Posted on 09/06/2003 9:14:08 AM PDT by quidnunc
Abraham Lincoln is thought of by many as not only the greatest American statesman but as a great conservative. He was neither. Understanding this is a necessary condition for any genuinely American conservatism. When Lincoln took office, the American polity was regarded as a compact between sovereign states which had created a central government as their agent, hedging it in by a doctrine of enumerated powers. Since the compact between the states was voluntary, secession was considered an option by public leaders in every section of the Union during the antebellum period. Given this tradition — deeply rooted in the Declaration of Independence — a great statesman in 1860 would have negotiated a settlement with the disaffected states, even if it meant the withdrawal of some from the Union. But Lincoln refused even to accept Confederate commissioners, much less negotiate with them. Most of the Union could have been kept together. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas voted to remain in the Union even after the Confederacy was formed; they reversed themselves only when Lincoln decided on a war of coercion. A great statesman does not seduce his people into a needless war; he keeps them out of it.
When the Soviet Union dissolved by peaceful secession, it was only 70 years old — the same age as the United States when it dissolved in 1860. Did Gorbachev fail as a statesman because he negotiated a peaceful dissolution of the U.S.S.R.? Likewise, if all states west of the Mississippi were to secede tomorrow, would we praise, as a great statesman, a president who refused to negotiate and launched total war against the civilian population merely to preserve the Union? The number of Southerners who died as a result of Lincoln’s invasion was greater than the total of all Americans killed by Hitler and Tojo. By the end of the war, nearly one half of the white male population of military age was either dead or mutilated. No country in World War II suffered casualties of that magnitude.
Not only would Lincoln not receive Confederate commissioners, he refused, for three crucial months, to call Congress. Alone, he illegally raised money, illegally raised troops, and started the war. To crush Northern opposition, he suspended the writ of habeas corpus for the duration of the war and rounded up some 20,000 political prisoners. (Mussolini arrested some 12,000 but convicted only 1,624.) When the chief justice of the Supreme Court declared the suspension blatantly unconstitutional and ordered the prisoners released, Lincoln ordered his arrest. This American Caesar shut down over 300 newspapers, arrested editors, and smashed presses. He broke up state legislatures; arrested Democratic candidates who urged an armistice; and used the military to elect Republicans (including himself, in 1864, by a margin of around 38,000 popular votes). He illegally created a “state” in West Virginia and imported a large army of foreign mercenaries. B.H. Liddell Hart traces the origin of modern total war to Lincoln’s decision to direct war against the civilian population. Sherman acknowledged that, by the rules of war taught at West Point, he was guilty of war crimes punishable by death. But who was to enforce those rules?
These actions are justified by nationalist historians as the energetic and extraordinary efforts of a great helmsman rising to the painful duty of preserving an indivisible Union. But Lincoln had inherited no such Union from the Framers. Rather, like Bismarck, he created one with a policy of blood and iron. What we call the “Civil War” was in fact America’s French Revolution, and Lincoln was the first Jacobin president. He claimed legitimacy for his actions with a “conservative” rhetoric, rooted in an historically false theory of the Constitution which held that the states had never been sovereign. The Union created the states, he said, not the states the Union. In time, this corrupt and corrupting doctrine would suck nearly every reserved power of the states into the central government. Lincoln seared into the American mind an ideological style of politics which, through a sort of alchemy, transmuted a federative “union” of states into a French revolutionary “nation” launched on an unending global mission of achieving equality. Lincoln’s corrupt constitutionalism and his ideological style of politics have, over time, led to the hollowing out of traditional American society and the obscene concentration of power in the central government that the Constitution was explicitly designed to prevent.
A genuinely American conservatism, then, must adopt the project of preserving and restoring the decentralized federative polity of the Framers rooted in state and local sovereignty. The central government has no constitutional authority to do most of what it does today. The first question posed by an authentic American conservative politics is not whether a policy is good or bad, but what agency (the states or the central government — if either) has the authority to enact it. This is the principle of subsidiarity: that as much as possible should be done by the smallest political unit.
The Democratic and Republican parties are Lincolnian parties. Neither honestly questions the limits of federal authority to do this or that. In 1861, the central government broke free from what Jefferson called “the chains of the Constitution,” and we have, consequently, inherited a fractured historical memory. There are now two Americanisms: pre-Lincolnian and post-Lincolnian. The latter is Jacobinism by other means. Only the former can lay claim to being the primordial American conservatism.
David W. Livingston is a professor of philosophy at Emory University and the author of Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium (University of Chicago Press).
free dixie,sw
the southland by ACCIDENT created the first modern de-segregated military forces.
that is the TRUTH, if you can bear it.
free dixie,sw
about the same, i would guess.
free dixie,sw
i will NOT ask again.
free dixie,sw
you have found your niche in life, a semi-smart spellchecker!
free dixie,sw
by 1860, chattal slavery was dying an UN-lamented death, as a result of the Industrial Revolution coming to agriculture.
BTW,a former chair of history at Tuskeegee University publically stated that in "1860, there were not 10,000 people in all of the USA that cared a damn about the plight of the slaves".
they SHOULD have, but they did NOT.
free dixie,sw
we rebs have the damnyankees on the run again!
as usual, the damnyankees, dumb-bunnies, liars & PC-loonies are out in force over here.
there are even a few new MINNOWS swimming with the SHARKS tonight! MMMMM, MMMM, good!
free dixie, sw
Slavery is the antithesis of liberty; hence, an entire segment of the population had its Rights subrogated by another segment of the population.
When a state willfully suppresses the inherent, inalienable God-given Rights of an entire segment of its population, in such a vile and inhumane manner, it ceases to be just.
The Government *should* exists to preserve the free exercise of our Rights; ergo, individual Rights *should* supercede the wishes of the State.
In other words, Lincoln was right and embracing a Conservative tradition (i.e., recognizing the true origin of rights).
Folks can banter all they want about state's rights versus the power of the federal government, but they cannot claim that the state had the "Right" to deny Rights to a particular group of people (without just cause or as a result of punitive measures for criminal activity), without placing into peril their own claim of inalienable Rights.
NON-SEQUITUR, LOVER OF FONER AND OTHER MARXISTS.
Charles Brown leninist-international@lists.wwpublish.com
Fri, 15 Dec 2000 10:12:56 -0500
[Eric Foner is a preeminent Marxist historian of the U.S. Civil War.]
The Nation Magazine, COMMENT | January 1, 2001=20
Partisanship Rules
by ERIC FONER =20
July 10, 2002, 9:35 a.m.
The Left’s Lion
Eric Foner’s history.
By Ronald Radosh
EDITOR’S NOTE: This review appears in the July 1, 2002, issue of National Review.
Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World, by Eric Foner (Hill and Wang, 256 pp., $24)
Eric Foner of Columbia University is one of our nation's most acclaimed historians. A past president of both the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians, he is best known as the author of pioneering revisionist studies of Reconstruction and of Republican ideology before the Civil War, as well as other books on ideology and politics in the Civil War era. He is also one of the foremost exponents of what has become known as "radical history": the euphemism of choice for Marxist and neo-Marxist historians who seek to overturn the old mainstream political history.
* * *
Foner, as he reveals, was a bona fide red-diaper baby. His father, he relates, lost his job teaching history at City College of New York after a state legislative committee held hearings about the influence of Communists in higher education. (He does not mention that the hearings coincided with the time of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, when Foner's father was touting the party line that FDR and Britain -- not Hitler and the Nazis -- were the real enemy.) Ironically, the historian hired to replace him was none other than the young Richard Hofstadter, who, years later, became Foner's mentor at Columbia University's graduate school, and whose position at Columbia Foner now holds.
* * *
In Foner's eyes, to be opposed to Communism is in fact to be an apologist for an American Empire. Thus, his chapter entitled "The Russians Write a New History" exhibits his love for the USSR of Mikhail Gorbachev, and his sadness about its demise. As a guest professor under the Gorbachev regime, Foner was thrilled by a society in which Russians embarked "on the task of reconceptualizing their nation's past" -- shedding the Stalinist past while remaining true to the ideal of Communism, rehabilitating Bukharin and a supposedly humanist early form of Marxism-Leninism. And yet, Foner is upset that the new Soviet scholars dropped concepts such as "class," never seemed to mention "imperialism," and even got rid of the distinction between bourgeois and socialist ideologies and replaced them with a "search for 'universal human values'" that Foner sees as "oddly ahistorical."
Eric Foner, James McPherson and the other Marxist historians were carefully chosen as speakers because government officials know that these professors will give them the opinions they want to hear. Speaking for this school of historians, Foner said: "In the course of the past twenty years, American history has been remade. Inspired initially by the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s – which shattered the ‘consensus’ vision that had dominated historical writing – and influenced by new methods borrowed from other disciplines, American historians redefined the very nature of historical study."
News releases explained that the symposium "will explore new historical currents in linking the battlefield experience to such issues as the historical, social, economic, legal, cultural, and political forces and events that led to the Civil War" and "Sessions will focus on the institution of slavery."
Translation: A Civil Rights activist and Marxist historians will justify the need to reorient interpretations of Civil War battlefield sites away from military data to the "horrors of slavery."
This sad truth is evident from the identity of the historian who has been chosen by Disney Corp. to be its major consultant on the history to be taught at the Manassas theme park. He is none other than the notorious Eric Foner, distinguished Marxist-Leninist historian at Columbia University, and the country's most famous Marxist historian of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Foner, as might be gathered, is fanatically anti-South and a vicious smearer of the Southern cause. It was Foner who committed the unforgivable deed of writing the smear of the late great Mel Bradford as a "racist" and fascist for daring to be critical of the centralizing despotism of Abraham Lincoln.
Eric Foner is a member of the notorious Foner family of Marxist scholars and activists in New York City; one Foner was the head of the Communist- dominated Fur Workers Union; another the head of the Communist-dominated Drug and Hospital Workers Union; and two were Marxist-Leninist historians, one, Philip S. Foner, the author of volume of a party-line history of American labor.
Eisnerizing and Fonerizing Manassas has nothing to do, on any level, with free-market ideology or free-market economic development. This impudent statist-project designed to denigrate the South should be stopped: in the name of conservatism and of genuine free-markets.
Reading this reminded me of a C-Span "BookNotes" program on which Brian Lamb asked the president of the American Historical Association, Eric Foner, about his father, Jack. Foner claimed that Jack Foner was a man "with a social conscience" who made his living through public lectures and who, along with his brothers Phil and Moe, was persecuted during the McCarthy era. When Lamb asked Foner why they were persecuted, Foner responded that his father had supported the loyalist side in the Spanish Civil War. But no one was actually persecuted for siding with the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War. The Foner brothers, on the other hand, were fairly famous Communists, one a Communist Party labor historian and another a Communist Party union organizer and leader. It is a fact that, on orders from Moscow, Communist-controlled unions in the CIO opposed the Marshall Plan's effort to rebuild Western Europe. The Marshall Plan, it should be recalled, was in part designed to prevent Stalin's empire from absorbing Western Europe as it had its satellites in the east. That's why socialists like Walter Reuther purged the reds from the CIO and also why Communists like Foner's uncle came under FBI scrutiny -- i.e., why they were "persecuted" in the McCarthy era. That Communists, like the Foners, lied at the time was understandable. They had something to hide. But why are their children lying to this day?
This collection of occasional essays by noted Marxist historian Eric Foner provides useful insight into the ever-changing, if reliably utopian, progressive mind. Foner covers a range of subjects, including blacks and the U.S. Constitution, revisionist history in Russia and South Africa, American freedom in a global age, and why there is no socialism in America. The unifying themes are "the politics and purposes of historical understanding" and the relationship between the historian and his own world.
Foner's world is impeccably and indelibly progressive. Raised in a "Communist-oriented" family, young Eric "did not have to wait until the upheavals of the 1960s to discover the yawning gap" that separated America's claim to be a land of liberty from its social and political reality. Influenced by the Communist Party's fight against racism, his family had a "preoccupation with the past and present condition of our black fellow countrymen." In this environment Foner learned how a commitment to social justice can infuse one's view of history. In effect, it gave him a headstart on the road to academic distinction—he is a former president of both the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians. Such honors make him the preeminent tenured radical of his generation.
Foner is an old-line, "New Left" thinker. Social constructivism and cultural studies are not for him. The question who owns history, the burning question raised in the 1990s by controversies such as the Enola Gay exhibit and the Columbus quincentennial, is a multiculturalist distraction for committed leftists like Foner. Anyone reading this book for instruction on the philosophical questions raised by postmodernist scholarship will be disappointed. Still, cultural radicalism has its uses, and Foner is sympathetic to it. This is expressed here in his defense of historical revisionism, on which radical cultural studies depend, against a suspicious public that wants a celebratory national history.
Foner says such an attitude misunderstands the nature of historical study. Historical revisionism began with the ancient Greeks, he argues. More recently, Progressive Era icons Charles Beard and Carl Becker "demolished the notion that historical truth is fixed and permanent and that fact and interpretation can be sealed off from each other." Indeed the search for new perspectives is the "lifeblood of historical understanding." So each generation rewrites history to meet the needs of the times—"new political, social, and cultural imperatives."
Of course like all historical relativists, Foner presents this assertion as a matter of fact rather than interpretation. Moreover, he reassures us that history is not myth and invention but rests on commonly accepted professional standards. He observes: "Historical truth does exits [sic], not in the scientific sense but as a reasonable approximation of the past." Yet distrust of revisionism persists. The real problem is that people don't pay enough attention to academic historians. The "most difficult truth" for people outside the academy to accept, Foner laments, is that "there often exists more than one legitimate way of recounting past events." Who then owns history? "Everyone and no one—which is why the study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery."
More Marxist/Socialist 'Civil War History' Pt. II
Marxist historian Eric Foner, also noted in Curry's article bemoans the fact that older versions of the Battle of Gettysburg seem to paint the battle "as a morally neutral conflict between two equally honorable foes." Foner even complains that Ken Burns is too soft on the South!
MOMENT OF TRUTH
(For the Anti-American Left)
Every movement has its moment of truth. At an "anti-war" teach-in at Columbia last week, Anthropology professor Nicholas De Genova told 3,000 students and faculty, "Peace is not patriotic. Peace is subversive, because peace anticipates a very different world than the one in which we live--a world where the U.S. would have no place."
De Genova continued: "The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military. I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus."(1) This was a reference to the ambush of U.S. forces by an al-Qaeda warlord in Somalia in 1993. The Americans were there on a humanitarian mission to feed starving Somali Muslims. The al-Qaeda warlord was stealing the food and selling it on the black market. His forces killed 18 American soldiers and dragged their bodies through the streets in an act designed to humiliate their country. In short, America can do no good, and nothing that is done to America can be worse than it deserves.
The best that could be said of the crowd of Columbia faculty and students is that they did not react to Mogadishu remark (perhaps they did not know what "Mogadishu" referred to). But they "applauded loudly," when the same professor said, "If we really [believe] that this war is criminal ... then we have to believe in the victory of the Iraqi people and the defeat of the U.S. war machine."(2)
In other words, the American left as represented by faculty and students at one of the nation's most elite universities wants America to lose the war with the terrorist and fascist regime in Baghdad. In shorts, the crowd might just have well applauded the professor's first statement as well.
The phrase "a million Mogadishus," has a resonance for those of us who participated in an earlier leftist "peace" movement, during the war in Indochina. In 1967, at the height of the conflict, the Cuban Communist leader, Che Guevara (still an icon among radicals today) called on revolutionaries all over the world "to create…two, three, many Vietnams," to defeat the American enemy. It was the Sixties version of a call for jihad.
In the late Sixties, I was the editor of Ramparts, the largest magazine of the New Left and I edited a book of anti-American essays with the same title, Two, Three, Many Vietnams. Tom Hayden a leader of the New Left (later a Democratic State Senator and activist against the war in Iraq) used the same slogan as he called for armed uprisings inside the United States. In 1962, as a Marxist radical, I myself had helped to organize the first protest against the war in Vietnam at the University of California, Berkeley. At the time, America had only 300 "advisers" in Vietnam, who were seeking to prevent the Communist gulag that was to come. John F. Kennedy was President and had been invited to speak on the campus. We picketed his appearance. Our slogan was, "Kennedy's Three R's: Radiation, Reaction and Repression." We didn't want peace in Vietnam. We wanted a revolution in America.
But we were clever. Or rather, we got smarter. We realized we couldn't attract large numbers of people by revealing our deranged fantasies about America (although that of course is not how we would have looked at them). We realized that we needed the support of a lot of Americans who would never agree with our real agendas if we were going to influence the course of the war. So we changed our slogan to "Bring the Troops Home." That seemed to express care for Americans while accomplishing the same goal. If America brought her troops home in the middle of the war, the Communists would win. Which is exactly what happened.
The nature of the movement that revealed itself at Columbia is the same. When the Mogadishu remark was made, it was as if the devil had inadvertently exposed his horns, and someone needed to put a hat over them before others realized it. That someone was the demonstration organizer, Professor Eric Foner, the prestigious head of Columbia's history department. Actually, when Foner spoke after De Genova at the teach-in, he failed to find the Mogadishu remark offensive. Instead Foner dissociated himself from another De Genova comment to the effect that all Americans who described themselves as "patriotic," were actually "white supremacists."
But the next day when a reporter from New York NewsDay called Foner, the professor realized that the Mogadishu remark had caused some trouble. When asked now about the statement he said it was "idiotic." He told the reporter, "I thought that was completely uncalled for. We do not desire the deaths of American soldiers." Foner did not say (and was not asked) how he thought organizing an anti-American demonstration to protest America's war in Iraq and express the hope that we lose would not encourage the enemy and possibly lead to American deaths.
Eric Foner is the scion of a family of American Communists (and American Communist leaders) at that. In the Sixties he was an anti-American Stalinist. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, he wrote a piece in the London Review of Books saying, "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." After receiving much adverse reaction, he wrote a self-exculpatory piece for The New York Times explaining that his uncertainty was actually patriotic.
Eric Foner's cover-up reflects a powerful tactical current in the movement to derail America's war in Iraq. Until now, the largest organization behind this movement has been "International ANSWER," which thanks in part to the efforts of the War Room and www.frontpagemag.com has been revealed as front for a Marxist-Leninist party with ties to the Communist regime in North Korea. According to a comprehensive (but partisan and sympathetic) report in The New York Times(3), some factions of the left became disturbed that the overtly radical slogans of the International ANSWER protests were "counter-productive." Last fall, they met in the offices of People For The American Way to create a new umbrella organization called United for Peace and Justice that would present a more palatable face to the American public.
As it happens, the name of the new organization was similar to that of one of the two main groups behind the national protests of the anti-Vietnam movement. It was called the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice and it was a run by the American Communist Party. (As it happens, the other organizer of the national demonstrations was the MOBE, which was run by the Trotskyist Communist Party.)
The New York Times has attacked from the flank. Instead of meeting Operation Iraqi Freedom and its splendid moral, strategic, and tactical success head on, the Times has trotted out a Marxist historian, Eric Foner, to divert us from the central issues with an entry from Karl Marx's dictionary.
Foner wants America "to engage in a dialogue with the world about the meaning of freedom." He strains to persuade us that freedom includes such things as economic security, while he laments the "internationalization of current American concepts of freedom." He slips in a dig at the institution of slavery. He suggests that we respect other countries' "ways of thinking about the social order, which may not exactly match ours."
Politically Correct History
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
The political left in America has apparently decided that American history must be rewritten so that it can be used in the political campaign for reparations for slavery. Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., of Chicago inserted language in a Department of Interior appropriations bill for 2000 that instructed the National Park Service to propagandize about slavery as the sole cause of the war at all Civil War park sites. The Marxist historian Eric Foner has joined forces with Jackson and will assist the National Park Service in its efforts at rewriting history so that it better serves the political agenda of the far left. Congressman Jackson has candidly described this whole effort as "a down payment on reparations." (Foner ought to be quite familiar with the "art" of rewriting politically-correct history. He was the chairman of the committee at Columbia University that awarded the "prestigious" Bancroft Prize in history to Emory University’s Michael A. Bellesiles, author of the anti-Second Amendment book, "Arming America," that turned out to be fraudulent. Bellesiles was forced to resign from Emory and his publisher has ceased publishing the book.)
Eric Foner, an ornament of Columbia University's Marxist firmament, trivialized the attack by announcing himself unsure "which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House."
So what 'oppression' were the Southern states under besides the realization that they were not going to able to expand their 'peculiar institution' into the new states?
When the South Carolina tried making those noises during Andrew Jackson days (a Southerner), he told them that he would hang them all for treason.
When the Northeast states tried pulling out of the Union during the war of 1812 it was the Southern states who said that they had no right to do so.
The South under the philosophy of Calhoun was anti-American, a rejection of the Declaration of Independence, that all men were created equal, not some meant to be workers and others meant to be masters due to the accident of their birth.
McPherson the Socialist
wsws.org
World Socialist Web Site
Published by the Internationalist committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
James McPherson's What They Fought For: When great ideals gripped the American people
By David Walsh
5 December 1994
[Originally published in the International Workers Bulletin, December 5, 1994]
To give him credit, James M. McPherson, author of What They Fought For, 1861-1865, is one of the few historians worth reading at the moment. In the current intellectual atmosphere, his conscientious defense of the progressive character of the American Civil War stands out.
Socialist historian James McPherson is quoted by Curry. McPherson says: "This new interpretation is going to put the war in the context of slavery, and that's going to challenge alot of people." McPherson then goes on to backhandedly compare Southern folks with the people in Germany and Japan after World War 2. McPherson did tell one truth, which, in true socialist fashion, he seems quite please with. He noted that the war changed America from "a plural Union to a singular nation." In this he was accurate, though the change has been for the worse rather than the better. It's interesting that when people like Curry go to writing articles about the war, they inevitably end up quoting the socialists and Marxists who are supposed to be the "experts." Have you ever been curious as to why?
Eric Foner, James McPherson and the other Marxist historians were carefully chosen as speakers because government officials know that these professors will give them the opinions they want to hear.
McPherson's Left Wing Politics
7/4/02 4:37 AM Eastern by GOPcapitalist
Any freeper who has visited a thread discussing Abraham Lincoln, the great war in which he participated, or practically anything pertaining to American history between 1850 and 1870 has likely encountered the posting of commentary by Princeton University historian James McPherson, author of The Battle Cry of Freedom. On any of these threads McPherson himself is a controversial figure. To supporters of Lincoln and the North, McPherson is adored and his book is, as one of his supporters recently put it, a "highly-balanced, factual account." To supporters of the South and critics of Lincoln, McPherson's book is a heavily pro-northern account tainted with political bias and historical revisionism. Though conflicting appraisals of McPherson have been going on between the two sides for years, I only recently became curious about McPherson himself. Having an opportunity to weigh in, I decided to do a little research on the guy's background simply to find out who he was and what his issues were. Almost immediately and with but a single internet search I discovered not only was McPherson a liberal regular in the world of academia, but he also has ties to the left's radical and socialist elements.
Having seen McPherson characterized as balanced, objective, and even implied to be conservative, or at the least moderate or politically neutral, it became obvious somebody wasn't telling the whole story. Accordingly, I decided to compile the information found on Professor McPherson's radical left wing ties and introduce them as a whole into the record.
James McPherson: Defender of Bill Clinton
During the second term of his presidency, scandal plagued Democrat President was impeached by the United States House of Representatives for his extensive criminal activity in office including his obstruction of justice and repeatedly perjuring himself under oath. During the debate over impeachment and the judiciary hearings regarding what to do with Clinton in light of his crimes, liberal academia rushed to the defense of their embattled president. Not the least among them to line up on Clinton's side was James McPherson of Princeton University. McPherson's activities on behalf of Clinton are many:
On December 8, 1998 professor Sean Wilentz of Princeton, who had co-authored with Arthur Schlessinger the petition of 400 so-called constitutional scholars defending Clinton and purporting his actions to have not merited impeachment, testified on Clinton's behalf before the House Judiciary Committee. The Daily Princetonian in the article linked here reported on Wilentz's testimony. The article also mentioned that James McPherson had been invited by the Clinton White House to testify on Clinton's behalf along with Wilentz. McPherson could not testify because the time conflicted with his classroom committments. McPherson nevertheless weighed in stating that the Constitution's requirements for impeachment "mean public offenses" along with the implication that Clinton's offense had not been a public offense.
James McPherson himself signed the petition of 400 so-called constitutional scholars defending Clinton and opposing his impeachment as is documented here. The petition asserted that impeachment of Clinton would "undermine" the United States Constitution and "leave the presidency permanently disfigured." Regarding the charges agaisnt Clinton, it stated "the current charges against him depart from what the (Constitution's) Framers saw as grounds for impeachment." The petition ran in newspaper advertisements across the nation paid for by the liberal group People for the American Way. It was also frequently cited by Clinton's defense in support of his acquittal. When asked about his signature in the article here, McPherson stated that Clinton's impeachment "might come back to haunt the country" and that he had signed it once and would sign it again. The list of signatures on the document reads like a whose who of liberal academia including Arthur Schlessinger and Julian Bond.
When the Senate considered whether or not to remove Clinton during January and February of the following year, McPherson continued to speak out on Clinton's side. Before the vote was taken, McPherson stated, as can be found here, that a senate vote to remove Clinton "would cripple the executive branch . . . weakening the presidency for years to come." During Clinton's senate trial, McPherson argued the same line while giving a lecture at Kent State University. To make his case he pointed to Andrew Johnson complaining that Johnson's impeachment had weakened the presidency so much that it didn't regain the strength it had under Lincoln for another 35 years. During the same lecture reported on here McPherson continued to make his case on Clinton's side by praising Clinton's rhetorical abilities and comparing them to Abraham Lincoln. According to McPherson, Clinton had the same "gift" of connecting to the people that Lincoln did, and that is why Clinton remained popular in polls at the time.
McPherson continued his defense of Clinton as an historian by accusing those who sought to impeach Clinton of a "personal vendetta." Showing a pro-northern bias, McPherson, in the same interview, contrasted what he called the personal vendetta against Clinton with Andrew Johnson's impeachment, which he claimed was not personal (Johnson's impeachment is almost universally considered a fraudulent show trial over purely political differences between Johnson and an unconstitutional act the radical northern Congress had passed). The quote appeared in McPherson's interview on the World Socialist Web Site, which he appears on frequently and has published several articles. The quote in its entirity states "There was enormous substance to the issues involved in the impeachment of 1868 in a way that I think was totally absent from the Clinton impeachment. That was a personal vendetta, and in Johnson's case, I don't think it was personal." McPherson continues, asserting "The major difference is that the impeachment of the 1860s concerned really serious matters of substance, and the 1990s' impeachment was a more personal vendetta" and making sure to point out that Andrew Johnson was never impeached over what he calls "personal behavior." Elsewhere in the same three part interview, McPherson took jabs at conservatives classifying "groups, like the anti-abortion people" as "extremes on the Right."
James McPherson and the Socialist Pacifica Radio Network
On Nov. 3rd, 1999, Professor James McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom, appeared for a lengthy political discussion about the candidacy of George W. Bush on the "Democracy Now" program of the socialist Pacifica Radio Network. The topic of that particular show was a discussion devoted to accusations of white supremacy alleged against Bush by the show's two socialist hosts.
Pacifica radio is a multi-city socialist affiliated radio network headed up by Mary Frances Berry, the socialist Democrat chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Berry is perhaps best known as instigator of the 2000 Florida election "voter disinfranchisement" show trial hearings and ensuing "reports" from the commission accusing Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris of denying the right to vote to minorities. Berry's report was drafted on statistical models by a former paid consultant to Al Gore. Berry is also known more recently for waging a political battle against George W. Bush's appointees to the commission by refusing to seat them.
"Democracy Now," one of Pacifica's most popular programs, is a left wing political talk show that was, at the time McPherson appeared on the show, hosted by Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman. The program is one of the top political discussion outlets for the radical left in America. It has in the past featured among its guests MIT Professor and leftist guru Noam Chomsky, Socialist presidential candidate David McReynolds, socialist and black panther activist Angela Davis, and radical Democrat congressman and reparations activist John Conyers. Pacifica itself is practically the exclusive domain of the radical left. With almost no exceptions, it's guests range from left to far left and its shows are hosted by open marxists and other radicals.
The first host McPherson appeared with, Juan Gonzalez, is an vietnam era activist and organizer who helped found the 1970's era "Young Lords" political movement, a Latino affiliate modelled after the Black Panther Party and formed under the guidance of imprisoned Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. Gonzalez' "Young Lords" organization was a socialist latino liberation movement that dedicated itself to the abolition of capitalism, dissolution of the United States military, implementation of worldwide socialism, and assisting "Brothers and Sisters around the world" who are under assault by forces opposed to communism. The "Young Lords" movement staged "liberation" events in the early 1970's to preach socialism to crowds carrying banners reading "Viva Che!." It is also considered one of the organizational precursers of the Puerto Rican FALN movement of Clinton pardon fame.
The second host McPherson appeared with, Amy Goodman, is a socialist activist and was featured as a guest speaker at the 1997 Socialist Scholars Conference of American held in New York. She appeared at this socialist convention along side several noted socialists including Vermont congressman Bernie Sanders and other affiliates of the Progressive Caucus, the congressional wing of Democratic Socialists of America.
Also appearing on the program as a guest with McPherson was Ed Sebesta, a leftist anti-confederate activist and ally of the leftist attorney Morris Dees of the SPLC. Sebesta has devoted much of his recent energy attempting to brand republicans with the accusation of racism and was on the show with McPherson exclusively to make allegations of white supremacy against George W. Bush. Among the Republicans Sebesta has attempted to smear are then Texas governor and now president George W. Bush, current Texas governor Rick Perry, and attorney general John Ashcroft. Sebesta was a major promoter of disinformation about Ashcroft and the Southern Partisan interview during the Senate confirmation hearings.
McPherson appeared along side the two socialist wackos Goodman and Gonzales as well as Sebesta. During the course of the show from which transcripts are available online, he took an anti-south position. Among McPherson's positions were the assertion of his support for the removal of confederate symbols from the Georgia and Mississippi flags, criticism of Republicans who opposed their removal, and direct accusations of white supremacy against two national confederate veterans ancestry groups. Perhaps most amazing was McPherson's seeming abstention from rebutting the absurd charge of white supremacy being waged against Bush by the other three clowns. Among McPherson's statements from the Pacifica broadcast are the following two excerpts:
"I do know that the issue of the Confederate flag in South Carolina and also in Georgia where the Confederate battle flag was incorporated into the state flag back in 1956, that those, that...of those flags has a contemporary political agenda, and to the extent that any politician endorses that, I think Trent Lott did as well a couple of years ago, far more vigorously, I can't support them in doing that."
"I think, I agree a 100% with Ed Sebesta about the motives or the hidden agenda, not too, not too deeply hidden I think of such groups as the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans. They are dedicated to celebrating the Confederacy and rather thinly veiled support for white supremacy. And I think that also is the again not very deeply hidden agenda of the Confederate flag issue in several southern states."
James McPherson: The 'World Socialist Web Site'
A Google web search reveals 27 "hits" for James McPherson on the World Socialist Web Site, www.wsws.org. The World Socialist Web Site is the official internet home of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). The site lists its purpose as providing documents of analysis and study "from the heritage of the socialist movement" (apparently McPherson's many articles on this site are among those documents). The site itself proclaims to be involved in a movement to solve economic and social equality struggles, which it claims are "inseparable from the growth in the influence of a socialist political movement guided by a Marxist world outlook."
The organization that runs the website, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), is the direct descendant of an international socialist organization founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938. It has affiliate third party political organizations in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and Germany, among others.
The World Socialist Web Site has a profile devoted to McPherson under their history section. McPherson's profile is linked their history index along side their other history pages. It is identified as "James McPherson: Historian of the American Civil War" and is one of many sections of mostly socialist themes. Among the others are "Marxism and the fundamental problems of the 20th century," "Leon Trotsky" and "The Struggle for Social Equality." Among the items under McPherson's profile are several of his publications including a three part exclusive interview with the organization that runs the site.
In addition, a mini-biography of a profile of McPherson is given on the World Socialist Web Site located here. This biography is by David Walsh, a socialist activist and arts editor for the World Socialist Web Site. In it, Walsh clearly identifies McPherson as a friend to socialists, stating "Nearly 40 years ago Professor McPherson arrived at a conception of the American Civil War, based on the work of the best of his predecessors and his own researches, as a revolutionary struggle for equality and democracy and he has not, I think, ever deviated from that view. This is noteworthy in light of the fact that the last several decades have not been favorable for progressive social thought" (my emphasis added). The rest of Walsh's mini-biography lavishes McPherson with praises for viewing the war as a "social movement" of "liberation" and proceeds to quote one of the north's strongest advocates during the war itself, Karl Marx, to show that the granddaddy of communism's view is consistent with McPherson's. The article does concede that McPherson is generally a political in his writings, but nevertheless maintains the title "progressive" - the famous euphemism used by leftists to refer to themselves and their allies in terminology with less inflamatory connotations than "leftist," "communist," or "liberal."
Lincoln said, "in our greedy chase to make profit of the Negro, let us beware, lest we 'cancel and tear to pieces' even the white man's charter of freedom"
Lincoln, CW 2:276
Translation for the intellectually challenged:
The White Man's Charter of Freedom = The Declaration of Independence
THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION ON SLAVERY
Article 1, Section 2. Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
Article 1, Section. 9, Clause 1. The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3. No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
Article 5. ... Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
More quotes from Lincoln:
[CW = Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln]
Lincoln said he was in favor of the new territories "being in such a condition that white men may find a home."
Lincoln, Alton, Illinois, 10/15/1862
"His democracy was a White mans democracy. It did not contain Negroes." Oscar Sherwin
Lincoln's dream did not contain Indians or even Mexicans who he referred to as "mongrels."
Lincoln, CW 3:234-5
"Resolved, That the elective franchise should be kept pure from contamination by the admission of colored votes."
That got Lincoln's vote, January 5, 1836.
Lincoln wanted the territories to be "the happy home of teeming millions of free, white prosperous people, and no slave among them"
Lincoln, 1854, CW 2:249
The territories "should be kept open for the homes of free white people"
Lincoln, 1856, CW 2:363
"We want them [the territories] for the homes of free white people."
Lincoln, CW 3:311
If slavery was allowed to spread to the territories, he said "Negro equality will be abundant, as every White laborer will have occasion to regret when he is elbowed from his plow or his anvil by slave n-----s"
Lincoln, CW 3:78 [Lincoln uses the N-word without elision]
"Is it not rather our duty to make labor more respectable by preventing all black competition, especially in the territories?"
Lincoln, CW 3:79
This fact that no one was executed by federal authorties makes a striking contrast with rebel actions, where hundreds of loyal southerners were executed simply for standing by the old flag.
Stand Watie wrote:
name ONE!
Wernell, Richard Martin, Burch, H.J. Esmond, Ward, Evans, Clem Woods, Wolsey, Manon, Leffel, A.B. McNiece, Wash Morris, Wesley Morris, Thomas Floyd, John CRisp, James Powers, Rama Dye, J. Dawson, Wiley, Barnes, Milburn, W. Anderson, Gross, Ward, Dr. Johnson, Childs, Sr., Childs, Jr. Hampton, Locke, Foster, Fields, D. Anderson, D. Taylor, R. Manton, Jones, Carmichael, Henry Cochran
These are some of the loyal Union men hanged in Texas simply for being loyal to the old flag.
There is no parallel to this on the Union side.
Walt
Try Jefferson Davis or Robert Lee.
"We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Law in nature tells us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude. Freedom only injures the slave. The innate stamp of inferiority is beyond the reach of change. You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables him to be." -- Jefferson Davis, March 1861
"Considering the relation of master and slave, controlled by humane laws and influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public sentiment, as the best that can exist between the white and black races while intermingled as at present in this country, I would deprecate any sudden disturbance of that relation unless it be necessary to avert a greater calamity to both." -- Robert Lee, January 1865
So if the Alabama State Supreme Court had ruled that conscription was unconstitutional and refused to allow the state to provide troops to the Davis regime then that would have been OK? What if the Louisiana state Supreme Court ruled that the confederate tariff was protectionist in nature and unconstitutional and refused to allow it to be collected? Could the Arkansas state Supreme Court have ruled that the attack on Sumter was illegal and that the fort did belong to the federal government, and could that have meant that Arkansas wasn't at war with the U.S.? When the Davis regime suspended habeas corpus througout the south, heck with any laws passed by the regime at all, then the individual states could have agreed to enact them or disagreed depending on how their state Supreme Court decided?
And on a case by case basis in the respective states where the ruling was that is perfectly permissible. Or do you think that a ruling in Virginia should bind a person in Alabama? Cause if you do you might as well attempt to enforce Virginia's code of statutes in the borders of Alabama as well.
It's not a case of imposing Viginia's statutes on Alabama, it's imposing the Davis regime's statutes on the country as a whole.
Also worth noting is the fact that the Morill bill was not a 'revenue' tariff, but protectionism. Despite people's claim that Reaganites invented 'voodoo economics' the tenets of revenue generation by "right sizing" taxes to maximize revenue were known, even in Buchanan's day (IIRC).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.