Im-Politic: Ivy League Princeton Turns Bush League in the History Wars

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cancel culture, Christopher L. Eisgruber, Founding Fathers, history wars, Im-Politic, Ivy League, James Madison, Princeton University, race relations, racism, slavery, Washington Post, Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Full disclosure: Although I graduated from Princeton University and believe that I got a great education there (for a princely sum, to be sure), for various reasons, I never felt much affinity to the place (except for the basketball and other athletics teams – long story). As a result, I’ve never given it a dime . Even so, it’s depressing to learn that for the last seven years, the school as been run by a leadership team that’s full either of guilt-driven liberals, ignoramuses, utter ditzes, or some combination of the two.

I know this because the university’s president, Christopher L Eisgruber, has just explained in an op-ed in today’s Washington Post why he persuaded Princeton’s Board of Trustees to remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from the university’s School of Public and International Affairs.

My scorn for this move and those responsible for it has nothing to do with any doubt concerning the racist views and policies of a figure who was not only President of the United States, but president of Princeton. I’ve fully recognized Wilson as a racist here and here. Nor do I hold the former Woodrow Wilson School in any special regard. In fact, I’ve long considered “public and international affairs” as being about as legitimate a university course of study as sports communications.

Instead, I view the Wilson name removal as (to quote Eisgruber) “an excess of political correctness” precisely because he’s also expressed strong agreement with one of the few sensible notions that have emerged from America’s recent history wars – that there’s a crucial distinction between figures who are known only or mainly for supporting treasonous and racist and other odious views and policies, and those whose role in U.S. history entailed much much more. More.

In this vein, Eisgruber acknowledges explicitly that Wilson “is a far different figure than John C. Calhoun or Robert E. Lee, people whose pro-slavery commitments defined their careers and who were sometimes honored for the purpose of supporting segregation or racism.” He recognizes that many of Wilson’s achievements both at the university and in the White House can legitimately be called “genuine” and even “grand.” And he goes on to admit that “I do not pretend to know how to evaluate his life or his staggering combination of achievement and failure.”

Weirder still: As Eisgruber explains, responding in 2015 to student demands that the university “de-Wilson-ize” itself Eisgruber asked the Board to study how Princeton was presenting Wilson’s record and legacy, and the school ultimately decided to “recount its history, including Wilson’s racism, more honestly.”

In my view, that’s exactly the right way to handle the matter, and I’ve since urged that participants in the national debate to think harder about similarly thoughtful ways to deal with other historical figures who also deserve to be remembered as more than racists whatever flaws on the issue they demonstrated or embodied.

But Eisgruber and the Princeton board have taken the easy, and simplistic way out. Although nowadays the concept of “slippery slope” is abused way too often (because it too conveniently defines out of existence any need and ability to make intelligent choices or draw important distinctions), Princeton’s decision raises the question of why Abraham Lincoln or the Founding Fathers, with their own problematic racial records and actual slave-owning, shouldn’t be expunged from the nation’s public places as well (or from whatever private places honor them).

According to Eisgruber, he changed his mind because even with the 2015 changes, Princeton was still honoring Wilson

“without regard to, and perhaps even in ignorance of, his racism.

“And that, I now believe, is precisely the problem. Princeton is part of an America that has too often disregarded, ignored and turned a blind eye to racism, allowing the persistence of systems that discriminate against black people.”

But of course, the university had taken specific steps to (as Eisgruber told us) “recount its history, including Wilson’s racism, more honestly.” So what’s changed between then and now?

Similar questions arise from Eisgruber’s associated contention that “When a university names its public policy school for a political leader, it inevitably offers the honoree as a role model for its students. However grand some of Wilson’s achievements may have been, his racism disqualifies him from that role.”

If so, however, why keep Wilson’s name on one of its residential colleges and on it’s “highest award for undergraduate alumni”? (As Eisgruber calls the Woodrow Wilson Prize. Unless that, too, has changed? Eisgruber didn’t specify.)

Finally, why have Eisgruber and the Board stopped with Wilson? The university also still honors the slave-owning (and pretty consistent slavery supporter) Founding Father and former President of the United States James Madison in at least two ways: a scholarly program called the James Madison Society, and a dining option called “Madison Society”. What the heck is so special about him? Why not kick this racist SOB’s name off the campus, too? 

Nothing could be clearer than that Eisgruber has no rational answers to these questions – and may not have even asked them. In fact, the only intellectually honest or competent sentence in his entire article is his confession that “I do not pretend to know how to evaluate [Wilson’s] life or his staggering combination of achievement and failure.”

In other words, Princeton’s decision stands as a monument – to ignorance. And you can probably throw in intellectual cowardice and faddism as well.

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.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Globalists Keep Abusing the Lessons of History

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America First, globalism, John Maynard Keynes, Jonathan Kirshner, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, The New York Times, Trump, Versailles treaty, Wall Street, Woodrow Wilson, World War I

Although I’m a long ways past high school, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that students are still being taught that the main lesson Americans should draw from their country’s foreign policy during the early decades of the twentieth century is that standing aloof from world affairs is a catastrophic mistake.

The most familiar feature of this claim holds that by preventing the United States from joining the League of Nations after World War I, America’s so-called isolationists guaranteed that no effective counter to fascist aggression could be mounted, and thereby guaranteed the outbreak of a far more destructive global conflict. But an economic indictment has been leveled against U.S. policy during those years as well.

As made clear between the lines of a December 7 New York Times op-ed piece, supporters of the foreign policy globalism opposed by President Trump and most of his backers have long ardently believed that international financial policies after the First World War also took a disastrous, “America First”-type turn. One big problem, though – history actually shows that the fundamental mistake Washington made was not too little international economic engagement after the war, but too much during it.

In the article – which usefully commemorates the hundredth anniversary of a seminal book by iconic twentieth century British economist John Maynard Keynes – Boston University political scientist Jonathan Kirshner rightly lauds Keynes’ eloquent case against the economic punishments levied against Germany by the 1919 Versailles peace treaty. He’s also right in criticizing the United States’ “stubborn” and “shortsighted” insistence that its allies fully repay the enormous war debts they’d racked up to America.

As Keynes himself insisted, those obligations were “a menace to financial stability everywhere,” imposing a “crushing burden,” that would be “a constant source of international friction.” An international financial order that was little more than a tangle of debts and reparations, he warned, could hardly “last a day.”

Kirshner, though, looks like he has a hidden – globalist – agenda. Echoing today’s criticisms of Mr. Trump’s trade and foreign policies (which, I need to note, have been far from models of consistent America First-ism), he condemned American leaders of the 1920s for ending a “brief flirtation” with internationalism (a pre-Trump term for globalism) under President Woodrow Wilson and returning to “nationalism and nativism.” “Domestic demands,” he continued, were placed above “global concerns.”

Even more pointedly, he repeated Keynes’ contention that it “will be a disaster for the world if America isolates herself.”

Nonetheless, you don’t need to buy into America First-ism or even simply criticize globalism to recognize that Kirshner (and Keynes himself, for that matter), have completely ignored the financial run-up to Versailles. During these years, private American banks lent massively to the belligerents before the U.S. entry into the war in April, 1917 (overwhelmingly to the allies, but including minor credits extended to Germany), and after America joined the conflict, Washington took over.  (Here’s a handy brief history.)

In other words, the eventually ruinous war debts amassed by the European victors were possible largely because Wall Street massively intervened in the conflict financially in its early years, and because the U.S. government continued underwriting the fighting in its latter stages.

Also – and comparably – crucial: Just as America’s very entry into the war both guaranteed its prolongation and ensured that its ending would become a exercise in self-righteous, destabilizing, and ultimately disastrous vengeance rather than the kind of cold-blooded but hard-headed diplomacy that had contained the damage from previous conflicts, its loans to the belligerents worsened the destructiveness of the fighting and the consequent challenges of reconstruction. Indeed, Wilson himself was worried that Wall Street’s largesse was helping the allies in particular to wage war far longer than they otherwise could have afforded, and helped ward off the sheer exhaustion that would force a negotiated peace.

Thus the real lesson of America’s early 20th century financial diplomacy isn’t that international engagement is always bad, or that international non-involvement is always good.  It isn’t even that the United States should never seek to have its cake and eat it, too – which was clearly the expectation of Wilson’s successors.  It’s that in this particular instance, America’s combination of actions backfired. 

And let’s not forget a broader lesson for students of foreign policy and its record that’s reinforced by Kirshner’s article:  Beware of scholars cherry-picking history.   

Im-Politic: Ensnared in the History Wars

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Confederacy, Confederate monuments, Holocaust, Im-Politic, racism, Staunton, Stonewall Jackson, Stonewall Jackson Hotel, Stonewall Jackson Memorial Highway, Virginia, Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum

I finally had my own personal brushes with the History Wars this past week, receiving a first-hand reminder of the complications entailed in presenting the American past with accuracy and therefore with true integrity. Nothing I experienced has shaken me of the conviction that most of the nation’s Confederate monuments shamefully honor traitors (I discussed some of the exceptions here), and should be removed (lawfully) from public places. Ditto for displays of Confederate symbols on private property – although such displays should remain Constitutionally protected by the First Amendment. But what about dealing with these affronts on a personal level? That, it became clear to me, is another matter altogether.

My encounter with the History Wars resulted from a two-day trip my wife and I took to Staunton, Virginia, a picturesque town of about 25,000 located between the Blue Ridge Mountains and recent History Wars battlefield Charlottesville. We went to the area to check out a big regional book sale, and to take in two plays staged by the town’s renowned Shakespearean theater.

And we scored a deal: a package from a local hotel that included not only two nights’ stay, but two performances and a sumptuous breakfast. What could have been better? Here’s what. The hotel was the “Stonewall Jackson” – named of course after the famous Confederate general.

By the time we put one and one together, it was too late to cancel without a charge (yes, how convenient), so we held our noses and took the trip. The hotel was in all other respects exemplary – including a very friendly, helpful staff. It employed some African-American workers as well, and we saw no signs of dissatisfaction on their part. Moreover, the town lying beneath the (big) “Stonewall Jackson Hotel” sign seemed perfectly pleasant as well. True, we saw very few African-American pedestrians or working at local businesses. On the other hand, Staunton features tony restaurants with fashionable farm-to-table menus, as well as a (quintessentially progressive) fair trade products shop.  In other words, a hotbed of racism and reaction it isn’t. 

I thought of sharing (politely) my opinion of the hotel’s name with the staff, but wound up keeping my thoughts to myself. After all, it’s the owners’ views that really count. I probably will communicate my feelings on Facebook in hopes of persuading them to change – and will let them know (regretfully) that unless they do, I can’t in good conscience stay there again.

History Wars encounter Number Two was much easier to deal with – my visit to the town’s Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum, located in Staunton because the 28th president was born in the town (and lived there briefly during his infancy before his family moved to Georgia).

Although Wilson held deplorable racial views even for his time, and although he is among my least favorite presidents (overwhelmingly because of his disastrously naive foreign policies), the decision was a no-brainer for me on moral grounds. For as I’ve explained previously – and as with similar figures like the Founding Fathers – Wilson’s role in American history far transcended his record on race. And he didn’t take up arms against his own country.

Moreover, the facility handled these issues very appropriately. In addition to the exhibits describing Wilson’s re-segregation of the Federal government and paternalistic – at best – views of his fellow black citizens, the guide who conducted the tour of the actual Wilson family home forthrightly told our little group that the former president’s parents employed three house slaves – rented from a local farmer for Wilson’s father, a minister, by his congregation. And she made plain as day how low the living standards of these slaves were.

Encounter Number Three came on our drive back, when we decided to take local roads (including one dubbed the “Stonewall Jackson Memorial Highway”) part of the way and came upon the kind of big antiques store that my wife can’t resist. I find these places eminently resistible, but as usual, gave it a quick once over. I wasn’t offended by the Nazi memorabilia I saw. (They can be genuine collector’s items – as with the Japanese sword a childhood friend’s father took back from his World War II service in the Pacific. That didn’t make him an Axis supporter.) Ditto for the “George Wallace for President, 1964” sign displayed in a side room. (The arch-segregationist then-Alabama governor made his first run for the White House that year.) For the record, my wife was much more creeped out by these items.   

What did offend me was the conversation I heard between the young man at the cash register (who was unfailingly polite toward both of us), and two other customers. On top of dredging up the usual canard about Confederate memorial opponents wanting to “erase history” (What? You never heard of history books or museums?), they made the kind of remarks about the Holocaust so ignorant that they were surely in part willful (though they obviously were not Deniers).

As I was in earshot, I was sorely tempted to interject. But I decided that no useful purpose educational purpose would be served. Indeed, far likelier that I would have reinforced any prejudices they had about rude, self-righteous Yankees. Or Jews. Or both.

Since I have no reason to believe that the employee owned the store, or that the owners condoned his views (or even knew about them), I don’t at this point have any issue with patronizing that store again. And getting the cashier in trouble seems way over the top – especially since he didn’t initiate that exchange and could well have been agreeing with his customers largely to be polite, and make sure he completed the sale.

My wife wound up getting some truly beautiful items there. In fact, she considers it one of the best antique stores she’s ever seen – both in selection and price terms. We also still love central Virginia – its countryside is mostly stunning. But as we continued back north on the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Highway, heading toward I-81 and home, we both realized more than ever, how long America’s History Wars, and the collective and individual challenges they pose, are bound to last.

Im-Politic: Why Most of the U.S. History Wars Shouldn’t Even Be Fought

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Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Confederacy, Confederate flag, Founding Fathers, history, history wars, Im-Politic, political correctness, Princeton University, racism, Robert E. Lee, slavery, Woodrow Wilson

Last week I wrote about my experiences with the political correctness and free speech disputes at my alma mater Princeton University in the mid-1970s and, what do you know? They reappeared on the campus this past week in their “history wars” form. It’s worth covering – but not because the demands for more or less erasing the physical legacy of former university and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson from the campus were especially novel or unusual according to the standards of our time. Nor was the university’s response, which could be interpreted in various ways ranging from a polite brushoff to an instance of kick-the-can-ism.

Instead, this episode is worth covering because it provides a good opportunity for presenting some common-sense guidelines on depicting historical figures in public spaces or within private communities when such a private controversy arises (as in the case of a private university).

The Princeton students protesting the university’s longstanding showcasing of Wilson base their position on the former president’s segregationist views on racial subjects and on the segregationist policies he approved during his White House tenure. There’s no legitimate doubt that their accusations are accurate.

Defenders of the university status quo have pushed back with equally accurate points – noting that some of Wilson’s decisions on a related question – the role of Jews in American society – both on the campus and in Washington, D.C. were enlightened by the standards of his time. Indeed, they legitimately go even further, and argue that, in both these positions, Wilson was a major champion of many progressive values. (Here’s an excellent summary of this case.)

In my view, the pro-Wilson forces have the better argument, by a considerable margin. But they don’t deserve victory for the reasons they emphasize – i.e., because their opponents have failed to recognize what how exemplary Wilson really was. Instead, their position is stronger because it makes clear what should matter most in evaluating and acknowledging the role of historical figures: the sum total of their records and significance. As a result, leaders like Wilson deserve recognition because their impact on university and American history far transcended characteristics rightly regarded as shortcomings today, and that were hardly impressive even in their own eras.

That is, Wilson was not simply a racist. He was someone whose actions shaped American politics and higher education in ways felt even today. And because this record was at worst lamentable in some (but hardly all) respects, it’s fitting and proper that the nation – and the university – have decided to honor him.

In this way, therefore, Wilson resembles the Founding Fathers. As widely known, Washington and Jefferson were slave-holders. But obviously they were so much more. It’s somewhat less widely known that Lincoln held racist views about black people. But he was so much more. This point might seem indistinguishable from the debate over merits that I just belittled, and obviously they’re very close. The essence of it is, though, that for figures of wide-ranging importance whose legacy was not overwhelmingly malevolent, these debates simply shouldn’t be necessary. Therefore, when they break out, the kind of common sense that’s essential for sound decision-making inevitably and damagingly takes a back seat.

Moreover, in this way, Wilson, the Founders, Lincoln, and others in this category fundamentally differ from, say major Confederate leaders. Although Robert E. Lee, for example, served America admirably in the Mexican War (which was not an especially admirable venture), his name wouldn’t be on roads, public schools, and even university campuses all over the country because of that role, or even because he became commander at West Point. He’s only widely remembered at all because he was a leader of the greatest single act of treason – and one motivated overwhelmingly by racist considerations – in American history. So he clearly belongs in the textbooks – along with other prominent Confederates. But honoring their memory, and that of their cause, is disgraceful.

Not every such decision is an easy call. Andrew Jackson, for instance, embodied many praiseworthy populist impulses, and was certainly a consequential president. He also rose above sectional interests and perspectives by opposing southern claims of states rights over federal law, and would have enjoyed great ratings had opinion polls existed back then. But his Indian expulsion policies were reprehensible, and arguably so even for the early 19^th century.

If the common sense rule is invoked, however, Americans shouldn’t be faced with too many of these hard calls. Because the essence of history is change, and because it’s vital to keep learning about and rethinking the past, judgments about various historical events and individuals should never be fixed in stone or so viewed. But unless you think that the basic, admirable narrative of American history is fundamentally wrong, or that most of our leading forebears were in fact generally contemptible, you’ll agree that the overwhelming burden of proof is on the revisionists to overturn the current consensus on events and individuals that Americans have chosen to honor – and that far more often than not, this burden has not remotely been met.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Delusions About the Nation-State

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21st century rules, citizenship, global norms, Immigration, International Monetary Fund, international organizations, International Trade Organization, internationalism, Kerry, League of Nations, nation-state, nationality, Obama, Open Borders, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, United Nations, Woodrow Wilson, World Bank, World Trade Organization

A New York Times essay earlier this week suggesting that the idea of the nation-state was growing ever more obsolete didn’t contain any explicit policy recommendations. And even though this omission raises the question of why the piece was published in the first place, that was actually all to the good.

Author Taiye Selasi, identified as a “writer, photographer and globetrotter,” as well as novelist with a highly cosmopolitan background, unquestionably falls into the “Open Borders” camp on immigration policy. But she seems to have (reluctantly?) realized (along with Times editors in this case?) the complete irrelevance to decision-makers of observations like “the discrimination experienced by dark-skinned [African] refugees migrating to the West and dark-skinned Italians migrating north [within Italy] is the same.” Why else would the author not explicitly have called for a country suffering its third recession since 2008 to indiscriminately admit everyone who crossed over the Mediterranean fleeing indisputably genuine poverty and hopeless in their own homelands?

To be sure, Selasi did condemn what she views as the (sometimes, in her view, unwittingly) hypocritical practice of people from countries whose national identities have continually changed due to cross-border migration flows using the idea of nationality to “justify barriers to citizenship.”

“Who better,” she asked indignantly, “than the Italian citizen, the all-American, the East Berliner, to understand that a country that has perpetually expanded to include new complexions, inflections and politics might (lo, must) expand once more?” Yet she never insisted that these countries tear down all of their physical and administrative barriers to entry, and keep them down in perpetuity.

There’s an even broader reason for Selasi’s failure to relate her other major observation to major questions before U.S. and other leaders. But unfortunately, at least when it comes to the American foreign policy establishment, it’s much less obvious. In addition to defining nationality and citizenship, the author also focused on the claim that “The idea of the modern nation-state — a sovereign state governing a cultural nation — [is] just that: an idea, 350 years old and showing its age. There [is] nothing eternal about nations, nothing biological about nationality.”

In fact, the view that nation-states are receding in importance is central to a long and deeply held beliefs among American internationalists on the right and left alike – that the political structure of the world is something that is unfinished and in a constant state of flux, and indeed moving, however unevenly and haltingly, towards ever greater degrees of integration. As a result, American internationalism holds, the nation’s diplomacy should try to nurture this process – even, at least in some instances, if it means sacrificing American interests.

As with other tenets of modern U.S. internationalist thinking, the belief in an unfinished global political structure first took meaningful form under President Woodrow Wilson in the immediate aftermath of World War I, when he sought to prevent another such conflagration by encouraging creation of a League of Nations. His own country, of course, rejected joining even the weakened version of the organization that eventually was formed, as Congress and the public feared being drawn into all manner of foreign conflicts that did not directly threaten American security. But this decision has since then been villified by internationalists as the height of disastrously narrow and shortsighted thinking, and turned into a pillar of the national conventional wisdom.

After World War II, Congress certainly learned this supposed lesson, as it strongly supported creation of the United Nations and other international organizations (nixing only U.S. membership in a proposed International Trade Organization, and thereby killing this predecessor of the World Trade Organization).

It’s easy to point out that during the subsequent Cold War decades, this unfinished world thinking was reduced to boilerplate. Washington did indeed dominate the new World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and ignored the United Nations and other principles of international law whenever convenient. But it’s just as important that, nearly as soon as the Cold War ended, integrationist talk was back with a vengeance. Not only was it epitomized by President George H.W. Bush’s references to a “New World Order.” It was made concrete by Washington’s agreement to create a World Trade Organization with strong enforcement authority that regularly ruled against the United States.  And it was fueled continually by the global ideological defeat of communism, the movement of so many national economies toward free market practices and principles, the surge in global trade and investment flows that bypassed borders with remarkable ease, and the emergence of digital technologies that positively seemed to mock them.

More recently, it’s become clear that strong beliefs about benign changes that are shaping the international system have powerfully influenced President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry – and in particular muddled their initial responses to Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons to suppress the revolt against his brutal rule in Syria, and to Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s moves against Ukraine. Stunned that these dictators didn’t care about global norms against certain weapons of mass destruction, and didn’t agree that new, “21^st century rules“ had rendered obsolete aggression and subversion against neighbors, the president and his top diplomat were caught flat-footed.

The reason, it’s clear to me, anyway, is that Kerry and Mr. Obama went further in their minds than Selasi did in her Times article, and did try to draw dramatic policy conclusions from their related beliefs in the nation-state’s decline and the strength of integrative forces around the world. More specifically, they wildly conflated the two, and in the process overlooked a far more important reality: Whether the nation-state is fading or not, for the foreseeable future, the world’s population will continue to be divided into numerous discreet units. And because consensus on acceptable behavior (norms) will remain elusive at best, these units – no matter their appearance or composition – will find themselves trapped in a struggle for both security and prosperity.

By no means does that mean that all forms of international cooperation will be impossible, whether ad hoc or even more systematic. But it does mean that Americans leaders’ supreme challenge will long remain ensuring the nation’s safety and well-being in the here and now, in the largely conflictual world they’ll be stuck with.  As for wracking their brains on the long-range-at-best objective of trying to turn that world into something significantly more pleasant — that’s likeliest to remain a dangerous distraction.