July 4 and The Importance of History

I have neither the intellectual rigor nor academic credentials to claim the label “historian,” or really even “history buff.” Still, I do know stuff, a lot of it history from teaching and preparing to teach various courses. Maybe I can claim “history dilettante,” which kind of fits my approach to so many things.

Nevertheless, on the 4^th of July, I am disturbed by the number of people willing to ignore history, the number of people willing pretend history doesn’t matter, the number of people willing to twist history to fit their world view and agenda.

This holiday in particular seems to inspire people.

Conservatives proudly wave their flags and tout their beliefs, failing to recognize that the history of conservatism is the story of people swimming against the tide. In their time, conservatives opposed declaring independence and the American Revolution (Tories), ratifying the Constitution (anti-Federalists), abolition, passage and enforcement of the Civil War Amendments, women suffrage, organizational rights for workers, social security, social integration and Brown v. Board, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, civil rights protections for all people…. Change is scary and conservatives play an important role in making people slow down before adopting ill-conceived (even if usually well-intentioned) proposals without considering the inviolable Law of Unintended Consequences. But conservatives have consistently been on the wrong side of history. You can’t truly own your political philosophy without also owning its historical roots.

When you don’t know your history, you adopt slogans like “America First” without knowing its provenance. The slogan was used by the Ku Klux Klan in marches as early as the 1920s and as late as David Duke in 2016.

It was also used as an argument by Woodrow Wilson to keep us out of World War I and opponents of the League of Nations after that war. It was resurrected by Nazi sympathizers, anti-Semites, and isolationists, including Charles Lindbergh, during the 1930s to try to keep us out of World War II, or from even helping our (eventual) allies, and the short-lived AFC (America First Committee), formed in opposition to FDR in 1940, but disbanded for obvious reasons after Pearl Harbor. Pat Buchanan (who notoriously called WW II “an unnecessary war”) used it in his run for office in 2000 on the Reform Party ticket. Do you know who also tried to get the Reform Party nomination in 2000? Donald Trump (who called Buchanan a “Nazi-lover”). Although his campaign style may be consistent, apparently he forgot the origins of his now favorite slogan.

   And then there’s the just plain “bad” history. Although I reject that the Civil War, at its core, was about anything other than preserving and expanding slavery, I recognize the deep roots of the “lost cause” school. I also “know” that its goal was to transform sedition into nobility, but understand why others might reject that view. Today, however, someone said slavery was incidental and the true cause was taxes. Fortunately for my self-esteem, I do not know and did not teach this person; and my goal here is not to create a lesson on the cause(s) of the Civil War. I’ll just end with what I was tempted to say, the variously (and apparently often incorrectly) attributed quote, “It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool than to talk and remove all doubt of it.” I obviously do not always heed my own advice. 

Happy July 4, 2018.

Tributes to Traitors, Terrorists and Treason

To Say Nothing of Slavery and Racism

Because getting bent out of shape has become a national pasttime to which so many are addicted, I find lots of people complaining about the removal of symbols giving tribute to traitors and treason.

Yes, monuments to the Confederacy are, at a minimum, exactly that. The CSA was created to preserve the enslavement of human beings for the benefit of the landed aristocracy in the South. Armed insurrection against their country followed, creating a war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives and ripped our nation apart. Even sewn back together, the divide remained and the traitors, years later, erected monuments to honor their treason (plus honoring those who terrorized the new black citizens) and attempting to reshape the narrative. That revisionist history of the “Lost Cause” conveniently discounted slavery and attempted to transform sedition to nobility.

Monuments and flag worship have been part and parcel of that public relations coup. The virulent racism that continued and even grew in the post-war years exemplifies the statement, “The North Won the War but the South won the Peace.” Don’t believe me? Do some basic research about the corrupt deal settling the election of 1876 and preserving the presidency for the Republican Party. (Note: neither the Republican nor Democrat parties of 1876 are the parties of today.)

Does dismantling a monument or lowering a flag solve any of the pressing problems facing our nation? Of course not. Do those actions deserve the seemingly high priority assigned to them? Seems doubtful. But make no mistake, maintaining those artifacts of racism carries a price tag, both in terms of state and municipal treasuries but also in reminding those (or their ancestors) who were victims of that attitude that many people, and their state and local governments, considered them inferior, even subhuman. You need no more than a hint of empathy to understand how that feels, how that discounts the value of a significant number of Americans. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Just because it’s not YOUR problem doesn’t mean it’s not A problem.

All that being said, I could never support the destruction of art (including today’s destruction of a 10 Commandments monument in Little Rock by a nut job with a history of such actions), no matter how offensive it might be to some people. (Not surprisingly, what offends me might not offend you, and vice versa.) I’m not suggesting we try some Orwellian erasure of history; it must be preserved (and analyzed and evaluated and debated). But such art (or history) needs to be displayed and maintained in museums or by privately funded entities. That apparently will be the case with the St. Louis monument to the Confederacy (created in 1914, long after the Civil War, but during the hey day of Jim Crow), as it is now in the custody of the Civil War Museum.

So if you want to get upset, you can add this piece to the list of things about which to fret. Or you might invest your energy in working to discover common ground and find solutions to problems that affect us all.