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...here's a baby elephant at the beach.

Lincoln’s most misrepresented words

Every time someone wants to represent Abraham Lincoln as soft on slavery, which he wasn’t, they like to point to his famous August 22, 1862, letter to Horace Greeley, in which he said

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save Slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy Slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

This is usually pointed to as evidence that Lincoln didn’t really care about slaves, just about keeping the union together—the unspoken conclusion being that there was something wrong with that set of priorities. In fact, what’s important about this letter is not Lincoln’s emphasis on preserving the union. That was old news by 1862. Lincoln had made clear time and again that that was his policy. Andrew Jackson had used force to preserve the union only thirty years before, and everybody remembered it. Decades before, Washington had called out troops to put down the Whiskey Rebellion, and the Adams administration had considered using force for similar reasons.

What was important about this letter was the phrase, “if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it.” This was the first time that a president had spoken in such language. John Quincy Adams, as a Congressman, had said that a president had power, hypothetically, to free the slaves in wartime, but no sitting president had ever before said that he would be willing to free all the slaves if necessary to fulfill his legal obligation to see that the law be faithfully executed. And to emphasize that fact, Lincoln concluded by reiterating his “oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free.”

To read this letter as if it were a retreat from a strong position is to read it completely backwards, and to ignore the historical context in which it was written. Lincoln had no explicit constitutional authority to free slaves, and his scruples as well as his tenuous support from the border states forced him to toe the constitutional line. That meant prioritizing the union over slavery whatever his personal feelings. Of course, the anti-slavery cause had much more to gain from preserving the union than seeing it go; the south had seceded, after all, precisely because they knew that slavery could no longer expect protection from the democratically constituted government. But Adams had argued that the president could free slaves as a wartime measure to seize enemy contraband or eliminate the cause of the war—which, of course, is what Lincoln did just half a year later. By appearing to moderate Greeley’s demand for emancipation, Lincoln was in fact announcing for the first time that the president reserved the option of doing just that. He could have promised not to free the slaves to entice the south to return; he did the opposite.

The proper way to read this letter is as a threat that if the south would not submit—and return to a constitutional process whereby slavery could be ended peacefully through democratic and constitutional means—that Lincoln would not flinch at exercising his wartime power to abolish slavery. And that was news.

The piety of Progressivism

This very interesting article about the historiography of the Haymarket Square riot—or, rather, the lack thereof—brings back a lot of memories. When I was a student at Chaffey Community College in Rancho Cucamonga, California, I took an American history class with a dyed-in-the-wool communist professor (who, sadly, still “teaches” there). It was my first encounter with the religion that is Progressive historiography. That religion comes complete with its own holidays, its own doxology and scripture, and a full set of taboos and rituals. It seems ridiculously out of date, in light of all that has changed in the world since 1989 or 2001, and yet it persists.

The scripture, of course, is Howard Zinn. His witness is that American industrialism and capitalism are the great sin that has corrupted the purity of the propertyless Edenic life. With Rousseau as his Isaiah, Zinn preaches that the North American continent was one of harmony and peace before the arrival of westerners in the 15th century. What followed was a series of sins and catastrophes, heroically resisted in some cases by “radicals,” who preached to little avail of a better life.

What’s striking about this religion is the way that historical episodes are sculpted to fit the prophesy—with actual facts disregarded, and eventually forgotten, until the episodes become a sacred mythology. This happens throughout the teaching. Some incidents of relatively little significance are boosted out of all proportion into major turning points—while crucially important moments in history are treated as if they were trivial. Major historical figures are regarded as relatively unimportant, while insignificant actors are given the spotlight for solo roles. (And, of course, if one complains that the result seems distorted, Zinn and his supporters can answer that they’re “just asking questions,” or only trying to focus on unjustly disregarded personages.)

In consequence, the Arawaks are made out to be 15th century hippies, living in bliss without mine or thine distinct; the Salem Witch Trials were really an example of class struggle; union leaders are given long scenes in soft focus, while Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln are treated as crypto-fascists who hated black people. America was the bad guy in the Cold War, and the Soviet Union never really threatened the safety and freedom of the world—that was all just propaganda. And, of course, the rioters at Haymarket Square were innocent victims of the Capitalist Imperialist Machine. Anyone who says otherwise is just part of the conspiracy against the masses, and should be disregarded.

Now, imagine that this way of looking at the world persists and is elaborated for generation after generation. What would you get? And suppose that the propagators of this way of thinking were given the power to censor and persecute their rivals. What would be the result, after a thousand years? Textbooks would present a wildly distorted notion of what happened and when; historical personages would be absurdly mischaracterized, incidents that never occurred would be treated as fact, and major moments in history would be disregarded or completely misrepresented—in short, you would get something like what is taught as history in Sunday Schools today. You’d get the “census of Caesar Augustus”—which never happened; you’d get the “Massacre of the Innocents”—which probably never happened. You’d get “Nero’s torches” and Pilate washing his hands; you’d get fringe religious movements treated as though they were the central fact of the age, and alleged historical figures who never appear in the writings of mainstream historians treated as though they were of primary concern to everyone involved. You’d get holidays commemorating events that never occurred, or celebrating people who probably didn’t do what they’re said to have done. And you’d get a deeply ingrained cultural taboo against questioning the historical basis of any of it. You’d have contrary evidence disregarded or rationalized away. You’d have scientific research treated as if it were just evil propaganda. You’d get emotionalistic overreactions whenever you disputed the basis for people’s “faith” in, say, the “Haymarket Square Massacre of The Innocents.”

It’s easy to see how an extreme political movement could, over the length of two millennia, evolve into a mainstream religion, and all for want of a nail.

Pixar Star Trek

It would be much better.

Happy birthday, Frederick Douglass

This is the day Douglass chose to celebrate as his birthday.

Happy Valentine's Day

To one very cool lady.

Stanley Fish on Les Miserables

A surprisingly spot-on analysis of why the sophisticates hate the best movie of 2012 so much.

I remember when I first realized how irony was the anthem of my generation. It was 1994, and I promptly resigned from my generation. Irony has its uses, and it can be a lot of fun at times. But in the end, it's just nihilism in a skinny tie, and, frankly, boring as hell. There are things worth one's unmediated and uncompromising allegiance. Les Miserables expects us to rise to that level of seriousness, which is impossible for those too clever to take values seriously. Or, as another writer put it, "kill reverence, and you've killed the hero in man."

HT: Irfan Khawaja

Sad news for Pasadenans

Barney's Ltd., one of the city's best and oldest restaurants, has closed.

Akhil Amar’s Unwritten Constitution

Akhil Amar reminds me of the little girl who had a little curl in the middle of her forehead, and who, when she was good, was very good, indeed—and when she was bad, she was horrid. Amar can be magnificent—brilliant, insightful, clever, inspiring, thought-provoking. And then he can be so jarringly wrong that one wonders how he could fail to see the obvious problems with what he says. And because these passages are so wrong, they run the risk of overshadowing his real accomplishment.

Speaking at Pepperdine tomorrow

I'll be speaking at Pepperdine Law School in Malibu tomorrow about "Why Libertarians Should Love Lincoln." All are welcome!

That's a bit of a provocative title, since there are certainly good reasons for libertarians to have reservations about Lincoln. But typically, libertarians criticize Lincoln for all the wrong reasons, as I hope to make clear.