetic Forms: Introduction, the Sonnet, the Sestina, the Ghazal, the Tanka, the Villanelle

Praise and Lament

How to Be an American Writer

Writers and Collaboration

Types of Closure in Poetry