Im-Politic: How to Deal with the Confederate and Other Now-Controversial Monuments

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A.P. Hill, Abraham Lincoln, Arlington National Cemetery, Aunt Jemima, Civil War, Confederacy, Confederate monuments, Constitution, cross-burning, Elizabeth Warren, First Amendment, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George C. Wallace, George Washington, Im-Politic, Ku Klux Klan, Mexican War, military bases, Pierre Beauregard, racism, Reconstruction, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Theodore G. Bilbo, Thomas Jefferson, treason, Trump, Tucker Carlson, Woodrow Wilson

Not that anyone’s asked for it, but the Confederate and other allegedly racist monuments issue is back in the news, so here’s my handy dandy guide for figuring out which of these memorials should be taken down or removed, which should remain publicly displayed (and how), and which should be left alone. (This guide, which only covers the major controversies that have reappeared recently, will of course include naming decisions for public buildings and spaces like parks and squares and streets.)

Some major misconceptions need to be cleared up first. Right off the bat, everyone should agree that whatever actions are taken (removal or alteration), they must result from legal processes. Unauthorized teardowns and inflictions of damage are simple vandalism and should be punished as such. No private person or group has the right to take these matters into their own hands, precisely because no one’s voted for you. As for public officials, unless laws specifically empower them to act unilaterally, they should always work through legislation or established rule-making procedures.

In addition, let’s drop the dishonest nonsense about statues and plaques on public grounds, and choices of names for public buildings or military bases and spaces like parks and squares, being simple descriptions or illustrations of history. Nothing could be clearer than that they’re meant to express honor and pride.

Similarly, making changes (including removal) has nothing to do with “erasing history.” To take one example, if Robert E. Lee’s name is taken off a high school or highway or whatever, there’s no chance that Lee will be forgotten. Every American who takes a public school course in U.S. history will learn about his role as commander of the Confederate army during the Civil War. And if you happened to cut or sleep through that class, you can always access one of the upteen gazillion books about that conflict that have been written for the last roughly century-and-a-half since it ended.

It’s true that public school students may not encounter the names of lesser Confederate figures. To which the only adult reply is “Big deal.” The reason that folks like Generals A.P. Hill or even Stonewall Jackson may be overlooked is because, in the end, they weren’t such big deals.

Also a no-brainer: If Americans want to honor controversial or despicable figures or movements or ideas on their own property, that’s in virtually all cases their Constitutionally protected right. Ditto for private businesses. If your neighbor is flying a Confederate flag or has painted a swastika on his property, you’re free to shun him, and to urge others to do the same. If you’re offended by Aunt Jemima, switch your pancake syrup brand, ask the company to use a new image or character, or encourage boycotts and trust in the market and consumer choice to settle the issue. (Cross-burning on one’s own private property, a la the viciously racist and anti-semitic Ku Klux Klan, is legally treated somewhat – but only somewhat – differently.)

More complicated is the question of which level of government should be making which decisions where public property is concerned. For instance, should a federal ban be enacted on using Confederate names on any public grounds, including state and local? I can see an argument for that proposition (as indicated below, it provides encouragement for treason, a Constitutionally designated crime or, alternatively, creates a discriminatory environment). But I can also understand the case for leaving the decision to the states and localities – and ultimately letting the market decide (mainly in the form of privately organized boycotts of the type that has pushed several states to drop anti-LGBT measures).

So having cleared away this intellectual brush, here’s the guide – at least for some of the major cases:

>Confederate leaders – they’re the easiest call of all. They were traitors. They took up arms against the U.S. government. No decent American should want to honor them in any way. Yes, there’s an argument that some of these naming decisions (e.g., for U.S. miIitary bases) were made in order to promote reconciliation between North and South after the Civil War. Indeed, President Trump just made it.

But the U.S. decision not to prosecute the leaders of the Confederacy – and execute them if found guilty – was a strong enough gesture of reconciliation. In addition, nearly all Confederate veterans – including senior officers – were soon permitted to vote and hold public office once more. And the same states whose rebellion ignited the war were admitted back into the Union.

As a result, naming numerous U.S. military bases after Confederate generals represents a grossly mistaken (at best), and I would argue utterly perverse and continuing slap in the face to all American citizens and legal residents of the country, and especially to the soldiers who fought and died to preserve the Union and their families and descendents. There are plenty of other American military leaders who served their country in actually patriotic and genuinely heroic ways. Their names belong on these bases instead.

But what about the graves of Confederate veterans (including rebels from “ordinary” backgrounds who may not have been slave owners or even racists) currently lying in U.S. military or other national cemeteries, including Arlington? There’s no doubt, as made clear here, that a number wound up there because of mistakes in identifying very partial physical remains. But it’s also clear that many were placed in or actually moved to these plots and the graves specially marked as signs of respect – and that Congress approved.

Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren has recently introduced legislation to “remove all names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honor or commemorate the Confederate States of America and anyone who voluntarily served it from all military bases and other assets of the Department of Defense.” Presumably (though I haven’t found the full text) this includes the markers.

Fox News talker Tucker Carlson (who I generally admire) condemned this measure as grave “desecration.” That’s reckless hyperbole, but if Warren would actually remove the markers, that looks excessive as well, since at least according to the official description in the National Parks Service post linked above, they simply identify the deceased as Confederates.

My bottom line: It’s not possible to figure out which of these veterans were bad guys and which were at least reasonably good guys, and the bodies are already interred. So I’d leave them be.

Not so, however, for the Confederate Memorial at Arlingon Cemetery – which even its official website says “offers a nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery.” The Cemetery authorites go on to contend that “The Confederate Memorial offers an opportunity for visitors to reflect on the history and meanings of the Civil War, slavery, and the relationship between military service, citizenship and race in America.”

But given the monument’s clear glorification of the Confederate cause and its rose-colored view of slavery, and given that visitors have lots of other opportunities to reflect on the meaning of the Civil War and related issues, I’d ship this slab of stone out of there. It has no place on arguably the most sacred ground of this nation’s civic religion.

What to do with it, however, from that point – along with other Confederate monuments on federal grounds? Here I fully agree with those who would put them in museums instead of simply destroying them. Wouldn’t it be best to show them in a setting that could describe them fully and explain the context of their creation? And I’d deal with these statues and plaques on state and municipal lands in exactly the same way.

>Let’s move to American historical figures who didn’t revolt against their country, but nonetheless owned slaves and/or expressed racist views or supported racist policies. Here I’ll restate the argument I originally made in this post. If these figures were known only or best for racist views and positions – like former segregationist Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, or former (if you can believe it) even more racist Mississippi Governor and U.S. Senator Theodore G. Bilbo, I’d remove any statues etc from public grounds and stick them in museums, displayed as described above.

>The same would go, by the way, for Civil War leaders who for various reasons were widely seen after the conflict as personifications of honor or other military virtues, or who actually repented in word and/or deed after the war. Lee is the leading example of the former. However gentlemanly he might have been, or however well he may have treated his soldiers, and even however distinguished his record in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War (which, to complicate matters further, was in large measure a war of annexation), few would have paid much attention to him, or even known of him, if not for his Civil War role. So let’s get him and his name out of public spaces.

A prime example of the latter is Pierre Beauregard. This former Confederate general actually led the troops in South Carolina who fired on Fort Sumter and for all intents and purposes started Civil War. After the conflict, according to the official website of his hometown of New Orleans, he became “an early proponent of equal rights in Louisiana, serving as the outspoken leader of the short-lived and ultimately failed unification movement.”

Since I do believe in redemption (and hope everyone else does, too), I’d go along with a monument of some kind. But not the kind currently standing in the city – which depicts “the uniformed general astride his horse.” How about moving that statue to a museum, complete with a full bio, and putting up a new monument portraying him in civvies and celebrating his efforts to champion equality? Ditto for any similar cases.

As for those leaders with troublesome racial pasts and/or policy records who nonetheless are (rightly) known for much more (as I argued in the RealityChek post linked above) , I’d leave their monuments in place, too – but make the maximum feasible effort to add some explanations that mention these blemishes. By the way, such leaders include not only former slave-owning Presidents like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and outspokenly racist former Presidents like Woodrow Wilson, but even former Presidents generally seen as race relations heroes – like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. 

A final point about dealing with the Confederate and especially other controversial monuments: If anything should be obvious about this discussion of the issue, it’s how complicated much of the history is, and therefore how complicated many of the monuments et al decisions are. Some are indeed easy calls and should be made promptly. But no one should favor anything resembling a rush to judgment on the others.

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Im-Politic: My Maryland Town Seems Keen on Non-Citizen Voting – & on Weakening Democracy

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Alexander Hamilton, assimilation, citizenship, Constitution, elections, Founding Fathers, George Washington, government benefits, illegal immigrants, Im-Politic, immigrants, legal immigrants, Louis Brandeis, Marsha Dixon, Maryland, Riverdale Park, Thomas Jefferson, voting

How thoroughly depressing to report that my town of Riverdale Park, Maryland seems about to join post-borders and post-citizenship America– that is to say, post-America America. Early next month, the town council is almost sure to approve legislation that will grant the vote in local elections to non-citizens both legally and illegally present in the United States. For good measure, the bill would lower the voting age for such elections to sixteen.

The above description should suffice to point to many of the proposal’s worst flaws. By extending the franchise to illegal immigrants, the town would create another reward for individuals who have broken U.S. law, and add insult to injury to all those outside the country’s borders who have been waiting in line and playing by the rules in order to enter. Even permitting legal non-citizens to vote on the local level would greatly empower many residents who, for various reasons, have chosen to avoid this kind of binding commitment to the American political community. In other words, both categories of canon-citizens would be able to weigh in on decisions with long-term implications for the town’s well-being without much skin in the game.

In addition, in the case of both legals and illegals, the vote would be rewarded based on residing in Riverdale Park for a grand total of 45 days. And despite the legislation’s creation of a “supplemental voter registry,” it looks like a great recipe for voter fraud given that applicants merely need to “submit a signed registration form with the town clerk in a form prescribed by the clerk.” The measure does specify that verification be provided that “the individual is eligible to vote in town elections” (by showing residency for 45 days). But how reassuring can this requirement be given that undocumented immigrants are – by definition – undocumented? Even more troubling: Applicants will be able to complete this registration process (including the supposed verification) on the very day elections are held.

As for lowering the voting age to sixteen, anyone who has ever parented an adolescent should understand why this idea should have been a non-starter.

I attended a town council meeting on March 26 to listen to and participate in debate over the bill. All manner of legitimate and specious arguments were made on behalf of legal and illegal non-citizen voting by the smallish number of residents present. Heading the first category was the compelling (though still controversial) claim that the non-citizen voting legislation would be completely acceptable on Constitutional grounds, since the Constitution says nothing explicit about the overall subject. 

Moreover, although citizenship has more recently been established as a nearly absolute requirement for voting in federal elections, the National Council of State Legislatures holds that it’s the states, with important qualifications (such as Constitutional bars on various forms of arbitrary discrimination) that posses “the ultimate authority” over elections within their borders. 

But the flurry of bogus arguments for permitting non-citizens to vote, and the conspicuous failure of most council members to challenge them, convinced me that this scheme is a done deal – unless it can be overturned by a referendum. For example, supporters claimed that enabling non-citizens of both types to vote was needed to establish Riverdale Park as a “welcoming community.” None responded to my objection that any resident is currently free to bring any concerns to the attention of any current town official, and that surely these officials would take them seriously regardless of that resident’s legal status.

I was also of course told that both legal and illegal residents were subject to taxation, and thus deserved representation (as 18^th century patriot Patrick Henry famously insisted). But of course, legal non-citizens are already eligible for a wide variety of benefits at many government levels, and illegals are eligible for a narrower but hardly negligible range – in addition to benefits (like public school attendance and food stamps eligibility) they can access indirectly because their children are permitted to attend public schools and, if born in the United States and therefore citizens. And let’s not forget – both categories of non-citizens also enjoy the less tangible but no less significant benefits of living in a freedom-loving democracy that, however flawed, ensures that power is exercised through the rule of law, not arbitrarily. Indeed, isn’t that largely why they’re here in the first place?

But most disturbing were two other categories of arguments – the first because it reflected absolutely no interest in political values central to the country’s historic success, the second because it suggested unmistakable contempt for these values.

This indifference – or what certainly sounded like it – came from the measure’s sponsor, Council Member Marsha Dixon, and was expressed after I described the legislation as a perfect example of poor governance. As I see it, a politician takes it on him or herself to solve a problem that’s been proactively identified by no one else in the town (even the non-citizens), according to all available evidence, and thus to fix a local political culture that has showed no signs of being broken.

Dixon’s response? (This is a paraphrase, since the official minutes of the meeting haven’t yet been posted.) She thought the town’s population had “evolved” (that I remember for sure), and therefore its voting rules needed to evolve accordingly.

But there’s evolution and there’s evolution. And Dixon’s version simply ignored one of the most important lessons taught by the Founding Fathers: The only hope for the long-term survival and health of an American democracy worth preserving is creating and nurturing a community of shared democratic values. And achieving this goal inevitably requires a process of assimilating immigrants that is inescapably protracted if it to be taken seriously.

Hence the fears expressed by Thomas Jefferson in 1782 about the encouragement of mass immigration:

“It is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize as much as possible in matters which they must of necessity transact together. Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent. Every species of government has its specific principles. Ours perhaps are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchies. Yet, from such, we are to expect the greatest number of emigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.”

George Washington shared many of these concerns, and believed that only exposure to American ways – a process that he suggested could take generations – could mitigate them:

“My opinion, with respect to emigration, is, that except of useful mechanics and some particular descriptions of men or professions, there is no need of encouragement, while the policy or advantage of its taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the Language, habits and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them—Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures and laws:—in a word, soon become one people.”

Alexander Hamilton has been portrayed in the recent blockbuster musical as a champion of Open Borders and immigrants’ rights, agreed with Jefferson and Washington, and argued strongly in 1802 against a (Jefferson) proposal to completely eliminate a fourteen-year requirement for naturalization (stemming from widespread alarm about excessive foreign influence in American affairs at a time when the new nation was threatened by both British and French ambitions). Alluding to those resulting insecurities and tensions, Hamilton allowed that

“The present law was merely a temporary measure adopted under peculiar circumstances and perhaps demands revision. But there is a wide difference between closing the door altogether and throwing it entirely open; between a postponement of fourteen years and an immediate admission to all the rights of citizenship. Some reasonable term ought to be allowed to enable aliens to get rid of foreign and acquire American attachments; to learn the principles and imbibe the spirit of our government; and to admit of at least a probability of their feeling a real interest in our affairs. A residence of at least five years ought to be required.”

Riverdale Park Council Member Dixon’s threadbare 45-day residency requirement demonstrates just how unconcerned about this history, and these essential considerations, so many of our politicians have become – as well as how thoughtless.

Nevertheless, her arguments at least didn’t explicitly scorn the view that the Founders’ deserve any hearing. That belief was expressed by several town residents who spoke in favor of expanding the franchise. Responding to my summary of this history, one youngish woman dismissed the Founders as figures who favored denying women the vote and treating enslaved African-Americans as three-fifths of a person (as stated in the Constitution’s Article I, Section 2) for the purposes of allotting the number of Congress members for each state. (Hamilton, of course, was “accused” by many contemporaries of having a mixed race background). A similarly youngish man smirked that, he “had no idea what was in the minds of the Founding Fathers,” and suggested he didn’t especially care.

This is of course a classic instance of “presentism” – the mistake of judging historical figures entirely by contemporary standards. Worse, such sneering overlooks how leaders whose views on race and gender would of course (rightly) be regarded today as racist and sexist nonetheless recognized that times could change momentously for the new nation – and included in their new nation’s organizing framework procedures for approving comparably momentous changes.

Moreover, similar views have been expressed by someone who wasn’t a slaveholder or sexist. In fact, he’s a deserved icon of American progressivism – early twentieth century Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. In a 1915 speech with a title – “True Americanism” – whose use by the left half of the political spectrum these days would be almost inconceivable, Brandeis spoke at length on the importance of assimilation.

He was no simple melting pot advocate. In fact, Brandeis explicitly stated that:

“America has believed that we must not only give to the immigrant the best that we have, but must preserve for America the good that is in the immigrant and develop in him the best of which he is capable. America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.”

But Brandeis (whose parents were foreign born) also insisted that immigrants undergo Americanization, and that at its core, this concept entailed ensuring that a newcomer’s “interests and affections have become deeply rooted here. And we properly demand of the immigrant even more than this. He must be brought into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations and cooperate with us for their attainment. Only when this has been done, will he possess the national consciousness of an American.”

Brandeis was emphatically optimistic that this task could be accomplished – not least because he credited many immigrants are “already truly American in this most important sense; who has long shared our ideals and who, oppressed and persecuted abroad, has yearned for our land of liberty and for the opportunity of abiding in the realization of its aims.”

But Brandeis also understood that the “E pluribus” (out of many) part of America’s national motto needed to become some meaningful form of “unum” (one) If only Riverdale Park – and all the other jurisdictions in Maryland and elsewhere in the United States that have either jumped on this bandwagon or are actively mulling this step – weren’t acting so determined to evolve beyond that vital ideal, too.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Know-Nothing-ism on Trade from The Wall Street Journal

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Abraham Lincoln, American history, Asia, free trade, George Washington, import substitution, investment, Mark Twain, Obama, protectionism, The Race to the Bottom, Theodore Roosevelt, Trade, Wall Street Journal, {What's Left of) Our Economy

It’s clearly time for Wall Street Journal editorial writers to start reading more Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain – specifically the adage (attributed to both) that it’s “Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” Because the paper’s broadside on trade today makes clear its management doesn’t understand the first thing about American economic or political history, and perhaps even less about Asia.

According to the Journal, opponents of President Obama’s trade liberalization agenda “are invoking the fantasy that buying foreign goods means fewer American jobs. This has become union orthodoxy in the U.S., as it used to be in India and other places that stagnated under ‘import substitution.’ This was the dominant theory of development in the 1950s and 1960s that rejected imports in favor of domestic-made products. East Asia rejected this policy in the 1970s, and India began to do so in the 1990s, with spectacular increases in living standards.”

Even more emphatically, Journal editors conclude that “Candidates who oppose free trade don’t belong in the Oval Office.”

Here’s what these pundits don’t seem to know. First, among the “other places” that have “rejected imports in favor of domestic-made products” was the United States during the 19^th century. Yes, the same 19^th century during which the nation became the greatest industrial, technological and agricultural powerhouse in human history. And living standards became the envy of the world – attracting hitherto unheard of tides of immigrants.

Consequently, the Journal’s criteria for the U.S. presidency would have excluded George Washington, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt, among others.

And has East Asia really rejected protectionism? Not even close. The region’s opening to trade and investment has been highly selective at best – and targeted. The region’s most successful governments have encouraged imports that build up their countries’ productive capacities (like capital goods), and discouraged purchases of foreign consumer goods. As for investment, Asian countries from China to Malaysia have attached conditions on incoming capital ranging from technology transfer to domestic content standards to requirements that certain shares of the resulting output be exported. My book The Race to the Bottom documented these policies exhaustively.

Obviously, this isn’t the 19^th century, and the United States isn’t East Asia. But for interlocking reasons including the energy revolution, the immense size of its domestic market, its own recent economic out-performance, and the heavy net export dependence of most of the world’s leading trading powers, the case for a more discriminating U.S. approach to foreign trade and a greater emphasis on economic self-sufficiency remains compelling today.

Many arguments for further trade liberalization are still compelling, too. But its advocates are better advised to describe domestic and international economic history correctly, rather than traffick in myth and advertise their ignorance.