It’s jigsaw puzzle season again. My latest depicts the biblical Tower of Babel, left unfinished when people stopped understanding each other because their one language splintered into many (Genesis 11:1-9).

By coincidence, I’ve also been following a course on the history of Eastern Europe, one of the most linguistically diverse regions I know. Its many tongues fall into whole different language families: Baltic, Slavic, Germanic, Romance, Indo-Aryan, Finno-Ugric, Turkic, and more. Borders are continually changing or being challenged, sometimes in the name of national sovereignty (think Yugoslavia), sometimes for the benefit of neighboring empires (think Ukraine).

I can’t help wondering if the United States is suffering a Tower of Babel period today. We claim one English language, but the meanings of words are splintering. Liberal: To some, it’s openness to new ideas; to others, it’s repudiation of traditional norms. Security: To some, it means protection by armed defenders; to others, it means keeping one’s life and data private. Freedom: To some, you’re allowed to do as you please; to others, you don’t suffer discrimination or threats. Patriotism: To some, you love your country enough to try to improve it; to others, you love your country too much to accept any criticism.

Small wonder we can’t understand each other enough to build something together.

           America! America!
          God mend thine every flaw
          Confirm thy soul in self-control
          Thy liberty in law!
               - Katherine Lee Bates, “America the Beautiful,” verse 2

In my grade school years in West Virginia, we didn’t ask whether “Presidents Day” needed an apostrophe. We celebrated Lincoln’s birthday on Feb. 12 and Washington’s on Feb. 22. We practiced patriotism in other ways all year. Each school day began with the Lord's Prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, and a patriotic song. We learned only the first verse of each song, so we got no clue that America might have flaws. God was integral to patriotism in Cold War rivalry with the godless Russians. “Under God” got added to the Pledge of Allegiance to emphasize the point.

Back to that apostrophe: It depends on the state and the style guide. Federally, no such holiday name exists to raise that question. Washington’s birthday became a federal holiday in 1885 and was moved to the third Monday of February starting in 1971. Its formal name remains Washington’s Birthday, even though it never lands on Feb. 22. Third Mondays must fall in the range from the 15th to the 21st of every month, every year.

“Presidents Day” became popular usage and an official state holiday in many states. Some insert an apostrophe before or after the “s.” Using no apostrophe is also common.* Depending who you ask, the day honors both Washington and Lincoln, or all U.S. presidents, or the office of the presidency. Wisconsin, where I live now, doesn’t recognize a February holiday at all.

* This treats Presidents as not possessive but descriptive, comparable to Labor Day or Veterans Day.

​Image: The 48-star flag of my childhood. Photo by Bret Lama on Unsplash.

Career professionals are leaving the Justice Department in droves. They’re finding it impossible both to follow orders and to do the jobs they were hired to do.

Probably without meaning to, the Founders wrote this tension into the Constitution. They vested executive power in one person, the president. Perhaps they didn’t realize how much room for interpretation would lie in carrying out the laws, or how many departments and agencies it would require. Maybe they didn’t foresee how politicized the office was bound to become.

The only limits to presidential discretion were those specified in the Constitution and those Congress wrote into laws. Two years after a disgruntled job seeker assassinated President Garfield in 1881, Congress passed the Civil Service Act to replace political patronage with employment based on merit. The Supreme Court in 1935 affirmed that Congress could limit the president’s authority to fire independent agency heads (a ruling now under dispute).

The Watergate scandal underscored the dilemma of federal attorneys trying to serve two masters. Unwritten norms say the president sets policy and priorities but does not try to influence individual cases. When norms fail, judicial independence goes by the wayside. Legal ethics leave some attorneys little choice but to disobey or resign.

Image: Poster for Growl Theatre, Brisbane, performance of “The Servant of Two Masters” by Carlo Goldoni, 1746. 

Blame Sen. Robert Taft and Rep. Fred Hartley. Or thank them, if you prefer. Either way, their work helps explain why organizers in Minneapolis last week could call theirs the first general strike in the United States in eighty years. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 restricted union activity and made classic general strikes illegal.

Strikes began as a tool of the labor movement in the 1800s. Sometimes strikers in one industry were joined by others, either in sympathy or in pursuit of shared political goals. Philadelphia claims credit for the nation’s first general strike, held in 1835 to demand a ten-hour working day. It began in textile mills and spread to unions throughout the city. By the end of 1835 the ten-hour working day was largely standard across the U.S.

A wave of strikes broke out nationwide after World War I. In Seattle in 1919, over 60,000 members of various unions took part in a five-day work stoppage to support the city’s shipyard workers. The general strike collapsed in the face of corporate interests and fears of Communism. In an even bigger strike wave in 1946, the largest began in Oakland CA department stores. Women who had worked factory jobs during World War II were now reduced to retail clerks with low pay and few protections. More than 100,000 workers from multiple industries came out in support, shutting Oakland down for two days. Backlash brought the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947.

Eighty years after the Oakland general strike, how is Minneapolis different? It targets federal action, not employers. Its organization is grassroots. The Museum of Protest says labor unions are “navigating legal constraints through strategic ambiguity.” In sub-zero temperatures, what law forbids closing schools for safety or suggesting workers call in sick?

​Image: Seattle Union Record, February 3, 1919.