Libertarian Leanings

The Wilson Legacy

Eric Yellin, Associate Professor of History at the University of Richmond, gives a brush-off to the racist legacy of Woodrow Wilson in a column for USA Today.  Says Professor Yellin, Remembering Woodrow Wilson's racism isn't enough.

"Wilson indeed was a flawed and paradoxical figure. He was a racist and must be remembered as such. But consider how much easier it is to write columns about one man’s racism than it is to confront the fact that generations of hard-working Americans were told by their own government that their labor was not worthy because of the color of their skins. Consider how much easier it is to tear down a statue or rename a building than it is to address the economic and social oppression of the people who worked in (and probably built) that building.

The lessons we draw from the student activism at Princeton and across the country must not be about the actions of singular bad men only. They must force us to consider the broad and often quotidian effects of the inequality that pervades many of our national institutions.

Woodrow Wilson was a racist. But this mattered far less to Swan Kendrick than that his life’s prospects could be dimmed by the stroke of a supervisor’s pen.

History is so much more than the battle between mean racists and righteous anti-racists, and confronting it can only bring justice when we attend to its complexities, its grayer shades and its ordinary figures."

Ah, yes.  That's what we need to do, understand the nuances.  Why is the professor telling us that?  Well, for one thing Woodrow Wilson has been a progressive icon among the left-wingers for generations.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Professor Yellin leans left, probably hard left.  

An article in Reason Magazine from 2002 described Wilson's reputation this way.  It's worth reading the article in its entirety, by the way.

"Wilson's historical reputation is that of a far-sighted progressive. That role has been assigned to him by historians based on his battle for the League of Nations, and the opposition he faced from isolationist Republicans. Indeed, the adjective "Wilsonian," still in use, implies a positive if idealistic vision for the extension of justice and democratic values throughout the world."

Woodrow Wilson's racist history and the damage he did to race relations in the U.S. was not widely known, certainly not known to me, until the rise of the Internet and access to news sources like Reason.  Imagine my surprise at learning that Woodrow Wilson held a screening of Birth of a Nation, a movie glorifying the Ku Klux Klan, at the White House.  And that he segregated the previously integrated federal civil service.  More from Reason:

"What Wilson's election meant to the South was "home rule;" that is,license to pursue its racial practices without concern about interference from the federal government. That is exactly what the 1948 Dixiecrats wanted. But "home rule" was only the beginning. Upon taking power in Washington, Wilson and the many other Southerners he brought into his cabinet were disturbed at the way the federal government went about its own business. One legacy of post-Civil War Republican ascendancy was that Washington's large black populace had access to federal jobs, and worked with whites in largely integrated circumstances. Wilson's cabinet put an end to that, bringing Jim Crow to Washington."

But Professor Yellin says that now is not the time to focus on the past racist leaders, and instead attend to complexities... and ordinary figures.  He says the real problem is not so much Wilson, as it is the supervisor who with the stroke of his pen dimmed the prospects for Swan Kendrick.  The professor would rather imply that it's something ingrained in America — an institutional imperfection.  Wilson must remain, if not completely blameless, at least secondarily responsible for the immense harm caused to African Americans of his day and to the generations that followed.  

I get why the good professor would rather not put much weight on Wilson's negative impact on race relations in America.  Now that a progressive hero is revealed as the racist, why it must be a cultural problem.  Progressives will need a little time before they can work up the moral courage to disown Woodrow Wilson.  And when they do there is only one way that can happen.

My countdown clock starts today.  How long will it take for our left wing media to start referring to Woodrow Wilson as "far right?"

Trouble For Democrats In 2016?

ABC's Matt Dowd argues that  Democrats have much more to lose than Republicans in 2016.

The storyline by many in the media goes as follows: the GOP is in dire straits, they are in the midst of tearing themselves apart by a civil war, they have a disorganized field of candidates, they are about to lose badly for president and are on the verge of disintegrating as a major party.

That is how a number of folks in the media (and many Democratic operatives/insiders) describe the circumstances of the GOP dilemma at hand and ahead. Some of this is true, and looks bad for the GOP, but some of it is just fiction. But let's take a moment to understand what party faces the biggest problems ahead in the aftermath of a loss in the presidential race next November.

Ha.  "...folks in the media (and many Democratic operatives/insiders)..."  To paraphrase Mark Twain, Mr. Dowd repeats himself.  But to get back to the question at hand, Mr. Dowd cautions that the media/Democratic alliance may be misreading the state of the electorate and the potentially negative outcomes for Democrats.  Mr. Dowd lays out his analysis:

Reasonable worst case scenario for the GOP: they lose the presidential race, lose control of the United States Senate by a few votes, lose a few seats in the House of Representatives but retain control, and retain a majority of governor's and state legislative bodies.

Reasonable best case scenario for the GOP: they win the presidential race, expand control of the Senate, retain control of the House, and expand majority of governor's and state legislative bodies.

Reasonable worst case scenario for the Dems: they lose the presidential race, lose seats in the Senate, don't gain control of the House, and lose more governor's and state legislative races.

Reasonable best case scenario for the Dems: they win the presidential race, gain control of the Senate by a slim margin, pick up a few seats in the House but don't control, and win a few governor's races and legislative seats.

It's not an unrealistic assessment, but it misses one huge Democratic advantage.  If the Dems win the presidency in 2016 they will also control our federal bureaucracy, which is no small thing. In a continuation of the Obama administration, the efforts of the DOJ, the IRS, the EPA, the NLRB, and a host of other federal agencies will be directed in ways that are intended to benefit the Democratic party. Electing a Democrat for president will mandate a continuation of the Obama administration policies which direct federal agencies to bypass the Republican Congress by interpreting regulations in ways that nullify congressional intent. The Department of Justice will claim its prerogative of prosecutorial discretion as it selects which laws to enforce and which to ignore, whom to prosecute and whom not, all of it with an eye toward protecting the progressive grip on government. Targets of federal regulatory efforts will be anyone or anything that threatens progressive control or disseminates anti-progressive information or thought.

If the Dems win the presidency they'll be in a lot better shape than Mr. Dowd seems to think.

Ben Carson Attacks Liberal Media Bias

The media has been working overtime trying to discredit Republican presidential candidate, Ben Carson.  Their latest smear is to question a claim in his book, Gifted Hands, that he was offered a scholarship to West Point, accusing him of making it up.  On several occasions the media have taken to twisting his words.  When asked what he would do if he were facing a deranged killer on a rampage, he said he hoped he would be able to fight back instead just letting himself be killed.  Median translation:  Carson blames the victims of gun violence for not fighting back. 

Carson pushed back on CNN and elsewhere, arguing that the media never scrutinized Barack Obama in this way, specifically pointing to the media's total lack of curiosity about Obama's sealed college records.

I would be willing to bet that those records are sealed because they will show that Obama lied on his application to Columbia, saying that he was born in Kenya, probably to give himself a better chance for admission, or for some other benefit afforded foreign students.  It wouldn't be the only time he made that claim.  He said the same thing later in a biographical sketch for publisher, Acton & Dystel in a pamphlet describing their stable of authors.  Here is an image of it:

 

Obama's literary agent at the time, Miriam Goderich, claimed it was a clerical error on her part. The media either ignored the controversy altogether, or bent over backwards to give Obama and his literary agent the benefit of the doubt, offering a litany of reasons why it couldn't possibly be anything but an honest mistake.

I don't believe it.  It is so similar to the Elizabeth Warren controversy in which she claimed to be part Cherokee, a claim that Cherokees dispute.  Her claim appears to have played a part in getting her a professorship at Harvard, though, and it certainly didn't disrupt her campaign to become U.S. Senator from Massachusetts.  Our progressive media just accepted her story — end of controversy.

Somehow I suspect the media are going to take their lumps this election cycle.  At least I hope they do.  For decades the media have decided our elections for us, reporting favorably on their chosen candidates while casting their opponents — almost always Republicans — in a negative light.  

So Ben Carson is a real threat to progressives.  As a popular and accomplished African-American neurosurgeon Ben Carson could draw African-American voters away from Democrats.  The media are eager to smear him in any way they can to prevent that from happening, but Ben Carson is forcefully pushing back, and so far he seems to be winning.  Maybe Republicans across the board can take a lesson from him.