Posted on 10/09/2002 12:31:28 AM PDT by GOPcapitalist
As you may know, the Claremonsters launched their latest and probably most widespread attack on Thomas DiLorenzo's "The Real Lincoln" this week with an article in National Review by Ken Masugi. The article follows the same line taken by the two previous Claremonsters tasked with smearing DiLorenzo by the Abratollah Jaffa - Tom Krannawitter and Richard Ferrier. Rather than appearing on the Claremont or Declaration Foundation websites like the previous attacks, this one made it into a more mainstream conservative publication. I read the review today in the new issue of NR and immediately experienced a sense of disgust that the publication would print such poorly written bilge. To critique DiLorenzo's book is one thing, but Masugi's article is little more than intellectually bankrupt rhetoric. Compared to the old days of NR when Frank Meyer took Lincoln to task and even when the Abratollah actually fought his battles himself, the lack of quality in the present piece is shocking and in need of address. A dissection and rebuttal of the latest and most prominent Claremonster attack on DiLorenzo's book is therefore in order. Excerpts from the NR article are printed in bold:
I. "Fortunately we are not dependent on DiLorenzo for an understanding of Lincoln's political philosophy; Lincoln himself summarized it in the Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural. For Lincoln, the preservation of equality of natural rights demands a strong government, but one limited in its powers. This founding principle leads politically to the need for consent of the governed, the basis of our republican government."
Contrary to Masugi's assertions, the Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural were not reflections of Lincoln's political philosophy but rather his rhetorical gifts. Above all, Lincoln was a pragmatic politician who played the games of politics with amazing skill and frequency. His asserted devotion to a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" in the Gettysburg speech makes a brilliant rhetorical point, but does not reflect Lincoln's own political behavior in any sense. Lincoln went to war to prevent the formation of a government by a clear majority of the southern people and imposed military reign in its place upon conquest of that region. Such behavior further makes Masugi's claim that Lincoln's political philosophy revolved around principles of "the need for consent of the governed" absurd.
Lincoln did advocate and exercise his power in a strong government, but the limits in its power that Masugi speaks of were severely lacking. One such case happened famously in Lincoln's shunning of a court ruling contrary to his assumed and unconstitutional unilateral suspension of habeas corpus. Following the violation of citizen's equal rights before the law in Maryland, Justice Roger Taney authored the opinion of Ex Parte Merryman for the US Circuit Court and had a copy hand delivered to Lincoln himself. Lincoln shunned the decision, though the court in its proper role had exercised a perfectly legitimate and constitutionally sound limitation on government powers exercised through the executive and military. The incident is but a single of many virtually unrestrained exercises of power by Lincoln during his administration.
II. "DiLorenzo then complains of the war measures Lincoln took after secession: military tribunals, restrictions on civil liberties, and the suppression of newspapers. But he doesn't mention the South's suppression of discussion about abolition"
In this complaint Masugi commits a fallacious line of argument, and perhaps intentionally. He notes DiLorenzo's complaint with Lincoln, responds with the assertion that the south "did it too," and moves on as if the issue has been settled while simultaneously criticizing DiLorenzo for failing to write about the South's shortcomings. Only one problem - DiLorenzo's book was never about the South's shortcomings and never sought to take up that issue in the first place. It was about Lincoln though, and despite Masugi's best efforts to divert attention away from the validity of DiLorenzo's complaints with Lincoln, they remain unaddressed in his supposed critique. Yet again, DiLorenzo's argument remains unaddressed by Masugi.
III. "DiLorenzo also contends that Lincoln violated international law in his "savage" conduct of the war. Not once does DiLorenzo entertain the thought that a disunited America might have become prey for the designs of European imperial powers, which would have put an end to the experiment in self-government"
Masugi employs a clear and apparently intentional distraction tactic to divert attention away from DiLorenzo's original argument - war crimes under Lincoln's command. Notice that his "response" to DiLorenzo on the issue is a wholly unrelated reference to fears of European imperialism in North America - an issue that has very little if anything to do with DiLorenzo's commentary about war crimes and fails to address it in any significant way.
IV. "And for the destruction caused by Sherman's march through Georgia, historian Victor Davis Hanson has observed: 'It is a hard thing for contemporary liberalism to envision war as not always evil, but as sometimes very necessary - and very necessarily brutal if great evil is to disappear.'"
Masugi's comment here comes as if an arbitrary rhetorical expression constitutes enough to dismiss a factually formulated argument. It doesn't, and Masugi's chosen quote conveys little more than excuse making of an "ends justify means" variety. By implication of his quote, Masugi seems to be attempting to cast DiLorenzo's critique of Lincoln's style of warfare as a view of "contemporary liberalism." Nothing could be further from the truth, as the distinction of justly waged war and unjustly waged war comes directly from traditional conservative Christian moral absolutism, not modern liberalism.
Thomas Aquinas, a famed Christian philosopher and ethicist of the scholastic age, set forth the qualifications of a morally waged war. Aquinas reasoned that a war may be justly waged when three conditions are met: that of sovereign authority to do so, that of a just cause for its being waged, and thirdly "it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil" Aquinas cites St. Augustine in giving examples of the wicked waging of war: "The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are rightly condemned in war." Many such elements, including drives for vengeance and harm and the lust for power exhibited their ugly heads in the brand of warfare waged against civilians by northern troops.
Even if one believes that the North had fought for the just end of freeing the slaves (it did not do so according to no less a source than Lincoln himself), and even if the North's war was waged duly under proper authority, its immoral waging renders the war unjust. Aquinas states this clearly in his writings: "For it may happen that the war is declared by the legitimate authority, and for a just cause, and yet be rendered unlawful through a wicked intention." DiLorenzo also readily admits in his book that had the war been waged to free the slaves, had it been properly conducted, and had it been waged in a moral way, it would have been justified. His argument, which he supports by citing the rampant Northern war crimes, demonstrates that this was simply not the case, therefore making the North's waging of war unjust and immoral. Yet again, this argument of DiLorenzo remains unaddressed by Masugi.
V. "But why would Lincoln indulge in these criminal actions? Since he was a racist and had no great interest in freeing the slaves, DiLorenzo concludes, his "real agenda" must have been the imposition of a "mercantilist/Whig" high tariff economic system"
Masugi's assertion here is a clear case of scarecrow construction, but first let us examine the conclusions he attributes to DiLorenzo but apparently disputes himself. The fact of Lincoln's racism (racism being defined by the belief that a certain skin color instills qualifies conditions of superiority in that skin color over another) is thoroughly supported by Lincoln's statements. Among them are the following:
"I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position." - Lincoln at Ottowa, August 21, 1858Next we may turn to Lincoln's position on the issue of freeing the slaves. I have recognized many times before that Lincoln very clearly had a passive moral opposition to slavery. Politically, he took a fairly firm stance in opposition to its expansion into the territories. Beyond that, Lincoln played politics, which led him to adopt positions opposed to the abolition of slavery and even engage in efforts to prolong the institution's existence. One such case of the latter came in 1861 when Lincoln endorsed - in his inaugural address of all places - a recently passed constitutional amendment that stated"Negro equality! Fudge!! How long, in the government of a God, great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagoguism as this?" - Lincoln, speech fragments, circa 1859
"No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."The measure would have effectively prevented any future amendment abolishing slavery, likely extending the institution years if not decades beyond what would otherwise have been its fate had the measure been ratified. Lincoln's involvement in this constitutional amendment extended far beyond simply endorsing it though. Lincoln himself was the motivation behind its introduction in committee several months earlier, as is indicated by the senator who introduced it, William Seward. Following the proposal's introduction, Seward wrote to Lincoln to inform him of his actions stating "I offered three propositions which seemed to me to cover the ground of the suggestion made by you, through Mr. Weed, as I understand it." In other words, Seward introduced the measure after being informed of it by Thurlow Weed, who conveyed it as a message from Lincoln, who he met with in Springfield a few days earlier. When the amendment passed Congress two months later on the eve of Lincoln's inauguration, his support of the measure was further cited as the main reason for its success. Eyewitness Henry Adams wrote of the event, "some careful manipulation, as well as the direct influence of the new President, was needed before this measure...could be passed."
Having exposed the error in these assumptions about Lincoln that had been contradicted by DiLorenzo though denied by the Claremonsters, we may now turn to Masugi's argument in this statement. In the simplest of terms Masugi is asserting that, holding the other two assertions to be true, DiLorenzo concludes by default that Lincoln's real motivation was the Whig economic agenda. This assertion is a straw man, as DiLorenzo's argument on Lincoln's economic beliefs is based upon Lincoln's espousal of those beliefs throughout his career - not some random conclusion that since it wasn't X and Y, it must by default be Z. Extensive passages of DiLorenzo's book are devoted to Lincoln's career as a proponent of protectionism, and Lincoln's own words right up to the war indicate he held this belief strongly:
"I was an old Henry Clay tariff whig. In old times I made more speeches on that subject, than on any other. I have not since changed my views." - Lincoln to Edward Wallace, October 11, 1859Lincoln espoused his tariff views strongly in a speech given only weeks before of his inauguration. It pertained to the Morrill tariff bill, which had long since passed the House and was up for debate in the Senate. In the plainest of language and on the eve of the war, Lincoln told his audience that the tariff, which the South vehemently opposed, was a top priority:
"According to my political education, I am inclined to believe that the people in the various sections of the country should have their own views carried out through their representatives in Congress, and if the consideration of the Tariff bill should be postponed until the next session of the National Legislature, no subject should engage your representatives more closely than that of a tariff."- Lincoln at Pittsburgh, February 15, 1861VI. "The South's call for low tariffs became a demand for preserving an agricultural economy based on slavery. To view the conflict between North and South as primarily one of two incompatible economic systems obscures the central place of slavery."
Masugi fails to substantiate his first assertion and proceeds as if it were fact upon his statement. In reality, common sense economics dictate that Southern opposition to the tariff stemmed from the economic detriments incurred by the South by the presence of protectionist industrial tariffs. A protectionist tariff functions by raising the price of a foreign import by way of the tax imposed upon it. When raised by a tariff, a comparatively cheap foreign good's price may become equal to or higher than an otherwise more expensive but protected domestically produced substitute. Accordingly the market shifts to favor the protected domestic good, which is, thanks to the tariff, the cheaper of the two. That domestic good will still cost more than the foreign substitute absent the tariff, therefore persons who stand to gain from the presence of a cheaper foreign good will oppose the tariff while the protected industries will support it. That is exactly what the South faced in 1861. Tariffs benefited northern industries by shifting the market to them and denying persons outside of the northern industries the benefits of free trade.
Masugi's second assertion is itself ironic, as it better applies to his own position when flipped than to any tariff-oriented argument - To view the conflict between North and South as one of slavery and virtually nothing else, as Masugi does, obscures the complexity of the conflict itself by denying even the simplest consideration of any factor beyond that narrow pre-set parameter. To be sure, reducing the entirety of the war to a tariff difference is not without its own fallacy, but just as much if not more is true of slavery reductionism, and the latter is firmly adhered to as an immovable doctrine by many in the Claremonster school. Rather than objecting to attempts of another to interpret the conflict as exclusively economic, they seem to object to any interpretation of the conflict that is not exclusively slavery.
VII. "Progressivism was based on the same historical-evolutionary brand of thought, dating back to Rousseau, that justified black slavery as the cornerstone of Confederate civilization. And Progressivism begat modern megastate liberalism."
Masugi's argument in this case, that leftism emerged out of the same strain of thought as the confederacy, is not only bizarre but wholly unsubstantiated in his article. He simply asserts it to be so, accepts his self-assertion as fact, and moves on as if it were the case. The entirety of his statement may be rejected as quickly as the whim in which it was made. Quod gratis asseritur gratis negatur.
If one does, however, investigate this assertion further, its falsehoods are similarly evident. Masugi's assertion is presumably based upon the writings of the Abratollah, which basically attempt to force a bizarre theory on the evolution of liberalism from John C. Calhoun to the Confederacy to both Adolph Hitler and modern leftism. Jaffa's attempted connection is uneasy, if not wholly unsubstantiated. Any honest examination of the political evolution that led to Hitler and National Socialism traces its origins to the synthesis of Germanic nationalism and Hegelian Marxism by a group of relatively obscure far-left political philosophers who wrote in Germany during the first world war. All of these writers were direct products of various communist movements drawn upon what their writings asserted, Marx und Hegel. The theory of national socialism, as with its counterpart theory of socialism that still dominates modern leftism, emerged heavily out of the life breathed into it by Karl Marx and his successors. As evidenced by the writings of Marx himself, the marxist movement's interpretation of the War Between the States has been thoroughly aligned with the North, not the South, since the very first shot was fired in 1861. They saw the Northern cause, albeit through shaded glasses, as being purely a struggle of liberation for the working man and sung praises of that which came out of it under Lincoln's guidance. Marx himself expressed this interpretation in a letter to Lincoln in 1864:
"The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world." - Marx, November 29, 1864Contrary to Masugi's interpretation, Marx, in the plainest of terms, saw his leftist cause advanced into a new stage of historical evolution by the Northern victory over the Confederacy he detested and spent his time attacking throughout the war.
VIII. "Some libertarians would not see a paradox in a liberty to own slaves and thus to enslave oneself: This is precisely DiLorenzo's position stripped of all its pretensions"
This attempt to characterize a position of DiLorenzo is yet another unsupported assertion of Masugi's, made on a whim and inserted as if it were so by its very presence alone. Masugi offers no evidence though that anything of DiLorenzo's even remotely approaches that position. Any honest reading of The Real Lincoln recognizes that, when applicable, DiLorenzo is harshly critical of slavery itself as an institution and even acknowledges that fighting a war to end it could be justice, if it were truly the reason for that war. This however was not the case with Lincoln.
IX. "Others on the right, such as Russell Kirk, Robert Bork, and Robert Kraynak have criticized the Declaration for being French, nihilistic, or irreligious."
Masugi's assertion here is aimed at a branch of conservatives who have taken Constitution-oriented views of proper American government, citing the Declaration as an important however somewhat problematic document. The Abratollah and his followers tend to hold otherwise, forwarding an argument that orients American government around the Declaration and asserts the document to have been perfected by the ideals embodied in Abraham Lincoln. In actuality, the major traditional conservative criticism of the DoI relates to its thoroughly Lockean philosophical base. Instead they turn to the much more solid and traditional philosophical bases found elsewhere in the founding documents. The Jaffa school has instead long tried to reconcile and rectify the Lockean problem, often through Lincoln as mentioned above. As a side note, for those who wonder what problems Locke, a figure frequently embraced by many conservatives, presents - read the logical fulfillment of his ideas as expressed in David Hume's Enquiry. From there it will become fairly obvious how post-modern leftism emerged in later centuries and the empiricist predecessors out of which it stems.
X. "But in two magnificent works, Crisis of the House Divided and A New Birth of Freedom, Harry V. Jaffa captured Lincoln's teaching about our founding principles. Jaffa demonstrated how tradition, majoritarianism, revelation, and latter-day states' rights arguments cannot provide for liberty, human excellence, and republican limited government as well as the natural-rights teaching of the Declaration as sublimely articulated by Abraham Lincoln"
In this concluding sentence, Masugi inadvertently concedes what this is really all about - a combination plug for the Abratollah's books and an intellectually light weight trashing of a major opposition, found in DiLorenzo. At least this statement of Masugi's is consistent with the rest of his book "review" - it consists of nothing more than a blind assertion of whim. Nowhere does Masugi bother to explain how Jaffa "demonstrated" all the things he alleges, nor does he even elaborate upon them. He simply asserts them to be true. The conclusion gives an appearance of an intention that the reader, at this point, to accept the Abratollah's word on faith, conclude the error of contrary positions by default, and join the Claremonster in its practice of genuflecting toward their worldly leader, his secular deity of Lincoln, and the glorious concept of "The Union" embodied in all three. As with all false gods though, their fraudulence is immediately revealed by exposure to a simple dose of truth and common sense.
Uh, Walt. Those are legislature and convention votes.
The referendum totals I have records on are as follows:
TEXAS: 46,153 for, 14,747 against
VIRGINIA: 132,201 for, 37,451 against
TENNESSEE: 104,471 for, 47,183 against
All three carried in landslides, Walt.
I've got to check Nevins
Have you found yourself a new yankee historian in the wake of "Noam" McPherson having been discredited?
but you are going to be very embarrassed.
Surely he will not be as embarrassed as you should be after mistaking legislative votes for referendums.
Advocating the unlawful secession of the states is treason.
Walt
...interesting choice of words from a guy who just responded to a list of legislative votes by asking if Mississippi only had 100 residents.
that doesn't show popular sentiment.
Sure it does. Representative government, at least to some degre,e and especially on issues with overwhelming support, tend to refect their constituents. Further, popular sentiment for secession is clearly shown in those three states that held referendums, where secession passed in a landslide. Amazingly, two of those three states, Virginia and Tennessee, were border states where sentiments for secession were comparatively weaker than the South Carolinas of the deep south, and they both passed it in landslides!
The evidence of these votes along with political reality and common sense dictate that secession was strongly favored in the confederate states. If you dispute that, Walt, the burden is upon you to make your case. You have not done so nor do I anticipate you will do so in any credible way. But that is your problem, not mine.
Good example of a logical fallacy.
Masugi is right in pointing out DiLorenzo's neglect of Confederate abuses and violations of civil rights. This makes DiLorenzo's book shallow, simply abuse of Lincoln, rather than a serious consideration of how governments behave in times of Civil War. A true historian of philosophical temperament wouldn't have left out the context of Lincoln's actions. Such a philosophical historian would look for examples of leaders in similar situations to Lincoln, like Davis, and compare the responses of different leaders to such circumstances.
Consequently such a historian would have a realistic yardstick to judge Lincoln against, and wouldn't make the mistake of confusing the expedients that all statesmen resort to when their nations are in extremely hazardous situations with their political philosophies.
DiLorenzo turns a great national tragedy into a a melodrama with a cardboard villain. That's why his book will be forgotten (after he's made his pile) as all such polemics are.
It's also not the case that Masugi indulges in a "straw man" construction in explaining DiLorenzo's concentration on Lincoln's Whig principles. It is not a "straw man." It seems to be a pretty logical and clear explanation of a logical method: Lincoln's motivation couldn't be X or Y, therefore it must be Z. Of course, Masugi doesn't have access to the internal operations of DiLorenzo's mind, but his view is not much of an oversimplification, nor is it in any way invidious.
It describes one of the ways the human mind works. The fact that DiLorenzo has assembled materials about Lincoln's Whiggery doesn't mean that he was working inductively, examining millions of facts until the a-ha or eureka experience occurs.
It's common practice to start with a problem and examine various hypotheses to see if they explain the observed phenomena. Actually, it would have been better had DiLorenzo more rigorously worked by this method. My suspicion is that he was just trying to portray Lincoln in the worst possible light. He seems to have passed over other interpretations in his rush to use the material that he views as most damaging. Speculations about how people think are bound to be simplified and debatable, but they are unavoidable in criticism.
DiLorenzo also readily admits in his book that had the war been waged to free the slaves, had it been properly conducted, and had it been waged in a moral way, it would have been justified.
Good for him, but you don't tell us what was so objectionable or unprecedented about the conduct of the war. Atrocities were certainly not more common in the war than in other wars, at least on the Union side. Blockades and the distruction of property and materiel that could be used in war were also not unprecedented practices. The war was bloody and destructive and tragic, but other conflicts that came before and after it were worse. Casualties were horrible, but the guilt or responsibility for them can't wholly be assessed to one side.
Moreover such a war to free the slaves would have been severely condemned by Southerners and their sympathizers. Much of the contemporary criticism of Lincoln's actions involved attacks on emancipation. In Confederate eyes it was one of his earliest and worst crimes. It's a modern-day, armchair practice to say the war would have been just if certain conditions had been fulfilled, which actually could not be fulfilled. Seen in the context of the time, such a revolutionary war would have been more strongly condemned than what actually happened.
And somehow, I don't quite believe Tom DiLorenzo would have signed on for such a war. Not given all his faith in secession and all his other criticisms of Lincoln. Hummell used this "I would have supported the war if ..." gambit in his own book on the war. But other people are free, on the basis of the books they wrote, to dispute whether such sentiments are in accord with the other arguments such authors make.
Since you haven't provided Masugi's article, I can't comment on the rest. Jaffa does have his cult, but Rockwellism is yet more cultic, and Rockwell has determined to elevate DiLorenzo to a similar status. One can certainly disagree with Jaffa's arguments. He does stretch things some times, and can be too much a cheerleader or even a hero-worshipper. But for better or worse, he does view things philosophically, and also doesn't lose sight of practicalities and the historical context. He certainly does see farther and deeper than a dime-store polemicist like DiLorenzo.
...not to mention accurate.
And it's not exactly fair to charge others with not responding to your arguments when you don't provide Masugi's article.
I would happily provide it if I could, but it's only in the NR print edition. I looked for it on their website and all they have is a short intro on one of those "check out what's in this week's issue" type pages. Accordingly, I did the next best thing by excerpting Masugi's arguments in detail. If yo read his piece, you will likely find that I presented them fairly and accurately.
Masugi is right in pointing out DiLorenzo's neglect of Confederate abuses and violations of civil rights.
If it were a book about the Confederacy, he would be. But it was a book about Lincoln, not the Confederacy. Whether or not he should have included it aside, you are still missing the real point - Masugi's "rebuttal" of DiLorenzo on the issue of Lincoln's abuses was more of a non-rebuttal. He did not address anything DiLorenzo charged against Lincoln and instead responded with a Clintonesque "they did it too" line. The fallacious nature of his argumentation should be readily apparent to any halfway intelligent reader.
It's also not the case that Masugi indulges in a "straw man" construction in explaining DiLorenzo's concentration on Lincoln's Whig principles. It is not a "straw man." It seems to be a pretty logical and clear explanation of a logical method: Lincoln's motivation couldn't be X or Y, therefore it must be Z.
And that is his straw man. You restated Masugi's presentation of the argument accurately, but that is precisely the problem. Masugi attributes the "not X or Y and therefore Z by default" argument to DiLorenzo, asserting it to be the basis for his Whig economics commentary. This is a straw man as it is not the argument used by DiLorenzo in his book to reach the Whig economics issue. To the contrary, DiLorenzo's book reaches the economic issue by detailing Lincoln's political support for tariffs etc. through his career. DiLorenzo devotes extensive space to making the case that these political beliefs heavily influenced Lincoln's decision of war, yet Masugi purports this case to have been a default conclusion after other alternatives were rendered untenable in DiLorenzo's mind. That is a classic straw man - attribute a weaker argument with similar conclusions to one's opponent and attack it in the place of his actual argument.
Good for him, but you don't tell us what was so objectionable or unprecedented about the conduct of the war.
DiLorenzo's book does so though. He writes extensively on the subject, citing such things as Sherman's execution orders against civilians, the burning of cities and towns...in general, the intentional waging of warfare against civilians.
Atrocities were certainly not more common in the war than in other wars, at least on the Union side.
Irrelevant. The morality of a war's conduct is independent of its relative position along side other wars. In suggesting otherwise, you are retreating yet again into the philosophically unsound relativist "they all do it" position.
Moreover such a war to free the slaves would have been severely condemned by Southerners and their sympathizers.
You are missing the point entirely. The motivation of emancipation is a just one independent of its political pragmatism, and that is the issue at hand in a justly waged war war. And somehow, I don't quite believe Tom DiLorenzo would have signed on for such a war.
Such speculation is provocative but substantially bankrupt argumentation. It is a non-issue whether DiLorenzo would have signed on living at the time, as he did not live at that time and could not live at that time if he wanted to. At most, he can state and argue the qualifiers of what would have been necessary to constitute a just war or to make an unjust war just. DiLorenzo did just that in his book.
Since you haven't provided Masugi's article, I can't comment on the rest.
If you wish to read it, you may do so in this week's National Review print edition. Most newsstands will provide you with a copy for a couple of dollars.
Jaffa does have his cult, but Rockwellism is yet more cultic, and Rockwell has determined to elevate DiLorenzo to a similar status.
You seem exhibit an inability to move beyond the tu quoque line tonight, which is unfortunate as it provides an extremely weak form of argumentation for your side. This is, what, the third time you've pulled the "they all do it" or "they do it too" line in this post? Surely you see the fallacy in this - responding to an argument with "they do it too" is itself a non response due to its failure to address anything substantial about the argument to which it purports to respond. At best it serves as a diversion away from the original argument and nothing more, hence its weakness.
But for better or worse, he does view things philosophically, and also doesn't lose sight of practicalities and the historical context. He certainly does see farther and deeper than a dime-store polemicist like DiLorenzo.
I'll have to disagree with you there, at least as far as things go with Jaffa in recent times. He seems to have fallen into an historical trap that permits Lincoln to attain near-infallability. It's the whole "Lincoln can do no wrong" mentality and it has led Jaffa in recent times, not to mention his followers, to deny clear cut simple factual shortcomings on Lincoln's part.
A perfect case was Lincoln's clear inconsistency on the racial superiority issue during his debates with Douglas. In two consecutive debates, Lincoln took inescapably contradictory positions to appeal to his audiences. Douglas called him upon it at the next debate, causing Lincoln to squirm for a while before he obscured the inconsistency by burying it in political spin. I've seen the Jaffaites face this incident time and time again and have asked some about it myself. Every time, rather than conceding the plain language inconsistency and debate shortcoming of Lincoln, they retreat into an absurdly reduced and unworkable argument of semantics, all of it designed to show that Lincoln really wasn't being inconsistent. Why? Because it has become harder for them to admit that Lincoln could have erred than to pretend he didn't through propped up yet utterly nonsensical fantasy arguments.
The same situation appears with them every time the habeas corpus suspension is brought up as well. With the mention of that issue and Lincoln in a sentence together, persons who on any given day would espouse a politically conservative strict constructionist if not downright literalist reading of the Constitution suddenly embrace among the most tortured word contortions imaginable to further the line that Lincoln was not acting unconstitutionally when he suspended habeas corpus. Why? Because again, it has become harder for them to admit that Lincoln erred than to pretend he didn't through propped up fantasy arguments.
Ya. They believed it was ok to hang people without a fair trial.
Call me a yellow dog whatever if you like. But your hateful rants paint you as some kind of mad-dog.
Keep your powder dry!
I called it in post 11 :^D
Seven were convicted. Over 40 were hung! And that's not even counting the Germans who only tried to get the hell out of Texas and were hunted down and shot.
Speculation about how someone else thinks can't be proven or disproven, but it's probably inevitable in writing a review and it's much more of a side issue, not something to be singled out for attack. It's not that Masugi substitutes a weaker argument for a stronger, but that he tries to understand how DiLorenzo proceeded. He may or may not have grasped things, I don't think that means he's trying to put the thumbscrews to the man.
Your argument seems to be that because DiLorenzo has data about much Lincoln's Whiggery that is somehow prima facie evidence of Lincoln's motivation for fighting the war. But we have much data about all of Lincoln's, or Polk's or McKinley's or Wilson's or FDR's or LBJ's or GWB's belief about a wide variety of issues, and it's not automatically clear that, for example, Polk's opinions on religion, or GWB's views on social issues, or Wilson's racial views or FDR's economic policies determined their decisions to go to war. This has to be determined by looking at the actual course of events that led to war.
DiLorenzo carefully picks documents out of a much larger collection to "prove" his point. The random letter to a tariff supporter is given importance far beyond what its context warrants. A speech on how the functions of government will go on is erroneously read as representing a thirst for ever more tariff revenue. From all I've seen, Di Lorenzo's performance is pretty disgraceful.
The whole argument that a war to liberate the slaves would have been regarded as a legitimate war by DiLorenzo is a dubious redherring he throws in. Given his support for secession and state's rights, I suspect he like others in his camp would find such a war equally reprehensible, not just at the time, but even today, were he honest. And though the war did eventually become one for liberation of the slaves, that doesn't cause DiLorenzo to moderate his attacks. As with Hummel, it's a way of doffing one's cap to contemporary political correctness while defending causes that outrage today's PC consciousness. Such a war would exemplify all the "Jacobinism" and executive power that he accuses Lincoln of. I can't see into the man's soul, but there is an odor of hypocrisy about DiLorenzo's argument.
The problem with applying just war theory to history is that political leaders can't apply the brakes to wars once they begin. Passions are too high and circumstances too unstable and perilous to simply go home at a point when moral balances change. The war was just in its inception. Whether or not Lincoln had the right to force the rebel states back under elected federal authority he clearly did have the right to combat and prevent their efforts to promote rebellion in other states and put them under Confederate control. Once this objective was secured, the war became a war of liberation, an objective that DiLorenzo asserts was justified.
There is a gray area between "war crimes" and legitimate and accepted means of winning a war which may not be particularly nice or kind. DiLorenzo and his kind are too quick to assume that actions committed by Union forces fall into the former and not the latter category.
Your quote by Augustine is very pretty, but I wish you would stand back a minute and try read it through critical eyes. He seems to be saying the reasons for war and the things that happen in war are all "rightly condemned in war." Wasn't every war fought in an "unpacific spirit?" Doesn't "the fever of revolt, the lust of power" sum up the spirit of the early Confederacy? "The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance" had taken hold in the guerrilla wars of Missouri and Kansas and would have gone on even had Lincoln remained passive and appeasing towards the Confederacy. Lincoln was clearly no angel or saint, nor would any of America's wartime leaders fit that mold. Augustine may have the yardstick for getting into heaven, but it's most unrealistic in judging wartime leaders. Like has to be compared with like, and the circumstances which a Lincoln faced were very different from those faced by Chester Arthur or Calvin Coolidge.
I am readily prepared to admit that Lincoln made mistakes. And I do admit that he was a product of our political system and some of his earlier utterances reflect the striving to win elections, rather than the highest moral purpose, but I don't see what's gained by ignoring the context of the times and the perilous situation of the nation in the 1860s to deliver up a condemnation of a dead man. To properly assess Lincoln's actions during the war, we have to understand that it was a war, a civil war, a situation in which both sides took extraordinary measures. Not to have done so meant defeat and humilation.
American libertarian history is a simplistic tale of shining heroes and evil villains. It's a stirring story, but people living in less fortunate countries understand that things aren't so simple. There are times when order breaks down and chaos and the struggle for power engulf society, and measures must be taken to restore the legitimate authority of the laws. When both sides indulge in such measures, it seems perverse to condemn only one side, particularly if it is the side of legitimate constitutional authority. If we ever face such a situation again, you may understand better what was involved.
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