Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit has a good post on the weirdness of some libertarians embracing the neo-Confederate movement. I have to say that I completely agree with Reynolds on this. I just don't understood how anyone on the right-ward side of the political spectrum -- either conservatives or libertarians -- could defend or pine for the Confederacy.My thinking on this is due, in no small part, to historian William Davis's book Look Away: A History of the Confederate States of America. As Davis demonstrates, the CSA was dominated by aristocacy, hostile to democracy, committed to chattel slavery & the repugnant doctrine of white supremacy, intolerant of dissent -- in other words, committed to oligarichal rule. It is beyond me how anyone attached to a political perspective like conservatism, with its commitment to natural law and tradition, or libertarianism, with its commitment to individual liberty and personal choice, could be considered compatible with the statist, revolutionary, unlawful slavocracy that the Confederacy sought to defend.
While it has become distressingly fashionable in some libertarian circles to castigate Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln stands not only as the first Republican president in our nation's history, he is one of the great conservative leaders of the Anglo-American political tradition. It is Lincoln's cause -- the cause of equal liberty under the law within the Union -- that is the conservative cause in our nation's history. It was the cause of Washington, of John Adams, and of the Republican Party of Lincoln's day and of our own day. It was Lincoln who understood the imperative of freedom, of the rule of law, of the simple justice of treating each human being as precisely that: a human being. It is unfathomable that a conservative or libertarian would want to attack Lincoln. Here are just a few quotes from Lincoln that demonstrate his essentially conservative and freedom-oriented political philosophy:
- "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy."
- "Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties."
- "I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause."
- "Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."
- "No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent."
- "Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors."
- "You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence."
2 comments:
In truth, I'm not a confederate. But the confederates were the conservatives. Historic conservatism, rooted in Aristotle, natural law, and the notion of ecclesiastical hegemony, was pro-aristocracy, pro-oligarchy, and pro-slavery. Even the Catholic Church, for most of its history, regarded slavery as a natural institution (and they were simply following the Philosopher in this). Modern american conservatism is really 18th century classical liberalism, but colored by a certain amount of nationalistic New Israel fundamentalist puritanism (thanks to the religious right).
I read Kirk's statement of conservative principles and it was clear that what it was about was the justification of paternalism, "natural" inequalities, and a kind of meritocracy that does not adequately recognize that life is not a level playing field.
(sorry I'm so argumentative tonight. The brain is just on overload. Anyway, this should make for some stimulating discussion). Consider me your devil's advocate ;-).
I'm glad to hear you aren't enamored of the Lost Cause. I would take issue with your characterization of the Confederates as conservatives. Politically, the Republicans were the descendents of Americas' conservative political parties. They stand in direct line with first the Federalists and then the Whig parties, both of which were considered the conservative political parties of the early Republic and the first part of the 19th century. Lincoln himself was clear on the roots of the GOP -- it stood for those "Old principles of the Whigs" as he put it. This is why the young Republican Party was nicknamed "The Grand Old Party" -- it deliberately understood itself, and was understood by others, to be standing in the same place as the previous conservative parties in American political life.
Second, the Republican Party was expressly founded on the principles of natural law and natural justice. This was part and parcel of the party's first three platforms (1856, 1860, 1864).
Kirk had a great admiration of the South and southern politicians. He first book was on John Randolph of Roanoke and he had written about and was an admirer of John Calhoun. This was a failure, though, of Kirk's vision regarding the nature of conservatism (I can't believe I just wrote that sentence, but it is true). Calhoun's political philosophy of the concurrent majority was simply unworkable in any modern nation. Randolph was a politically unstable romantic. Neither was particularly conservative. Calhoun in particular evidenced a shocking disregard for the Constitution in his political theorizing. Even when writing "disquitions" upon it, he rarely really sought to understand it and uphold it. He sought rather to undermine it in the hopes of bolstering the southern cause at the expense of the Union.
It is that rebellious quality that rendered the Confederates unconservative. They were not seeking to defend the established order, they were not seeking to defend balanced government, they were not seeking to defend the lawful rights of the States and the people. They were acting contrary to all these things in the defense of a social institution that was (as virtually everyone outside the South recognized at the time) a gross violation of natural law.
There is a great book you should read that shows the radicalism and unconservative nature of the Rebels, Joe. It is by University of Virginia historian William C. Davis. The title of the book is Look Away, and it is a political history of the Confederacy. The book's title is a play not only on Dixie, but a call for conservatives not to look at the CSA as any kind of a model for what a conservtive order looks like.
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