Geek alert
This is totally a nerdy aside, so be warned.
I am reading a really excellent book written by my undergraduate thesis advisor, David Ericson, the most thoughtful and decent political science professor or professor of any kind I studied with at Wichita State University - that's why I wanted him as my advisor - called Debate over Slavery: Antislavery and Proslavery Liberalism in Antebellum America - that argues the exact idea that is responsible for why Dr. Ericson had so much influence on my thinking and on me.
His book is a brilliant and elaborated argument for how proslavery and antislavery arguments before the civil war were both made in the tradition of American liberalism - "a general set of ideas that appeal to personal freedom, equal worth, government by consent, and private ownership of property as core human values" - and how those arguments, and Abraham Lincoln's historically contexual antislavery argument of "a house divided against itself cannot stand," in particular - guided the historical events that led to the civil war.
Dr. Ericson puts responsibility for war squarely on the shoulders of Abraham Lincoln, arguing, I think correctly, that the American civil war was not inevitable, but rather the result of Lincoln's argument and the reaction of Southern moderates to that argument.
Civil war military historian James McPherson has argued, I think accurately, as well, that the American civil war could likely have been resolved diplomatically with intervention by the French government admidst the war.
But Dr. Ericson gets to the heart of the matter in this book: the American civil war could have been averted by the participants, up front, and specifically by Lincoln, by other options. And the most serious option that matters to me and I think follows from Ericson's overall reasoning is that it could have been resolved given a commitment to a more genuinely and liberal democratic argument in favor of peaceful debate over the matter of slavery arriving at a consensus that would resolve the question as a matter of law and, in the process of having that debate, persuading the consciences of slaveholders and non-slaveholders, alike, to give up slavery as an illiberal institution. The fact of so many European countries, including the British Empire, abolishing slavery by law rather than by civil war is prima facie evidence that the United States could have resolved the question of slavery than by other means than civil war.
That war is the bloodiest in American history. It killed 600,000 people. And it is the avoidance of such civil wars, ironically, that inspired Thomas Hobbes to make his original argument, in the Leviathan, for governments premised on reason rather than on the domination of one religious group over another or on religious premises, at all, and which helped Great Britain and other countries to adopt governing principles that aimed and largely succeeded to transcend the kinds of civil wars that divided the American union.
It is an important argument about arguments, ideas, and choices and their responsibility for the unfolding of world events. And it is the most important influence that Dr. Ericson had on my thinking and on my life.
The failure to take the debate over ideas and arguments seriously enough likely, in my mind, led to the unecessary deaths of 600,000 Americans that might have been avoided with a more sustainable and workable political resolution based upon a democratic debate that persuaded Americans of the need to abolish slavery.
And it is the failures of power and the failures of those who have it and aspire to have it to take seriously such debates, the arguments that underpin them, and better ideas arrived at by such reason, that is the most serious and tragic mistake of governance and humanity in all of its history, I believe. It is responsible for more human misery than any of the mistakes that humanity has been subject to, I believe.
And it is a legacy that can end only as humanity and its governing leaders take responsibility for the mistake.
And correcting that mistake is the focus of my writing and my life.
Talk about a teacher having an impact on a student's life.
Thanks, Dr. Ericson. For everything.
2 comments:
Very good, very thought provoking.
Thanks for sharing Ben.
Do you reckon the Civil War gives America especial stats to go out into the new millennium to strike down similiar intolerance?
Well, that's the thing, Courtney.
The argument that Ericson, McPherson, and I are making is that while, obviously, slavery is wrong, it is a much more open question, that I have many doubts about, at this point, about whether civil war was the best way to address that problem.
In fact, that was the point of Hobbes' Leviathan: to develop a reasoned basis for government to avoid these kinds of civil wars, as Great Britain faced in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The whole point of secular, reasoned, liberal, and democratic government is to use political means to resolve such questions rather than warfare.
And the British experience and much of the experience of Europe and other countries that abolished slavery by legal and political means is that civil war was not a foregone conclusion. I think Dr. Ericson is right that it was the logical conclusion of a weaker argument for anti-slavery that Abraham Lincoln made in his inaugural about "a house divided against itself cannot stand." It, actually, obviously could have stood and did stand for quite a long time. But it reflected the boiling over tensions between anti-slavery and pro-slavery forces at a moment when radicals in each camp created a split in the union - just the opposite of what Lincoln wanted and was arguing for - and Lincoln's rhetoric, I think Dr. Ericson is correct, helped facilitate a division in the union rather than avoid it.
The British, on the other hand, just outlawed slavery and avoided civil war. Americans were busy experimenting with more destructive forms of radicalism and guerilla warfare previous to the civil war (hence the legacy of one of my not-so-favorite Kansans, John Brown), and ended up killing 600,000 people, needlessly, to accomplish an end for which plenty of political and legal solutions were available but which had been frustrated by the perpetual political rigging of anti-slavery and pro-slavery folks.
And if you're someone who believes that warfare should be avoided, as much as possible, for exactly the reasons that 600,000 dead casualties should serve as caution for, then you want to find political means out of such conflicts rather than opt for the more deadly and tragic means, when they can be avoided. They plainly could have been, in the case of the Civil War. We just opted for war. And the bloodiest war in American history was the consequence.
We obviously want to do good, promote liberty, and challenge oppression in the world.
The question is how can we do so in a way that is as least tragic as possible. It is easy to rationalize deaths when they are not your own or someone close to you. It is much more difficult when you or someone you love is who gets killed.
I do realize that there are plenty of people who do not really care, as long as they get their way.
And is exactly what liberal democratic and enlightened, reasoned government is supposed to be a corrective to. That was the long history of humanity up until the Enlightenment. And it is a history that we still work to move in the right direction, in a direction of genuine liberty and progress, today.
Sometimes war is necessary. But the fact that it is rationalized so often, when it is not, is exactly why we need to debate and discuss its use openly and on-going in each situation to avoid it being rationalized for uglier purposes. It is the most serious mistake by the Administration, in this war in Iraq, as far as I am concerned. And they and we all are dealing with the consequences of that mistake, still today, whether we acknowledge responsibility for that mistake or not.
For people like myself who think we need to stick with our commitment in Iraq, it is particularly frustrating since the failure to debate and discuss this decision more openly with people who disagree is the most important barrier I have to overcome to persuade people that we should stick this thing out. And partisans get their backs up about engaging others more openly and honestly on such questions, in a way that listens as well as it argues, at this point in the war, is especially discouraging since that was the original mistake that got us into this mess in the first place.
I think there are genuine signs of progress on this front. But American power and influence will continue to wane, for good reason, as British and all imperial power and influence waned after World War II, until we get straight about how the tendency to use power to somehow compensate for an unresolved debate and discussion, and the matters of conscience and judgment that underpin them, undermines honest resolution of our conflicts.
It's the most important insight that conservative thinking has to offer the world, I think: the limits inherent in government and power to resolve humanity's problems and the need for patient change within culture rather than social engineering imposed from above.
The fact that humanity perpetually rationalizes power, even when it violates our more fundamental reasoned, liberal democratic commitments and the practical virtues and their consequences that spring from those commitments is as old as human beings have walked the planet. It is our most serious, I think.
And the deepest wisdom that humanity has to offer seeks to understand, challenge and improve the human condition despite this perpetual temptation.
Everyone's a sinner. Everyone makes mistakes. Including and especially those with power. But correcting this mistake is the most serious work that humanity and liberal democratic peoples have to do, right now, I think.
We can't do that by rationalizing military force or other means of replacing more genuinely liberal democratic means of engagement to resolve conflicts and problems. That's the whole purpose of liberal democracy, actually. That's the point behind Dr. Ericson's book. The whole point of liberal democracy is to offer more honest routes for resolving our most serious conflicts and problems without force, especially military force, as much as that is possible.
We perpetually lose track of or ignore that fact. That is the sad legacy of humanity. That is the broadest and most robust conservative understanding for the fallen nature of humanity, I think. We are forever rationalizing our wrath, our envy, our greed, our vanity, and our will to dominate one another in the name of those and other sins out of a more deep-seated cynicism about virtue, which is our guide out of so many of our messes and failings. We are constantly manipulating one another and lying to ourselves about how noble and virtuous we, in fact, are, and constantly denigrating more genuine virtue in the name of reinforcing that cynicism and the power that we too often seek to compensate for our less than genuine commitment to virtue, to being good, better, great people.
Someone we still make progress. I suppose because we get a little more honest and a little more free each generation. And those two things feed on one another in one long virtuous cycle to counter the vicious cycle of cynicism and power.
Courtney, I better go send off this card for my dad and packages for a friend of mine in Delaware.
Are you taking classes this summer? Where are you studying? Are you studying international policy, I assume?
Just curious. I'm looking at international policy programs, myself. I'm looking at military service, too, and I have commitments, right now, at a school for kids with serious behavior and mental health issues, so I don't know, exactly, how I'm going to arrange things yet. But I'd be curious to hear about your experience with schools, on this front.
Talk with you later.
Ben
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