-Caveat Lector-
EXCELLENT!
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[Title 17 U.S.C. section 107]
The Trial of Lott
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Following the media campaign against Lott,
many people were astonished by the Senator's
willingness to jettison all political
principle for the sake of saving his status
as Majority Leader. Why would a conservative
Republican suddenly find himself embracing
the full panoply of the left-wing racial
agenda and flog himself so mercilessly?
Consider what a Chinese political prisoner
under Maoist Communism had to say about the
role of self criticism, denunciation, and
confession:
It doesn't take a prisoner long to lose
his self-confidence. Over the years Mao's
police have perfected their interrogation
method ... . Their aim is not so much to
make you invest nonexistent crimes, but
to make you accept your ordinary life,
as you led it as rotten and sinful and
worthy of punishment, since it did not
accord with the police's conception of
how life should be led. The basis of
their success is despair, the prisoner's
perception that he is utterly and
hopelessly and forever at the mercy of his
jailers. He has no defense, since his
arrest is absolute and unquestionable
proof of his guilt.
[The Black Book of Communism, p. 510]
Such means are the tried and true method of assuring
the supremacy of an ideology. Lott was accused of
segregationism and racism for saying something kind
about the presidential bid of Senator Strom Thurmond
in 1948. Mostly likely, his comments reflected an
affection for the attempt by the South to resist
federal encroachments against the liberties and
rights of the states after the Second World War.
But you would never know that by listening to either
Lott or his critics. As under Mao, the accused was
already guilty as charged so he had only one right:
to repent of his errors. If he appeared insufficiently
repentant, the attacks were renewed until the accused
was completely destroyed.
Even at the outset, it was clear that no effort would
be made to understand the deeper issues involved about
the history or political issues. There would be no
tolerance for anyone who might say that Thurmond's
bid reflected a just political aspiration, that his
States Rights Party might have had a point to make
that extended beyond race hatred. The thousand-year
struggle for liberty made possible by decentralized
political orders was swept away or completely
recast in light of racial politicsas if the
United States had not been founded as anything
but a unified state, and as if this conclusion
were never in question.
No, there was one goal at the outset of Lott's
trial: extract a confession, an apology, and
bring about what the Chinese communists called
"rectification": a visible sign that one accepts
the reality of one's ideological apostasy, and
declares publicly that the regime is right and
you are wrong. Anything short of that is regarded
as a personal indictment and further evidence that
you, as the enemy, must be vanquished.
Even so, perhaps it is worth examining the deeper
historical and political issues. It is not true
that supporting the Dixiecrats in 1948 necessarily
reflected a racial bias against blacks. The real
issue was not race; it was the place of freedom
and federalism -- concepts that are apparently not
understood by the national press or by any of
Lott's critics right and left--in the post-war
period. Both parties were split on the direction
they would take after long years of depression and
war. The industrial planning of the New Deal was
shocking enough, but the wartime planning of the
Second World War was as bad as the fascist
governments the US opposed on the battlefront.
The crucial political question concerned the
direction the country would take in the
future -- pushing headlong into the welfare-warfare
state or returning to founding principles -- just as
the country faced this same question in 1989 at
the end of the Cold War. In 1948, the key domestic
question concerned the uses of federal power for
purposes of social planning and redistribution.
On the international front, the Marshall Plan had
already been passed, shocking many in both parties
who had a principled opposition to foreign aid and
international management on this scale. And Truman
and his advisers were already embroiling the US in
a Cold War against Russia, a government that had
been a close US ally only a few years earlier.
Many Democrats had hoped that FDR would be an
aberration -- a man who betrayed his 1932 election
promises (for a balanced budget, for limited
government, for lower taxes, for peace) for personal
power. A strong faction hoped for a return to the
older style Democratic Party that favored free
trade, decentralization, peace, and other
Jeffersonian policies.
Harry Truman, meanwhile, was untested by any
presidential election until 1948. It was unclear
until the convention that year which part of the
party would be dominant. What the limited-government
faction had underestimated was the extent to which
the party had come to depend on vote buying through
welfare schemes for its very lifeblood, and many
in the libertarian-oriented faction of the Democratic
Party saw the foray into civil-rights politics as
nothing more than an extension of the same scheme.
A similar split had emerged in the Republican
Party, whose Congressional wing had largely
resisted the New Deal and the drive to war. One
faction hoped to deep-six this "negative" attitude
toward consolidationpushing for the Cold War and
for retaining the New Deal -- while another faction
favored free enterprise, spending cuts, and small
government at home and abroad. The issue came to
a head in 1952 with the great battle between Dwight
Eisenhower and Robert Taft, a battle which was
won (through the basest convention trickery) by
the nationalist-consolidationist faction.
Triangulation was taking place all around. Truman
had hoped to outflank the nationalist and
anti-communist faction of the GOP with his Cold
War rhetoric, while the militarists within the GOP
hoped that an embrace of the welfare-warfare state
would win enough votes to break the stranglehold
that the Democrats held over the White House.
Neither of the dominant branches of either party
saw much electoral advantage in calling for radical
cuts in government or returning to a foreign policy
of peace and free trade. The vote-buying and
industrial subsidies of the previous twenty years
had reduced the Jeffersonians in both parties to
an extent that few but the most pessimistic
observers had anticipated.
J. Strom Thurmond's faction of the Democratic Party
bolted after it became clear who would dominate
the party. It founded an optional party that it
hoped could compete, which of course it could
not (as most every third party discovers within
a system constructed by the dominant two). Today
it is said that Thurmond's party pandered to the
racist elements in the South, but it is more
correct to say that the dominant factions of the
major parties were pandering to the always-present
desire on the part of pressure groups for special
favors from the federal government.
Thurmond's party announced its first principle
in the platform of the States Rights Party:
We believe that the protection of the
American people against the onward march
of totalitarian government requires a
faithful observance of Article X of
the American Bill of Rights which
provides that: 'the powers not delegated
to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the states, are
reserved to the states respectively, or
to the people.
A long train of abuses and usurpations of
power by unfaithful leaders who are alien
to the Democratic parties of the states
here represented has become intolerable
to those who believe in the preservation
of constitutional government and individual
liberty in America.
The Executive Department of the government
is promoting the gradual but certain
growth of a totalitarian state by domination
and control of a political minded Supreme
Court. (Citing, e.g., "national domination
and control of submerged oil-bearing
lands in California.")
By asserting paramount Federal rights in
these instances a totalitarian concert has
been promulgated which threatens the
integrity of the states and the basic
rights of their citizens.
We believe that the Constitution of the
United States is the greatest charter of
human liberty ever conceived by the mind of
man. We oppose all efforts to invade or
destroy the rights vouchsafed by it to
every citizen of this republic. We stand for
social and economic justice, which we
believe can be vouchsafed to all citizens
only by a strict adherence to our
Constitution and the avoidance of any
invasion or destruction of the
constitutional rights of the states
and individuals. We oppose the
totalitarian, centralized, bureaucratic
government and the police state called
for by the platforms of the Democratic
and Republican conventions.
We stand for the checks and balances
provided by the three departments of
our Government. We oppose the usurpation
of the legislative function by the
executive and judicial departments. We
unreservedly condemn the effort to establish
nation-wide a police state in this
republic that would destroy the last
vestige of liberty enjoyed by a citizen.
We favor home rule, local self-government,
and a minimum interference with individual
rights.
The above points, which are more prominent in
the platform than anything concerning race, are
eminently defensible by any libertarian or
conservative. But in the current climate, a taboo
exists against expressing any regret for the
astonishing centralization of power in American
politics since World War II. Question that, and
you will have few friends and legions of
opportunistic enemies. We are supposed to accept
this reality, which stands on its head every
hope of the founding fathers.
It is nonetheless true that federalism of the
sort mentioned in this platform is the essential
genius of the American republican system of
government -- its great contribution to the
modern political experience, as Lord Acton noted.
In American law, federalism is guaranteed by the
enumerated powers in the Constitution, which
restrict the federal government to only a few
functions while leaving the rest to the states
and the people, as the 10th amendment says.
In the American lexicon, federalism is the same
as the Jeffersonian phrase "states rights," which
means that the states as legal entities have rights
over the federal government. "The true theory of
our Constitution," wrote Jeffersoin, "is surely
the wisest and best -- that the state are
independent as to everything within themselves,
and united as to everything respecting foreign
nations."
As James Madison said, summing up the American
structure of government: "The powers delegated ... to
the federal government are few and defined. Those
which are to remain in the state governments are
numerous and indefinite." FDR himself affirmed his
dedication to this idea in 1930: "As a matter of
fact and law, the governing rights of the states
are all of those which have not been surrendered
to the national government by the Constitution or
its amendments."
In this way, America was different from Prussia or
any other nation-state of the old world that had
a unitary state apparatus that exercised sole
sovereignty. In American federalism, we saw the
embodiment of divided sovereignty, political
tolerance, and decentralization -- the expression
of the liberal conviction that society can manage
itself and needs no central plan. As for government,
its power should be close to the people and shared
only by consent. As Montesquieu wrote: "this form
of government is a convention by which several
small states agree to become members of a large
one, which they intend to form ... . As this
government is composed of small republics, it enjoys
the internal happiness of each."
No, the system of federalism and states rights
does not lead to perfection in every way. But
it provides a check on corruption and despotism
from the center, and the political tolerance
of federalism permits flexibility and
competition between legal regimes, which provides
a check on petty despotisms. It is this very
flexibility that would have best handled the
issue of race relations in the period after
World War II. It was an enormous error to scrap
foundational American principles for the political
expediency of the moment, and we've paid a big
price in freedom for having done so.
As for segregation, the platform of the States
Rights Party did endorse it, but it also endorsed
"the constitutional right to choose one's associates"
(free association, once a pillar of liberal theory)
as well as the right to "accept private employment
without governmental interference, and to earn
one's living in any lawful way." When was the
last time a party platform so unreservedly embraced
liberty as a principle of the labor market? These
principles have been overthrown by the regime, and
now what was once taken for granted as part of the
fabric of liberty is neither discussed nor understood.
In 1948, most Southerners, however, understood
that the federal government wanted to do more
than end legally sponsored segregation at the
state level, which was on its way out in any
case. They understood that the federal government
wanted to take charge of their schools and
communities, not only ending legal segregation
but also managing their lives by prohibiting
voluntary choice in the exercise of private
property rights. They worried about the effects
of a new social planning attempt, complete with
mandatory and subsidized demographic upheavals.
This is what they predicted and this is what
occurred.
So intense was the campaign for centralization
that in 1950, journalist John T. Flynn wrote of
the "War on the South," which he described as an
attempt to use racial conflict to shore up support
for the New Deal planning state. And let's not
forget, too, that the South was put through a
cruel "Reconstruction" after the Civil War; 83
years earlier, the right of self government was
taken from the South and military governments
were installed. All people everywhere resent
imperial government intrusion, but Southerners
could speak with experience on the question. That
memory was still alive in 1948, and the threat
that another round was coming was everywhere
perceived.
Instead of allowing segregation to fade away,
the federal government usurped state functions
and created a very ugly backlash in the South,
pitting blacks against whites and visa versa.
This has resulted in unnecessary racial conflict
and the consolidation of federal power. This has
not been helpful to American race relations, and
it has taken away essential freedoms and property
rights from all Americans.
Today we see every manner of socialistic meddling
imposed on the states, not just in the South but
in all states and against all businesses and
communities and schools. The assumption is that
DC managers know best how to bring about social
cooperation, and that people cannot be trusted
in their daily lives to treat each other humanely.
Instead, we are told, they need inhumane bureaucracies
to tell communities how to run their schools,
businesspeople who to hire and who not to fire,
cities how much public housing to build and how
much to distribute by way of welfare dollars.
Would the country have been better off had the
Dixiecrats won in 1948? Of course this is
conjectural history, and Lott was wrong to imply
that we can know the answer with certainty. If
Thurmond's party behaved the way the Democrats
and Republicans typically behave -- betraying
election promises in favor of building the
welfare-warfare state -- the party might not have
made any difference at all.
However, we can say that the country would have
been far better off by preserving freedom and
federalism rather than empowering a managerial,
therapeutic state that today intrudes itself into
every aspect of public and private life, often in
the name of quelling racial conflict but in fact
only creating more.
In every state, there is racial conflict, and we
should hope and pray and work for an end to it and
the laws that inflame it. But it does not compare
to the suspicion and anger that dominates race
relations in Washington, DC, a place where the
racial divide is obvious to anyone with eyes to
see. In Washington, the home of the people who
claim they know what is best for everyone in the
country, crime and poverty are higher, and the
races can't manage the everyday civilities that
Southerners take for granted.
Lott might have apologized for any misunderstanding
his remarks created, owing to the lack of historical
understand of our nation's press corps and punditry
class. Moreover, there is no evidence that Lott had
any clue about these underlying issues. Like the
jailed dissident in Mao's China, he embraced his
guilt and pleaded for mercy. But no one should have
to apologize for being a defender of freedom and
federalism, and an opponent of the Leviathan state,
which uses any excuse, including race, to trample
on the essential rights of all.
In the end, of course Lott's resignation satisfied
no one. Having now tasted blood, the proponents of
centralization are demanding a wholesale purge of
anyone in politics who has expressed sympathy for
the old constitutional order and the liberties
Americans once took for granted.
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