Posted under NeoCons & Political Correctness
I was quoting these things over at the left-wing / neocon blog No Left Turns, but the neocon PC enforcers arrived and started deleting my comments. I don’t think that one must deplore Lincoln to be a conservative, but I do think it is wrong to make Jacobin adoration of him a litmus test, especially when one considers how unconservative Lincoln was. If anyone violates the protocols of political correctness, especially as it concerns Lincoln, then neocons will be the first to silence and censor. Here are some posts that were deleted.
All the quotes are taking from the essay “Gnosticism of Lincoln’s Political Rhetoric” by ME Bradford
The problem with all leftists-in-disguise like Jaffa is that they all trot out the same old pony: they try to dress up leftist ideas (e.g. egalitarianism) and sell them as conservative. Not only is this philosophically naive, but it is academically dishonest.
DELETED POSTS
(1) I would read ME Bradford’s “Gnosticism of Lincoln’s Political Rhetoric” (http://www.mmisi.org/ma/23_01/bradford.pdf). This article does a very good job of explaining the source of Lincoln’s inspirations and success. By and large, like many successful left-wing despots, he played upon existing cultural norms, nodded to traditions, and was extremely manipulative. But if you look at his underlying ideas, he was a left-wing Jacobin through and through. He was primarily interested in power, and also shared the Enlightenment leftist view of progress, or at least gave it lip service. He thought that the government should and could improve the lot of man. Here are some nuggets from Bradford’s essay…
(2) Lincoln believed in radical alterations as being the “basis and organization of American society.” This is left-wing radicalism, not conservatism.
(3) Lincoln said that he would achieve absolute power whether it meant “emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen.” This is pure left-wing ideology.
(4) Lincoln believed in and endorsed abstractions, or at least gave them lip service, from the liberal Enlightenment. Conservatives, like Burke and De Maistre, abhorred the Enlightenment “rights talk” and thought that a real country was based in historical circumstance, a people (tribe), their ancestral traditions, and their progeny. Burke and De Maistre stressed the importance of not allegiance to left-wing ideology, but a people and its ancestral institutions.
(5) Lincoln was also successful at creating a left-wing secular religion to promote “progress” among the people. Bradford on Lincoln’s secular religion: “A successful political religion must replace Church with State, or else must absorb the former into the latter, and borrow the sanction for its sacrilege from the civitas dei.”
(6) One of Lincoln’s first political acts was the Internal Improvements Act of 1837, which was one of the most radical big-government initiatives of its time, and which put Illinois in immediate bankruptcy.
(7) Lincoln said that to be successful in politics one should “tax and tax, spend and spend.”
(8) Bradford: “We are reminded of innumerable gnostic tracts, each in its own way concerned with the transformation of reality by ‘discovery’ of what is hidden an the ‘invention,’ through that discovery, of what is new.”
(9) Bradford: “According to Lincoln…, the… transformation of the modern world by America is to be accomplished by applied science, ethical culture and government manipulation.” It is this last that shows especially Lincoln’s left-wing mindset, and how infatuated he was with the secular Enlightenment god of Reason. Lincoln said: “mind, all conquering mind, shall live and move the monarch of the world.” Lincoln said: “Reign of Reason, all hail!”
(10) Bradford: “Lincoln goes well beyond conventional political obfuscation by the party of privilege and imposed rational reform in a traditionalist, socially conservative and closed republican regime.”
(11) Lincoln was a Jacobin through and through, and like all good Jacobins was fascinated with power and big-government imposed obedience.
(12) I don’t think Lincoln had any noble intentions. Like Bill Clinton, he would change his beliefs based upon the wind. But, regardless of his intentions, he did end up implementing big-government egalitarianism, which is the anithesis of conservatism.
Mr. Conservative on 31 Mar 2007 at 8:13 pm #
The Ashbrook Center is like a liberal secular church that has two gods: political correctness and Lincoln. If you criticize either, you are criticizing their theology. Don’t expect rational discourse. Expect blind worship and censorship.
David W. Hampton on 31 Mar 2007 at 8:15 pm #
Many of my posts were deleted, which were very civil. My crime? I refused to toe the left-wing / neocon line. Perhaps I should go by a cheerleader’s uniform and blindly sing the praises of Bush, Israel, spreading democracy, egalitarianism, Jaffa and Strauss, and toss in a few Jacobin / revolutionary cliches. Then they would invite me to dinner.
Edmund Burke on 31 Mar 2007 at 8:22 pm #
Comment 65 by Dale Cooper
Henry Clay Whitney (Lincoln’s close friend): the proclamation was “not the end designed by him (Lincoln), but only the means to the end, the end being the deportation of the slaves and the payment for them to their masters – at least to those who were loyal.”
Link to this Comment | 3/30/2007 6:52 AM
Comment 66 by Dale Cooper
Lincoln: “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything.â€
Link to this Comment | 3/30/2007 6:57 AM
Comment 67 by Dale Cooper
Lincoln: “What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the greater mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded.â€
Link to this Comment | 3/30/2007 6:58 AM
Comment 68 by Dale Cooper
Lincoln (on Dred Scott): “Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime [Africa], and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be.â€
Link to this Comment | 3/30/2007 7:00 AM
Comment 69 by Dale Cooper
Lincoln: “I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position.”
Link to this Comment | 3/30/2007 7:02 AM
Comment 70 by Dale Cooper
Lincoln: ““I do not speak of emancipation at once, but of a decision at once to emancipate gradually. Room in South America for colonization, can be obtained cheaply, and in abundance; and when numbers shall be large enough to be company and encouragement for one another, the free people will not be so reluctant to go.â€
Link to this Comment | 3/30/2007 7:03 AM
Comment 71 by Dale Cooper
As these quotes show, Lincoln was not some modern leftist / neocon. He did not worship the politically correct concept of equality. He, however, was a good 19th-century leftist, and worshiped a large, centrally-controlled state. Lincoln was just typically 19th-century, left-wing dictator. In this respect, he is the forerunner of dictators like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.
Link to this Comment | 3/30/2007 7:05 AM
Comment 72 by Dale Cooper
Thomas Jefferson: “I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments of both body and mind. It is not against experience to suppose, that different species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications. Will not a lover of natural history then, one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the department of man as distinct as nature has formed them? This unfortunate difference of color, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people.”
Link to this Comment | 3/30/2007 7:07 AM
Comment 73 by Dale Cooper
Thomas Jefferson: “and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them [negroes] a very strong and disagreeable odour.”
Link to this Comment | 3/30/2007 7:36 AM
Comment 74 by Dale Cooper
Thomas Jefferson: “To this must be ascribed their [blacks’] disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labour. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course.”
Link to this Comment | 3/30/2007 7:42 AM
Comment 76 by Dale Cooper
Thomas Jefferson: “The slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed [to Africa] beyond the reach of mixture.”
Link to this Comment | 3/30/2007 7:46 AM
Comment 77 by Dale Cooper
I can pull up dozens of more quotes to show that Jefferson was not some politically correct left-winger / neocon. It amazes me, but so many of the neocons here seem to worship at the alter of political correctness.
Link to this Comment | 3/30/2007 7:49 AM
Comment 78 by Dale Cooper
No, like the left-wing radicals in Europe, Lincoln desired to create a large, centrally-controlled government. It did not exist previously. Under Lincoln, the federal government increased 300times, the largest increase in American history. This is one of the many unfortunate facets of Lincoln’s left-wing dictatorship.
Link to this Comment | 3/30/2007 7:51 AM
Comment 79 by Howard
Russell Kirk in defense of segregation: “The South…the Permanence of America: the defender — sometimes consciously, sometimes blindly — of principles immensely ancient, of conventions that yet have meaning . . . Without the South to act as its Permanence, the American Republic would be perilously out of joint. And the South need feel not shame for its defense of beliefs that were not concocted yesterday.â€
Link to this Comment | 3/30/2007 8:32 AM
Comment 80 by Howard
Russell Kirk: “It would be reckless indeed to tamper with an institution as ancient as segregation.â€
Link to this Comment | 3/30/2007 8:33 AM
Comment 81 by Howard
Richard M Weaver: “some of the means, for example the Ku Klux Klan, were irregular, but essentially it was the political genius of Jefferson, of Washington, of Madison, and of Pinckney expressing itself in times of trouble and oppression.â€
Dan Phillips on 01 Apr 2007 at 2:51 am #
Were these posts actually removed/deleted? Or are you just suggesting you think they are what precipitated the backlash?
John Moser on 01 Apr 2007 at 3:48 pm #
Well, I guess I’m not surprised that the anonymous “Guest Author” slithered over here to whine about how we’re “censoring” his comments over at No Left Turns. I encourage you to visit the blog for yourselves. You’ll see that Dan Phillips is still posting. Brutus is still posting. Dain is still posting. All of Dale Cooper’s cherry-picked quotes are still there, and will remain there. In other words, there is a spirited discussion taking place about various strands of conservatism (oh, and stop confusing Straussians with neocons–they’re very different). Only one person’s comments have been deleted, and will continue to be deleted. They will be deleted because this person over the past few days has posted under about a dozen different pseudonyms, hurling abuse and invective (“neocons really are the scum of the earth” and “Jaffa is a neocon wackjob”) and making outrageous and unsubstantiated claims (charging, for instance, that Allan Bloom gave AIDS to his graduate students). This is the same person who started this thread, under the name “GuestAuthor.”
Surely as Southern Gentlemen you must be able to recognize unacceptable discourse when you see it. Surely as conservatives you understand the difference between censorship for the purpose of silencing dissent and censorship to maintain certain standards of decency. I am confident that you will understand why we at No Left Turns want to keep this sort of garbage from polluting our blog. Thank you and good day to you.
Bede on 01 Apr 2007 at 4:59 pm #
John,
Thanks for giving us a heads up. Although we generally do not like liberals / neocons, we do encourage civility. The gentleman to whom you refer is usually the epitome of good manners, so he must have really been riled up. Everyone has lapses. Please feel free to engage in lively debate here and post in our comments section.
P.S. I’m curious: is the comment he allegedly made about Bloom unsubstantiated? I’ve heard it many times (even from a Ph.D. graduate from Social Thought), but I’ve never seen it substantiated. It could just be myth. I do know, though, that Bloom considered himself a liberal. In the infamous essay in Giants & Dwarfs Bloom says that he’s a leftist, and says some harsh things about real conservatives. But like many neocons, Bloom just thought the Left went too far left. As I’ve said many times, neocons are really just 1950s liberals. To be a true conservative, I think, you, like Eliot, Weaver, Kirk, Fleming, etc., you need to reject much of the baggage of the Enlightenment (e.g. equality, etc.).
Bede on 01 Apr 2007 at 7:24 pm #
Professor Alasdair MacIntyre, although not a conservative per se, is one of the best critics of liberalism. Professor Donald W Livingston, for example, believes MacIntyre and Thomas Fleming (Morality of Everyday Life) provide the two most devastating critiques of liberalism.
What MacIntyre does, which needed to be done for a long time, is look at liberalism historically to see how much of modern thought is influenced by liberalism. His conclusion: conservatism is barely alive. What one usually calls “conservatism” is just an older form of liberalism.
MacIntyre said:
Almost every idea defended by neocons (egalitarianism, equality, natural rights, ideological capitalism, proposition nation, etc.) is a product of the liberal Enlightenment, and these ideas are historically leftist. There is nothing conservative about them.
Dan Phillips on 02 Apr 2007 at 4:51 pm #
I have never quite figured out MacIntyre. He is a critic of liberalism, but everyone says he is not a conservative. So what is he? His criticism of liberalism is informed by his Catholicism if I’m not mistaken.
GuestAuthor, which thread was that stuff deleted from?
Triple H on 02 Apr 2007 at 5:00 pm #
I believe the stuff was deleted from the “I have an idea…let’s talk about Lincoln!” thread.
Bede on 02 Apr 2007 at 5:04 pm #
Professor Alasdair MacIntyre is a communitarian. There are conservative communitarians and more progressive communitarians. (You can’t say “liberal communitarians” because all communitarians supposedly reject liberalism.) MacIntyre probably leans more towards the progressive side. This is not to say that regular conservatives are not communitarians or have such inclinations. Given that many conservatives have reservations about the extreme individualism bequeathed to us by the Enlightenment, they certainly have communitarian instincts.