My Name Is Neo
Tim Cavanaugh | February 21, 2005, 1:40pm
You may have been following the story of Thomas E. Woods, Jr. (Ph.D!), and the growing popularity of his Politically Incorrect Guide. If not, dig the outrage here and here. Arts & Letters Daily helpfully refers us to this critical pan from Max Boot:
I FIRST BECAME AWARE of Thomas E. Woods Jr.'s Politically Incorrect Guide to American History when the New York Times Book Review took note of its rise on the paperback bestseller list and described it as a "neocon retelling of this nation's back story." A neocon retelling? What would that be, exactly?
I have no interest in Max Boot, except to wonder whether that's really his name or a holdover from his punk rock days. For what it's worth, I was unpersuaded by Boot's arguments for why involvement in World War I was a vital national interest and amused by his defense of Bill Clinton's adventures in the Balkans. Nor for that matter, am I going to read the Woods book, whose complaints about the Civil War sound like an old whine in new bottles—for anti-militarist polemics I'll take Randolph Bourne every time, and for anti-militarist polemics with a frisson of Confederate apologetics, give me Gore Vidal. What's got me madder than a Civil War reenactor with chiggers in his wool underpants is the incredible description The New York Times used in touting the book. It's got Boot angry as well:
It tells you something about how debased political terminology has become when a leading light of the nutty League of the South is identified in the Paper of Record as a "neocon." The original neocons, like Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, were former Democrats who accepted the welfare state, racial equality, and other liberal accomplishments while insisting on a more assertive foreign policy than the McGovernites wanted. In other words, pretty much the opposite of what Woods believes. Woods is a paleocon, not a neocon...
I don't read The New York Times much, and the relevant bestseller list just gives the title and author; no description. So who's the slimy little communist shit, twinkle-toed cocksucker who doesn't know the difference between Norman Podhoretz and J.E.B. Stuart in his rakish hat with ostrich plume?
I think it says more about how contemporary liberals view themselves than about our "debased political terminology" that anybody at The New York Times believes a neocon "revision" of American history would even be possible, or that it would differ in any substantive way from the way that history would be written by The New York Times itself.
The genius of neoconservatism is that it's exactly in step with the progressivist, middle-of-the-road, big state view of American history they teach in school: The Articles of Confederation resulted in a disaster that taught the founders the value of a strong central state; the Whiskey rebels were dangerous kooks, not unlike the Branch Davidians of our own time; "States' Rights" has always been a code word for slavery; President Woodrow Wilson was a man of vision but sadly was unable to achieve his goals for an international order; the America Firsters were even kookier and more marginal than the Whiskey rebels, and the best way to deal with one is to sock him in the jaw like in The Best Years of Our Lives; many well intentioned folks on the left underestimated the danger of the Soviet Union, but the anti-communist witch hunts of the fifties were a regrettable overreaction (the Left didn't become dangerous until the late sixties and early seventies, when it embraced separatist and militant views that undermined the politics of consensus that made this country great); real civil rights progress only came when the federal government asserted its power over the refractory states; September 11 shocked America out of its isolationism and freed President George W. Bush (an excellent man, but distressingly shortsighted in some matters) from his naive opposition to nation-building. And so on.
Leave aside how much of it you agree or disagree with. What would the neocons add to the official version of American history? That Winston Churchill should have been made King of the United States as well as Prime Minister of Great Britain? That we missed a great opportunity by not jumping into the Franco-Prussian War? That we should have intervened on Sylvania's side against Freedonia? The folks at The Times may have a narcissistic interest in highlighting small differences, but you can't misuse language forever. When liberals look at the neocons, they see themselves.
In a related story, Honest Abe tops a new poll of our favorite presidents.
Evan Williams | February 21, 2005, 2:23pm | #
"If you want to talk about America-hating professors, here's someone who hates nearly everything about the last 140 years of US history. Yet only a handful of right-of-center commentators -- Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.com, Max Boot in The Weekly Standard -- have spoken out against the book. Where's the outrage? Is this the kind of ideology conservatives want to be associated with? Does anything labeled ''politically incorrect" get a pass?"
I used to respect much of the work that I saw from Cathy Young here at Reason, but this one sounds like it's from another person. Hmmm.
Oh, the HORROR! Woods doesn't like...LINCOLN! Honest ABE! The traitorous monster. Yes, as the public school system has taught all of us, Lincoln is a great american hero. Until you read the actual history of his actions, bordering on a tyrant, torturing deserters, suspending habeas corpus, etc. Lincoln was no hero, and only someone who just took their elementary school textbook as the final word on everything. But this example illustrates Young's entire argument, which is, namely, the same argument that every other critic who disapproves has made: namely, that since Woods doesn't agree with what we all accept as common knowledge, then he
must be wrong, he
must be an America-hating traitor.
Hogwash. Anyone who has actually read his work, either in print or at LRC, knows that he is neither. The rest of her rant is based on this gem of a hyperbolic ad hominem: that, since Woods is a co-founder of the League of the South, that, one should surmise, means that he is wrong.
I am sorely disappointed in Ms. Young's departure from reason, and wholehearted embrace of low-down tactics such as this. Her only saving grace is that she did actually pull a couple of specifics out of the book and attempted to refute them, which is more than I can say for most of the other critics...but even that wasn't very complete or coherent. And the last paragraph, well, Ms. Young might as well be writing for the Times instead of Reason (yes, I know, this wa sa piece for the Globe), because dredge like that belongs elsewhere.
I'm not just saying that because I disagree with her either. I disagree with many writers @ Reason, but I still respect their arguments and their argumentative style. It's just sad that something this pathetic could come from a writer here. Can't win em all, I guess.
David T | February 21, 2005, 10:13pm | #
BillyRay: To determine the percentage of white southerners who owned slaves by counting all individual whites regardless of age and sex is as silly as to "prove" that only a small minority of mid-twentieth century Americans owned cars--after all, look at all those children who didn't!
BTW, it is wrong to argue that even the Nullification Crisis was solely
about economics. So far as the Nullifiers were concerned, it definitely
had a slavery aspect. A few quotes:
John C. Calhoun: "I consider the Tariff, but as the occasion, rather than
the real cause of the present unhappy state of things. The truth can no
longer be disguised, that the peculiar domestick institutions of the
Southern States, and the consequent direction which that and her soil and
climate have given to her industry, has placed them in regard to taxation
and appropriation in opposite relation to the majority of the Union;
against the danger of which, if there be no protective power in the
reserved rights of the states, they must in the end be forced to rebel, or
submit to have . . . their domestick institutions exhausted by
Colonization and other schemes, and themselves & children reduced to
wretchedness."
Governor James Hamilton: "The same doctrines 'of the general welfare'
which enable the general government to tax our industry for the benefit of
the industries of other sections of this Union, and to appropriate the
common treasure to make roads and canals for them, would authorize the
federal government to erect the *peaceful* standard of servile revolt, by
establishing colonization offices in our State, to give the bounties for
emancipation here, and transportation to Liberia afterwards. The last
question follows our giving up the battle on the other two, as inevitably
as light flows from the sun."
George McDuffie (Senator and later Governor): "Any course of measures
which shall hasten the abolition of slavery by destroying the value of
slave labor, will bring upon the Southern states the greatest political
calamity with which they can be afflicted...It is the clear and distinct
perception of the irresistable tendency of this protecting system to
precipitate us upon this great moral and political catastrophe, that has
animated me to raise my warning voice..."
William Harper: "in contending against the Tariff, I have always felt
that we were combatting the symptom instead of the disease. Consolidation
is the disease....To-morrow may witness [an attempt] to relieve your free
negroes, first; and afterwards, your slaves."
Congressman Robert Barnwell: If South Carolina yielded "full supremacy"
to the Northern majority, "there are some changes in the very forms of our
*domestic* policy to which they could scarcely persuade us quietly to
submit. And there are no changes, however vital and subversive of our
most absolute rights, which fanaticism and misguided philanthropy would
not attempt."
Angus Patterson, a leading state legislator: "If the Tariff were all we
had to fear, I might be disposed to advise longer delay...[But] one of the
avowed objects of the Tariff is to favor free labor, as it is called, at
the expense of slave labor--to render the latter species of labor
unprofitable and indeed valueless, and thereby incline and force us to
assent to a system of emancipation, through the agency of the General
Government..."
Congressman William J. Grayson to his constituents: "if the tariff were
oppressive merely" patience "might well be deemed a virtue...But you
assert it to be unconstitutional. This it is that authorizes and requires
you to act...Allow Congres to make their will the limit of their power,
and prepare to see it exercised in a shape, the very shadow of which must
strike you with horror." (I don't think he simply means higher tariff
rates...)
Robert J. Turnbull, planter and pamphleteer, in his series of essays
called *The Crisis* which helped spark nullification: "...these words
'general welfare' are becoming every day more and more important to the
folks, who are now so peacably raising their cotton and rice, between the
Little Pedee and the Savannah. The question, it must be recollected, is
not simply, whether we are to have a foreign commerce. It is not whether
we are to have splendid national works, in which we have no interest,
executed chiefly at our cost...It is not whether we are to be taxed
without end...But the still more interesting question is, whether the
institutions of our forefathers...are to be preserved...free from the rude
hands of innovators and enthusiasts, and from the molestation or
interference of any legislative power on earth but our own?"
All quotes from William W. Freehling, *Prelude to Civil War: The
Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836 (Harper Torchbooks
edition 1968), pp. 127, 198-9, 256-7.
There's not much point in arguing further with you, though: no matter how many secessionist quotes I could find that said it was about slavery, you would say it wasn't about slavery...
Gary Gunnels | February 21, 2005, 11:21pm | #
BillRay,
Sorry David, but Lincoln opposed slavery into the new territories because he wanted them reserved for free white people. Lincoln was a racist after all.
So? He was a product of his time. And of course none your statements would compel me to support the Confederacy.
As Alexis de Tocqueville traveled around the country in the 1830s he wrote about slavery and racism. The further north he went, the worse the racism and no where was racism worse then in states that never had slavery or had since abandoned it.
Do read his book. Alexis de Tocqueville quite liberally castigates all of American society - North, South and West - for the treatment of Native Americans and blacks.
Sorry David, again as you well know, the tariff in the late 1820s and early 1830s almost sparked secession. Just as the northeastern states talked secession after the Louisiana purchase fearing the agricultural states would have more power than the banking and commerce states.
You mean 1832 re: South Carolina. Jefferson and Madison argued secession during the controversy over the Alien & Sedition Acts; many New Englanders were caught with the fire of it over the War of 1812; many New Englanders were also caught with the fire of it over the slave power aggrandizing war with Mexico; etc. Idle threats of secession were common throughout the history of the early Republic.
Only a very small percentage of southerners owned slaves.
Wrong and untrue. Such claims don't include the wives of slave owners, nor the children; indeed, they are quite disingenuous. Its funny to see you suckered in by this myth. Actual slave ownership in the South - counting wives and children as slave owners - ranged around 50% at any time. Of course this makes sense, since the average slave holding was 19-20 slaves. And of course remember, by 1860, four out of every nine Southerners was a slave; that makes slave holding ubiquitous and central to the Southern economy, culture, etc.
David T.,
You are exactly correct in your analysis.
Slag,
To the modern revisionist, it is this choice, yes. But to the participants, it was a choice between "Favoring the Confederacy's right to secede over slavery" and "Not favoring the Confederacy's right to secede over slavery."
No one is of course talking about the practitioner's viewpoint; we're discussing the modern perspective of the issue (indeed, to be frank, despite his bluster, so is Woods). And don't give me some fallacy of "historical essences" either.
To repeat: the war was over the secession and the secession was over slavery. I realize this chain of causality is too complex for revisionist ex-historians. Why it proves to be so difficult I cannot say.
One wonders, did I ever argue with this point? No. You are just making shit up. BTW, if you understood 1% of the modern historiography of the Civil War you would realize that very few make the claim that you claim they make. You are indeed arguing against a position which is a marginalized, minority view, just Mr. Woods is. You and he have to make strawmen to make your arguments look credible apparently.
Vince Daliessio | February 23, 2005, 8:43am | #
"Governor James Hamilton: "The same doctrines 'of the general welfare' which enable the general government to tax our industry for the benefit of
the industries of other sections of this Union, and to appropriate the common treasure to make roads and canals for them, would authorize the
federal government to erect the *peaceful* standard of servile revolt..."
This says it better than anything else I have ever read. At this point in history, the federal government was already overrunning the states. Lincoln's election was perceived, rightly, as cementing federal control and extortion of treasure from the South to hand over to Northern interests, just as Henry Clay envisioned, no abolitionist he.
Slavery was certainly the easiest issue for the North to demagogue and the South to rally around, but again, David T and others are succumbing to the same kind of Republican spin and obfuscation that were most recently used to take our nation to war in Iraq - find the most convenient issue, the one that is most inflammatory at that moment, and demagogue it, then, when people start asking questions, pick another issue, then another, then another...it is NOT insignificant that the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1963, for it was simply the next available handle to justify a ruinous, barbaric war being fought on behalf of the financial and industrial interests in the North.
For the cost of the war, Lincoln could simply have declared compensated emancipation. But he did not. Why is that? Is it because secession, being a fait accompli, prevented it? No, any emancipation Lincoln had in mind was going to involve Federal appropriation of Southern wealth. There was absolutely no way Lincoln would ever consent to any end to slavery which did not enable the transfer of revenue from the South to the North, and the South knew it. They tried to vote with their feet.
At bottom, no matter what anyone said then, or says now, the Civil War was an economic war. As a kindly old cynic I know always says, "follow the money trail". The South had raw materials and cheap labor in greater abundance than the North, and because of that the North never stopped trying to control those things for the benefit of Northern interests. No one in modern history ever went to war over principle, but only at bottom over money. "Principle" is simply used to justify after the fact the taking of property by force. This is the essence of the "modern" warfare state, as exemplified by our wars in conveniently resource-rich parts of the globe.
I am currently writing an in-depth serial review of Woods' book. Check it out over at www.libertyguys.org.
Gary Gunnels | February 23, 2005, 9:15am | #
Vince,
At this point in history, the federal government was already overrunning the states.
How so? By the postal service? Note that in the pre-Civil War era, 90% or so of the Federal Government was made up of postal workers. Can you give me some examples of the "overrunning" please? You note "roads and canals" of course, but roads and canals are authorized by the Federal Constitution. The tariff issue was bunk.
Lincoln's election was perceived, rightly, as cementing federal control and extortion of treasure from the South to hand over to Northern interests, just as Henry Clay envisioned, no abolitionist he.
Note that Lincoln, as President, had no power to tax, and that the Senate was at the very least half-controlled by slave states (not to mention the fact that there were Senators from the West who were also sympathetic to the South's concerns). Its absolute bunk to view Lincoln's Presidency as a real threat to the slavocracy's interests.
...it is NOT insignificant that the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1963...
One presumes that you mean 1863. What is significant - and what neo-Confederate apologists always ignore - is that within the first few months of the start of the war Union lines were literally flooded with escaping slaves - they were called "contraband" - and it was the escaping slaves, the slaves themselves, that forced the issue. Union Generals on the ground decided not to return them to their masters and that decision in turn eventually lead to the Emancipation Proclamation. What you would do, as a neo-Confederate, is make the good the enemy of the perfect.
For the cost of the war, Lincoln could simply have declared compensated emancipation.
How would he have done that? Lincoln didn't have such power under the Constitution after all. It would have required a Congressional act for that to occur, and such act would have been impossible given the ideological nature of Southern Senators and Represenatives and their allies in the North and West. Do learn something about the basic structures of our government.
There was absolutely no way Lincoln would ever consent to any end to slavery which did not enable the transfer of revenue from the South to the North, and the South knew it.
Transfer of revenue in what way specifically?
They tried to vote with their feet.
Yes, the slaves voted with their feet. They fled their owners in masses for the Union lines and never looked back.
The South had raw materials and cheap labor in greater abundance than the North...
Not really. The South had a couple of agricultural products of importance - mainly cotton, sugar and tobacco - but the North had far more coal and iron than the South. Coal and iron being the foundations of industrialization at the time. The North and West were also far more abundant in the production of foodstuffs than the South. And Northern labor was more abundant than Southern labor. Indeed, given that the North was over twice as big as the South population wise, its hard for me to see how you could come this bizarre conclusion of yours. Furthermore, the North had no problem attracting cheap labor via immigration from Europe - indeed, given that the North and West were the perferred locales of immigration in the pre-war 19th century that should give you some clue as which had the better oppurtunities for people.
I am currently writing an in-depth serial review of Woods' book. Check it out over at www.libertyguys.org.
I trust that it won't be any better than the pathetic effort you've produced here.
Gary Gunnels | February 23, 2005, 1:11pm | #
Vince,
It is telling that you do not address the basic substance of my argument - that the Civil War was fundamentally an economic war, and that Lincoln had no love for blacks that would compel him to declare such a slaughter.
Even if all that were entirely and completely true it wouldn't matter from my perspective and I think it should be obvious why that is so. Of course the fact is that there were mixed motives behind the war; McPherson drives this point home in a recent book surveying letters by Union soldiers - be they officers or not; the desire to fight to end slavery was common amongst Union soldiers in other words.
Slaves escaped to freedom en masse, and after another two years it EVENTUALLY led to the Emancipation Proclamation. This is a non-sequitur.
Actually, its directly on point from my perspective. You act like yours is the only metric for deciding the issue.
The Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in the states that were in rebellion. It had no force, zero, zilch in the slave border states that stayed in the Union. Therefore, its primary purpose was not to free slaves, or even acknowledge their freedom.
So? It freed some slaves did it not? Indeed, it freed the vast majority of the slaves, did it not? You keep on wanting to make the perfect the enemy of the good. You keep acting like partial measures vindicate your case, when they do not.
Further, one should ask, what was the CSA doing during the war regarding the slave population? Well, free blacks who were captured in the war were sent into slavery. Black soldiers caught fighting for the Union were often shot on the spot. And the CSA was certainly not considering any emancipation; indeed, in the last desperate days of the war, the CSA finally considered freeing slaves who fought for the Confederacy, which itself caused a tremendous uproar in the Confederate political establishment.
If the war never started, and the South was able to continue in peace after secession, isn't it possible that the same mass exodus would have occurred?
How? The South was a virtual police-state when it came to black slaves after all. Civilian patrols were common throughout the South to capture escaped slaves after all. Between 1820-1860 between 3,000-5,000 slaves escaped per year; yet this was at a time when there was no patrolled "national border" between the free and slave states. Imagine what would have happened if such a border had been erected.
The CSA's raison d'etre was to defend slavery; your argument forgets this fact. It took the actual invasion of the South to break the slavocracy's hold over the slaves.
I know enough about the basic structures of our government to know (and so should you, Gary) that after secession, in addition to its leading idealogue in the White House, the Republican Party had an absolute, overwhelming majority in the House, the Senate, and the Judiciary.
And after seccession, what could Lincoln have done to "free the slaves" in states which declared the Federal Government had no control over them? Short of war, nothing. Accordingly, your proposed action would have been mere paper shuffling.
Further, if you were actually to read a history of the Congress at the time you would see that Lincoln and the Congress clashed over a number of issues. Lincoln held no dictatorial hold over the Congress.
Vince Daliessio | February 23, 2005, 2:39pm | #
I said;
"The Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in the states that were in rebellion. It had no force, zero, zilch in the slave border states that stayed in the Union. Therefore, its primary purpose was not to free slaves, or even acknowledge their freedom."
Gary replied;
"So? It freed some slaves did it not?"
It did not. See the actual text of the document;
http://www.nps.gov/ncro/anti/emancipation.html
It was only in force in the areas in rebellion, where it could not be enforced. It did nothing for slaves continuing to be held in bondage in Maryland, Delaware, Tennesee, etc. The Fugitive Slave Laws as a legal matter were still in force, but as a practical matter no longer had the political pressure for their enforcement behind them, so it could be said that the slaves thus freed were freed for bureaucratic and political expediency, and not on principle.
The Emancipation Proclamation was strictly a war measure to curry favor with the slave states that were still in the Union, as well as to try to foment a full-on slave uprising in the South, in Lincoln's words "upon military necessity".
The only thing that freed the slaves fleeing the south was their own initiative, and that of sympathetic people along the way who helped them.
"Indeed, it freed the vast majority of the slaves, did it not?"
No, it did not. After the Civil War ended, the 13th Amendment passed, and was ratified in 1868 (long after Lincoln's death). Then and only then was slavery officially abolished throughout the United States.
Vince Daliessio | February 23, 2005, 3:03pm | #
I said;
"I know enough about the basic structures of our government to know (and so should you, Gary) that after secession, in addition to its leading idealogue in the White House, the Republican Party had an absolute, overwhelming majority in the House, the Senate, and the Judiciary."
Gary replied;
"And after seccession, what could Lincoln have done to "free the slaves" in states which declared the Federal Government had no control over them? Short of war, nothing. Accordingly, your proposed action would have been mere paper shuffling."
Sure. If you think repeal of the Fugitive Slave Laws, for example, would be considered mere "paper shuffling", then yes, I guess there was nothing short of causing the deaths of 650,000 people and destroying 3/4 of the value of all capital in the south that could have been done. He could have freed the slaves in the border states, although they would likely have seceded then too. A seceded South would have a huge border that could not be patrolled effectively, leading to many more escapes, and with the Fugitive Slave Laws repealed, these freed slaves would not be "repatriated". Finally, without the protection of the US Navy, Southern shipping would be easy prey for pirates and thieves. The South would eventually have had to rejoin the North, undoubtedly releasing the slaves as a condition of such.
"Further, if you were actually to read a history of the Congress at the time you would see that Lincoln and the Congress clashed over a number of issues. Lincoln held no dictatorial hold over the Congress."
True. There remained in the congress a modicum of resistance to his Constitutional encroachments. That's why Lincoln needed a war declaration. It made it much easier to put journalists and others who opposed him in jail, deport senators, conscript people into the military, and suspend habeus corpus, as well as have the attorney general draw up an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Face it, Gary - Lincoln was a dictator who camouflaged his real intentions with stentorian speeches and unconstitutional bullying. He wanted a centralized government that would tax the entire population and spend the money on a few favored interests. He hated blacks, thought them biologically and intellectually inferior, and wanted to deport them to Liberia, Haiti, and Panama. And he repeatedly declaimed that he had absolutely no intention of ever interfering with slavery where it existed, even into his first inauguration speech. This is all documented. Whether or not he stated any intention to free slaves is irrelevant, given his true feelings and his actions, which in practice freed next to no slaves at all.
Reason on Facebook
Reason on Twitter
Reason on YouTube
Reason RSS
