Bankrupt

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Kevin Drum sums it up:

… the Bush administration literally seems to have no foreign policy at all anymore. They have no serious plan for Iraq, no plan for Iran, no plan for North Korea, no plan for democracy promotion, no plan for anything. With the neocons on the outs, Condoleezza Rice at the State Department, and Dick Cheney continuing to drift into an alternate universe at the OVP, the Bush administration seems completely at sea. There’s virtually no ideological coherency to their foreign policy that I can discern, and no credible followup on what little coherency is left.

We keeping reading that the Democrats are in disarray, and that the Democrats can’t agree on a plan. But at least the Democrats have competing plans to disagree about.

The Bushies got zip.

And check out “Why Conservatives Can’t Govern” by Alan Wolfe:

The collapse of the Bush presidency, in other words, is not just due to Bush’s incompetence (although his administration has been incompetent beyond belief). Nor is it a response to the president’s principled lack of intellectual curiosity and pitbull refusal to admit mistakes (although those character flaws are certainly real enough). And the orgy of bribery and special-interest dispensation in Congress is not the result of Tom DeLay’s ruthlessness, as impressive a bully as he was. This conservative presidency and Congress imploded, not despite their conservatism, but because of it.

Contemporary conservatism is first and foremost about shrinking the size and reach of the federal government. This mission, let us be clear, is an ideological one. It does not emerge out of an attempt to solve real-world problems, such as managing increasing deficits or finding revenue to pay for entitlements built into the structure of federal legislation. It stems, rather, from the libertarian conviction, repeated endlessly by George W. Bush, that the money government collects in order to carry out its business properly belongs to the people themselves. One thought, and one thought only, guided Bush and his Republican allies since they assumed power in the wake of Bush vs. Gore: taxes must be cut, and the more they are cut — especially in ways benefiting the rich — the better.

But like all politicians, conservatives, once in office, find themselves under constant pressure from constituents to use government to improve their lives. This puts conservatives in the awkward position of managing government agencies whose missions — indeed, whose very existence — they believe to be illegitimate.

Contemporary conservatism is a walking contradiction. Unable to shrink government but unwilling to improve it, conservatives attempt to split the difference, expanding government for political gain, but always in ways that validate their disregard for the very thing they are expanding. The end result is not just bigger government, but more incompetent government.

Brilliantly put.

As a way of governing, conservatism is another name for disaster. And the disasters will continue, year after year, as long as conservatives, whose political tactics are frequently as brilliant as their policy-making is inept, find ways to perpetuate their power.

Wolfe doesn’t distinguish between conservatives and, um, other conservatives, as I did here. But be sure to read the whole article.

The Patients Are Running the Asylum

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Awhile back I wrote a post called “Patriotism v. Nationalism,” which was followed up by “Patriotism v. Paranoia,” “Patriotism v. Francis Fukuyama,” “Patriotism v. Hate Speech,” and probably some other posts.

I bring those old posts up because Christopher Dickey has a splendid article on the Newsweek web site that makes many of the same points. Dickey sites George Orwell’s 1945 essay, “Notes on Nationalism,” and argues that the American Right has become the embodiment of Orwellian nationalism. That is not good.

American nationalism, unlike American patriotism, is different — and dangerous.

The second part of Orwell’s definition tells you why. Nationalism is the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or an idea, “placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.” Patriotism is essentially about ideas and pride. Nationalism is about emotion and blood. The nationalist’s thoughts “always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations. … Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception.”

One inevitable result, wrote Orwell, is vast and dangerous miscalculation based on the assumption that nationalism makes not only right but might-and invincibility: “Political and military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties.” When Orwell derides “a silly and vulgar glorification of the actual process of war,” well, one wishes Fox News and Al Jazeera would take note.

For Orwell, the evils of nationalism were not unique to nations, but shared by a panoply of “isms” common among the elites of his day: “Communism, political Catholicism, Zionism, anti-Semitism, Trotskyism and Pacifism.” Today we could drop the communists and Trotskyites, perhaps, while adding Islamism and neo-conservatism. The same tendencies would apply, especially “indifference to reality.”

Get this part:

“All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts,” said Orwell. “Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage-torture, the use of hostages, forced labor, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians-which does not change its moral color when committed by ‘our’ side.… The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

Hammer. Nail. Head.

It’s this aspect of nationalism that peacemakers in the Middle East find so utterly confounding. The Israelis and the Palestinians, Iraq’s Sunnis and Kurds and Shiites, Iranians and Americans have developed nationalist narratives that have almost nothing in common except a general chronology. “In nationalist thought there are facts which are both true and untrue, known and unknown,” Orwell wrote, in a spooky foreshadowing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s nationalist musings. “A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one’s own mind.”

I think this tells us a lot about why righties cannot be reasoned with, which is more or less the subject of the three previous posts on this blog. This post, for example, is about the way righties frame arguments to confound any attempt at rational response (quoting Tristero):

Like, “So, would you rather Saddam stay in power?” this is a framing of the issue that provides for not even the hint of an intellectually coherent response, let alone a “dialogue.” It is designed to elicit the narrowest range of acceptable responses, responses that reduce disagreement with Bushism to a quibble.

Or, the way they’re turning agreement for the Hamdan decision into support for terrorists, which is absurd, but righties will cut off their own lips before they’ll admit the point is absurd. A few righties, I believe, know good and well their arguments are absurd but make them anyway, probably because they’ve got a vested interest in righties running things. But the bulk of them really don’t know their arguments are absurd, because they’ve walled off large parts of their brains. As Orwell said, “A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one’s own mind.”

Gene Lyons:

For years, the idea’s been percolating through the right’s well-organized propaganda apparatus that Democrats aren’t loyal Americans.

Regarding Ann Coulter’s ludicrous book, “Slander,” I once wrote that “the ‘liberal’ sins [she ] caricatures—atheism, cosmopolitanism, sexual license, moral relativism, communism, disloyalty and treason—are basically identical to the crimes of the Jews as Hitler saw them.” Michael Savage, Michael Reagan, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh and others peddle the same sterilized American update of an ancient slur. Limbaugh recently called 80 percent of Times subscribers “jihadists.” Now the Bush White House, desperate to prevail in 2006 congressional elections, has taken up the cry. Reasonable people never want to believe that extremists believe their own rhetoric. But quit kidding yourselves. This is mass psychosis. The next terrorist strike, should it happen, will be blamed on the enemy within: treasonous “liberals” who dissent from the glorious reign of George W. Bush. Unless confronted, it’s through such strategems that democracies fail and constitutional republics become dictatorships.

Have a nice day!

The American Way

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Jonah Goldberg is pissed at Superman.

In the new film “Superman Returns,” the Man of Steel no longer stands for “truth, justice and the American way.” These days he is dedicated, according to the movie’s promotional materials, to “truth, justice and all that is good.” Though, in the movie, the phrase gets edited down by Daily Planet Editor Perry White to “truth, justice and all that stuff.” Typical editorial arrogance, if you ask me!

More likely a typical marketing decision by a studio that needs international box office to make a profit.

Goldberg tells us that “conservative talk radio has surely gone overboard in bashing the film,” which I say is one good reason to go see it (although there are others). But even though Goldberg admits the “American Way” line might irritate some overseas audiences, he sniffs about a “cosmopolitan” outlook “that sees national boundaries and geographic loyalties as quaint and even backward.” And taking a swipe at the majority opinion in Hamdan that stipulates the U.S. must honor its old commitment to the Geneva Conventions, Goldberg says there’s nothing wrong with kicking off the shackles of international opinion and being the Lone Ranger.

Maybe not, but as I recall the Lone Ranger was into saving innocent people from bad guys and then riding into the sunset. The innocent people weren’t left wondering, three years later, when the heck he was ever gonna leave. Nor did the Lone Ranger run an alternative secret criminal justice system, but instead turned bad guys over to the public lawful authorities. And riding around with that Tonto guy whiffs of a little multiculturalism, if you ask me.

But in spite of himself, Goldberg stumbles on to some truth in his last sentence:

What is disturbing is that “the American way” now seems to have become code for arrogant unilateralism that falls somewhere outside truth, justice and all that is good.

Well, yes. And whose fault is that?

Speaking of old film heroes and the American Way — remember Hopalong Cassidy? If you do, you may be, um, as old as I am. But never mind. I ran into this on the Hopalong Cassidy web site:

Time Magazine in 1950 said, “Boyd made Hoppy a veritable Galahad of the range, a soft spoken paragon who did not smoke, drink or kiss girls, who tried to capture the rustlers instead of shooting them, and who always let the villain draw first if gunplay was inevitable.” Boyd himself said, “I played down the violence, tried to make Hoppy an admirable character and I insisted on grammatical English.”

That’s how the American Way was portrayed in the early 1950s, when the Hopalong Cassidy films and television series were popular around the globe. Back in the day, the American Way meant holding true to your values and doing the right thing even if the bad guys are doing the wrong thing. Now the American Way seems to be shoot first, and ask questions later. We’ve also turned We’re the good guys because we do what’s right into We’re the good guys, so whatever we do is right.

Yep; “arrogant unilateralism that falls somewhere outside truth, justice and all that is good” hits the mark, I’d say. As Superman Returns scriptwriter Dan Harris said, “I don’t think the American Way means what it meant in 1945.”

Tortured Reasoning

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DigbyTristero explains why you can’t reason with a rightie:

Folks, if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a zillion times. Never argue on the right’s playing field. Ever. It’s a setup and you will lose. That’s ’cause the questions as they pose them are defined so narrowly and foolishly, they preclude anything resembling what a liberal means by rational discourse. In the post linked above, Jonah Goldberg emits:

    If Democrats want terrorists to fall under the Geneva Convention let them say so. My guess is most won’t, if they’re smart.

And Kevin falls for it:

    Well, I’m a Democrat, and I’ll say it: anyone we capture on a battlefield should be subject to the minimum standards of decency outlined in the Geneva Conventions. That includes terrorists.

Wrong, wrong wrong!

Like, “So, would you rather Saddam stay in power?” this is a framing of the issue that provides for not even the hint of an intellectually coherent response, let alone a “dialogue.” It is designed to elicit the narrowest range of acceptable responses, responses that reduce disagreement with Bushism to a quibble.

This goes back to something Goldberg wrote this past Sunday, which in turn was a comment on something Charles Pierce wrote at TAPPED the same day. Pierce was commenting on an article in Saturday’s Washington Post titled “GOP Seeks Advantage In Ruling On Trials” by Michael Abramowitz and Jonathan Weisman. Abramowitz and Weisman wrote that Republicans were planning to turn the recent Hamdan decision into a political tool with which to bash Democrats:

Republicans yesterday looked to wrest a political victory from a legal defeat in the Supreme Court, serving notice to Democrats that they must back President Bush on how to try suspects at Guantanamo Bay or risk being branded as weak on terrorism. …

… “It would be good politics to have a debate about this if Democrats are going to argue for additional rights for terrorists,” said Terry Nelson, a prominent GOP political strategist who was political director for Bush’s reelection campaign in 2004. …

…A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the issue is still being debated internally, seemed to hint at the potential political implications in Congress. “Members of both parties will have to decide whether terrorists who cherish the killing of innocents deserve the same protections as our men and women who wear the uniform,” this official said.

Working backward — Charles Pierce’s point was that the last paragraph in the block quote above made Abramowitz and Weisman “part of a political dirty-tricks operation robed in constitutional privileges.” Does anyone seriously think the White House is engaged in a serious internal debate on how to treat the prisoners/detainees? Instead of how to tweak the issue to political advantage? Please.

And then Jonah Goldberg responded to Charles Pierce —

And I say this as someone who basically sees nothing wrong with making a political issue out of the Hamdan decision. If Democrats want terrorists to fall under the Geneva Convention let them say so. My guess is most won’t, if they’re smart.

To which Kevin Drum said,

Well, I’m a Democrat, and I’ll say it: anyone we capture on a battlefield should be subject to the minimum standards of decency outlined in the Geneva Conventions. That includes terrorists. It’s our way of telling the world that we aren’t barbarians; that we believe in minimal standards of human decency even if our enemies don’t. It’s also a necessary — though not sufficient — requirement for winning this war.

To which Digby Tristero responded (adding to the quote above),

And if, without thinking, you take the bait and respond as Kevin has, you’re instantly battling uphill:

– – – – – – –

    What is all this preposterous liberal hand-wringing about rights for terrorists? They’re beheading our soldiers! They are evil! And there you are, worried sick about their rights. And look, the world thinks we’re barbarians anyway, anti-Americanism predates anti-Bushism, duh. And let’s not forget the big picture here: The important issue is not to demonstrate we’re not barbarians but to defeat the terrorists before they kill us. The rest is detail.

Anyway, the point here is that it’s the Right, not the Left, that time and time again proves it is not serious about combating terrorism or strengthening our national security. All the Right cares about is setting semantic traps to win political advantage.

In today’s Washington Post, Harold Meyerson writes that Republicans seem conflicted on the rule of law regarding the Hamdan decision.

Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens also said that whatever procedures were adopted had to comport with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which mandates humane treatment for prisoners of war and entitles them to some rights at trial — such as their, and their attorneys’, right to actually attend.

In February 2002, President Bush signed an order saying that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to our war on terrorism, since it was not a war against a nation as such. A memo from the White House counsel one month before had called the Conventions “quaint” and “obsolete.” (Good thing nobody asked the office for its assessment of the Bill of Rights.) But the court ruled flatly that Bush’s order was wrong. Article 3, Stevens noted, explicitly says that its terms apply even in a “conflict not of an international character.” Justice Anthony Kennedy, in his concurring opinion, even had the bad manners to point out that violations of Article 3 were war crimes subject to severe punishment under statutes passed by Congress.

Now, if one were to think about this issue rationally, one might understand there is no reason lawful procedures for determining if prisoners/detainees actually require being imprisoned or detained would compromise American national security. But of course, when attempting to reason with righties, rational thinking will just get you into trouble.

As I understand it, the Hamdan decision says that Congress — not the White House — must stipulate how the prisoners/detainees will be tried. Just as judges are not supposed to legislate from the bench, neither are presidents supposed to legislate from the Oval Office. So the matter is to go back to Congress, and Congress might well just rubber stamp whatever the White House wants to do. In any event, some congressional Republicans call for working with Democrats on this issue. For example:

South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, who was a military attorney before he entered politics, has said, “My nation needs both parties working in collaboration with the executive branch to solve the military commission problem.”

Again, this is rational, and this is what the law and the Constitution and even the global war on terror require. However,

According to Karl Rove — the guy who actually decrees the strategy — Republicans will maintain their hold on Congress come November by stressing at every turn that the Democrats are a pre-Sept. 11 party while the Republicans are a post-Sept. 11 party.

The Democrats are concerned with such quaint and obsolete concepts as the rule of law. None of that for the Republicans; they’re too tough and realistic.

And so, when Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi had the temerity to welcome the court’s decision, Republican House leader John Boehner responded with a press release that attacked her for advocating “special privileges for terrorists.”

Echoing Boehner, the talk-radio thugocracy could speak of little else.

Here’s Meyerson’s punch line:

So Republicans have a choice. Working with the Democrats, they could craft a legislative response that incorporates both halves of the court’s decision, guaranteeing the legality of the new procedures — but forfeiting a major opportunity to demagogue against Democrats between now and November. Or, as they do roughly 100 times out of 100, they could simply choose to go for the politics. A bill that gives the force of law to the administration’s kangaroo courts could surely pass the House with close to unanimous Republican support. In the Senate, so many Republicans might demur that such a bill could fail. No matter: Some Democrats in both houses would surely vote against such a bill, which Rove and Co. would use to brand the party as one big Osama Enabling Society.

Jonah Goldberg is siding with the games-players, of course. Digby explains how to respond to him:

Jonah Goldberg is indulging in political games when he knows full well that the lives of millions of Americans working abroad, including soldiers who are fighting a war he supports but refuses to fight, are being endangered by the arrogant refusal of the Bush administration to set an example of principled action in the world. By embracing an official policy that embraces torture and murder, Bush (and enablers like Goldberg) are ensuring that what happened to Daniel Pearl will happen to more and more Americans. But the effect of this egregious flouting of bedrock principles going back thousands of years will transcend even the numerous terrible personal tragedies that are sure to come. As it becomes more dangerous for Americans to travel, trade will suffer and the security of our country will suffer precipitous declines.

Instead helping to create an atmosphere for genuine inquiry and dialogue, with recourse to facts and intelligent give and take, all Goldberg offers is one more opportunity to toss around the same old vacuous smears the right has been peddling for 30 plus years against the rest of America’s politicians, including those who are quite willing to fight wars Goldberg and company don’t have the guts to fight themselves. If Goldberg were prepared to discuss these very serious issues with any seriousness, he never would have proposed doing with such constricted, partisan language. And until he is prepared to be serious, I see no reason to enter his farcical rhetorical world.

Two points, which to Goldberg are irrelevant: One, we have no way to know if all the prisoners at Guantanamo and elsewhere are terrorists A number of prisoners have been determined to be innocent and released, but only after being detained in for months, even years. The BBC reported that one of the men who committed suicide at Guantanamo last month was scheduled to be released but did not know it.

Second, the issue of prisoners of war, or detainees, or whatever you want to call them, and torture, is not about what a prisoner/detainee “deserves” or giving him special rights. It’s about our values.

Over the long 4th of July weekend the Right Blogosphere was a warehouse of every flag-waving, pro-American sentiment you ever heard, along with the usual drivel about how “The Left” hates America. For example, “The left is apparently afraid to be in awe of this wonderful country, what it has done for mankind. They are afraid to recognize its good aspects.”

No, child, we are not afraid to recognize its good aspects. We are trying desperately to preserve its good aspects from being destroyed by the likes of you.

Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, the Judge Advocate General‘s Corps JAG who defended Hamdan in the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case, was questioned last week by Chris Matthews:

MATTHEWS: I only have a minute here, sir, and I appreciate your position, and I‘m being tough with you because there is another side to this argument. Let me ask you, do you believe that people who fight us as terrorists deserve Geneva Convention treatment?

SWIFT: It‘s not whether they deserve it or not. It‘s how we conduct ourselves. It has to do where if we say that our opponent can cause us not to follow the rules anymore, then we‘ve lost who we are. We‘re the good guys. We‘re the guys who follow the rule and the people we fight are the bad guys and we show that every day when we follow the rules, regardless of what they do. It‘s what sets us apart. It‘s what makes us great and in my mind, it‘s what makes us undefeatable, ultimately.

Got that, rightie?

For years righties have been telling us we lefties lack a moral compass. We engage in situational ethics. Well, folks, I say that whenever righties peg their ethical judgments on what they think other people have done first, I’d say their “moral compass” got lost in a swamp. This is doubly true when those “other peo;ple” are not given adequate means to challenge their incarceration.

Having ditched their moral compasses, righties justify their substandard ethics with legalisms about uniforms. But seems to me that when our enemies do not wear uniforms, we must be even more careful than with uniformed “regulars” to be sure those detainees are not harmless civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s the point of Hamdan; we need to have lawful procedures to ensure that innocent people are not locked up for years with the enemy. This is not about giving “rights” to terrorists, but following our own moral compass.

Here’s a little bit of history for you:

… at the time of the Guadalcanal Invasion in 1942, much of the Japanese populace believed that Americans tortured prisoners. Rumors circulated that the barbarians churned tanks over those Japanese captured in the Solomon Islands. These of course were untrue, but they were widely believed. Japan, unlike the United States, was not bound to treat its prisoners under international law because she failed to ratify the Geneva Convention articles on prisoners of war. Japan claimed, however, she would observe its stipulations.

The Vatican, of all places, broadcast to the world Japan’s kindness to its captives. Prisoners of war in Japan and Japanese occupied territory, the Holy City reported, received ample supplies of soap, cigarettes, and money to purchase other items from their captors. Those who knew the truth but were unable to speak because of their plight meanwhile learned to avoid the wrath of an Ishihara or to “stand fast or move fast” when suddenly face to face with a “menacing bayonet or rifle butt.” Behind the cold wire walked death, hatred, and hunger. [David Oran Faries, “Home Is My Only Destination: William Harold Thomas, North China Marine, 1940-1945” (Master’s Thesis, Department of History, Western Illinois University, August 1985), pp. 69-70.]

I happen to have a copy of this master’s thesis because David Faries is my cousin and William Harold Thomas was our uncle. I’ve mentioned him before; he’s the guy who was a U.S. Marine embassy guard in Peking in 1941, and who was a prisoner of war in Japan from the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 to after the surrender of Japan in August 1945. My uncle was beaten and starved, but he survived the camp. Several other Marines were killed, cruelly. But he came home emaciated and in fragile health. He was, I believe, only in his 50s when he died of health problems that began in Japan.

The Japanese decided that my uncle didn’t “deserve” humane treatment.

I was born after World War II, but I grew up hearing the legend of Uncle Harry in Japan. And was a point of pride with me that American policy was to treat POWs humanely, no matter what the enemy did to our soldiers. That’s why we were the good guys. We often fell short of our own ideals, but at least we had ideals.

Update: See Glenn Greenwald, “Legalizing torture – distorting Hamdan“

Bush and North Korea

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North Korea’s missile tests — which included tests of a long-range missile capable of striking the United States — stand as one more reminder of the Bush Administration’s failure to come up with a rational national security strategy.

The long-range test failed, and we are assured by several sources that North Korea does not pose an immediate military threat to the United States. Yet it’s pretty darn certain that Kim Jung Il wants to pose a military threat to the United States. If we were to apply the same rationale to North Korea that we applied to Iraq, we’d have invaded North Korea already.

In February 2005 I wrote a series of posts explaining the many ways in which the Bush Administration took a serious but managable situation in North Korea and turned it into an intractable crisis. The posts are archived here; after Part I scroll down past the adstrip for the remainder. It’s a long series, but in a nutshell, shortly after Bush became president in 2001 he destroyed years of careful international diplomacy with North Korea just by being the asshole that he is. Since then the Bushies have stumbled through one blunder after another, making the situation worse.

For example, in 2002 National Security Adviser Condi Rice said that the North Korean situation would be easier to manage than Iraq, and that Kim Jing Il could be made to behave if the U.S. stopped shipments of fuel oil and applied economic sanctions. Two years after oil shipments stopped, North Korea announced it had nuclear weapons. See how well that worked?

Note: Please don’t presume to argue with me on this point until you’ve read the series. In particular, do not try to blame the mess on Jimmy Carter and Madeleine Albright until you’ve read the series. Pay close attention to the difference between “uranium” and “plutonium.”

Colossally stupid rightie comment of the day by someone who clearly doesn’t know history from turnips: “North Korea is also a prime example of why Truman should not have relieved General MacArthur of his command and finished the Korean War.” Someone should explain to this genius that MacArthur was not only insubordinate to Truman, MacArthur was getting his ass whipped in North Korea. MacArthur’s replacement, General Ridgway, stabilized the mess MacArthur had made and managed a good counter-offensive, taking back some of the territory MacArthur had lost. And the cease-fire was negotiated on President Eisenhower’s watch.

Ulysses S. Grant

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Nathan Newman wrote a lovely post recognizing Ulysses S. Grant as one of our great presidents.

Grant, Newman writes, “went on to be the President who would oversee the ratification of the 15th Amendment and enactment of the civil rights enforcement laws that — after the interregnum of disuse under Jim Crow — to this day are a backbone of civil rights in this nation.”

Even as Grant was being elected in 1868, he faced Klan-based racial terrorism fighting to manipulate the vote throughout the South. The first result was the 15th Amendment to protect the right to vote but as importantly was the creation under Grant of the Department of Justice in 1871 and a series of “Enforcement Acts” to eliminate Klan violence. The language was sweeping in its defense of black voting rights:

    Congress made it a crime for “two or more persons [to] band or conspire together, or go in disguise upon the public highway, or upon the premises of another, with the intent…to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any citizen with intent to prevent his free exercise and enjoyment of any right or privilege granted or secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”

Grant used his new authority to crack down on Klan terrorism in nine South Carolina counties in 1871 and essentially destroyed the Klan there and then throughout the South. Hundreds of Klansmen were convicted between 1870 and 1873 of violating the voting and other civil rights of the new freedmen in the South.

The result was the election of 1872, the only election not undermined by racial terrorism until the late 1960s. In his second inaugural address, President Grant declared that racial segregation was unacceptable and called for federal legislation to assure equal rights in access to transportation and public schools. Following Grant’s lead, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, banning segregation in public accommodations, transportation, and entertainment facilities. Majorities in both houses of Congress even voted to make school segregation illegal throughout the country, but filibusters blocked enactment of those later amendments, but it is a testament to Grant’s dogged pursuit of civil rights that so encompassing a legislative and administrative agenda of racial justice was pursued.

The one thing most people think they know about Grant was that he was an alcoholic. Except that he probably wasn’t. His military and political rivals spread many uncorroborated stories of Grant’s public drunkenness, most of which have been dismissed as fabrications by historians. His biographers uniformly write that his marriage to Julia Dent Grant was sublimely happy — happy marriages do not go hand in hand with drinking problems — and that, rumors aside, he was never drunk “on the job” as a general in the Civil War.

He was one of the most admired public figures in America until his death in 1885. He even won some grudging respect in the South. His Personal Memoirs earned praise as a masterpiece of literature by Gertrude Stein and Edmund Wilson, among others. Yet historians of the late 19th and a large part of the 20th centuries dismissed him as a drunken, stupid brute whose administration was mostly famous for corruption.

The reason for the trashing of Grant’s reputation was, I think, twofold. A large part of the old popular histories of the Civil War were written by southerners who elevated Robert E. Lee to a position of sainthood. The notion that Lee might have been out-generaled by Grant just would not do; according to moonlight-and-magnolias revisionist history, Grant won because he had more men, or more equipment, or more ruthlessness, or more plain dumb luck. Historians who have revisited the historical record more recently, however, have come away saying that Grant beat Lee because Grant was the better general. See, for example, Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier & President by Geoffrey Perret (Modern Library, 1997). An older work by a British historian, The Generalship Of Ulysses S. Grant by J.F.C. Fuller, compares Grant and Lee and makes Lee seem downright substandard.

But I think the larger reason is that Grant’s support of civil rights became, during the long years of Jim Crow, reason to dismiss him as a fool. When white society, from the top down, was determined to persuade itself that racial discrimination was justified, something had to be done about Grant. Thus, he was trashed. Newman writes,

The sad reality is that if Grant had been able to continue his anti-Klan policies into his second term, there is little question that the elections of 1876 would have been a decisive victory for the Republicans and we would not have seen the end of Reconstruction. And American history would have been completely different.

But with the end of Reconstruction, we have seen history written to bury most memories of the period and assassinate the reputations of those who led it– including Grant. There were real accusations of corruption among Grant’s cabinet, although no one believes Grant himself was corrupt, but those charges of corruption appear relatively minor in light of far worse corruption in many administrations to come. But saying Grant was “corrupt” became an easy offhand way to dismiss his Presidency and Reconstruction at the same time. Even today, there are NO great films honoring reconstruction, just racist anti-Reconstruction films like Gone With the Wind and even modern documentaries like Ken Burns’ Civil War only mentions accusations of corruption In Grant’s administration — without a single mention of his vigorous fight against Klan Violence. …

…as corporate American sought new alliances with Southern Bourbons, the legacy of Ulysses Grant and Radical Republicans became an inconvenience, so a new consensus emerged that it had all been a mistake overseen by a corrupt and incompetent man best forgotten by history.

Nathan Newman also writes about Grant’s policies toward native Americans, which were better intended than executed. White society had been shocked when Grant named a Seneca, Ely Parker, as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and most of Washington conspired to make Parker’s job difficult until he resigned. Grant’s policies were specifically meant to end massacres of native Americans, but the generals sent West to carry out the policies were less enlightened.

Some years ago I read about a question asked of a panel of Civil War historians — what one event might have changed the outcome of the Civil War? And as I remember, they all came up with the same answer — eliminate General Grant, especially early in the war, and the Confederacy might have won its severance from the Union.

Before President Lincoln put him in command of all Union armies in 1864, Grant’s initiative and determination had put most of the western theater of war in Union hands. The Vicksburg campaign, which gave the Union complete control of the Mississippi River, in particular is remembered as one of the great military campaigns in all of American military history. And in 1864, Grant was brought east to finish off Lee’s army after a succession of other generals had failed. His accomplishments as a general alone — he saved his country’s butt — should have made him one of the great men of American history. That racism has buried his memory is one of the great injustices of American history.

See also: Jonathan Yardley, review of Ulysses S. Grant by Josiah Bunting, Washington Post, September 19, 2004.

Patriot Blog

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Celebrate while still you can.

Reg Henry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

… as a journalist — likely definition: “A writer who is accused of bias by people who are themselves hopelessly biased” — I feel compelled to say something on behalf of those of us patriotic folks who support the troops but do not support the war in Iraq. As polls suggest, there are many of us now in these disunited United States.

The idea that a patriotic American can simultaneously support the troops and oppose the war drives people on the right nuts. “How does that work?” they ask incredulously.

I will tell them in a minute, but first let me say that the simple pleasure of being irritating is surely reason and incentive enough for waverers on this point to adopt the sane position of pro-troops, anti-war.

There is an important distinction to be observed here, and unfortunately Americans are notoriously hopeless at making distinctions. …

… the troops are good people (I know, I was a soldier once myself) but the war in Iraq is bad. Worse, it is stupid, serving as an incubator of terrorism undertaken in the name of defeating terrorism. …

… Yes, we support the troops — when can their glory fade? — but we also know that someone has blundered, in fact a whole party of someones. Happy Independence Day anyway. Our unburned flags will be flying.


Howard Zinn, Alternet, “Patriotism and the 4th of July”

In celebration of the Fourth of July there will be many speeches about the young people who “died for their country.” But those who gave their lives did not, as they were led to believe, die for their country; they died for their government. The distinction between country and government is at the heart of the Declaration of Independence, which will be referred to again and again on July 4, but without attention to its meaning.

The Declaration of Independence is the fundamental document of democracy. It says governments are artificial creations, established by the people, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and charged by the people to ensure the equal right of all to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Furthermore, as the Declaration says, “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.” It is the country that is primary–the people, the ideals of the sanctity of human life and the promotion of liberty.

When a government recklessly expends the lives of its young for crass motives of profit and power, while claiming that its motives are pure and moral, (“Operation Just Cause” was the invasion of Panama and “Operation Iraqi Freedom” in the present instance), it is violating its promise to the country. War is almost always a breaking of that promise. It does not enable the pursuit of happiness but brings despair and grief.
Mark Twain, having been called a “traitor” for criticizing the U.S. invasion of the Philippines, derided what he called “monarchical patriotism.” He said: “The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: ‘The King can do no wrong.’ We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: ‘Our country, right or wrong!’ We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had — the individual’s right to oppose both flag and country when he believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it, all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.”

See also:

George Lakoff, Boston Globe, “Understanding the Meaning of Freedom”

E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, “A Dissident’s Holiday”

Susan Madrak, Huffington Post, “Of Thee I Sing”

Brent Budowsky, “A July Fourth call to arms”

Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence