I’m in Florida right now, on vacation, staying in an apartment on the beach. The complex has a nice pool, so I can go back and forth from fresh to salt water with my son, who thinks he’s a fish. The problem is, the other day I got into an argument with someone, another dad, I’d just met at the pool. I don’t usually do that, pick fights with folks I hardly know. I prefer to wait an appropriate interval before making people hate me. But in this case I made an exception. I had no choice. The guy had it coming: after hearing that I’m a history professor, and that I teach the Civil War, he insisted that President Bush’s approach to disregard for habeas corpus is no different than Lincoln’s was. Right, he said? Right? And if I like the one (Lincoln), why don’t I support the other (Bush)?
So I tried, as politely as I could — while also doing my best to keep my son from drowning (he’s a fish in his love for the water, not necessarily in his abilities, okay?) — to explain that, actually, I’ve got misgivings about Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus. In fact, I said, when I teach the Civil War to undergraduates, I devote parts of several lectures to the myriad ways in which civil liberties were besieged during the conflict. This is one among many cautionary tales I offer students who are often looking for a heroic narrative when they take my class.
But this wasn’t good enough for my new friend antagonist, who insisted that President Bush’s scorn for the Consitution is fired by the threat of Islamic extremism. Which threat, he insisted, “will destroy this country, destroy freedom EVERYWHERE, if we don’t do something about it NOW.” That’s a direct quote, by the way. I know for sure, because I still bear the mark on my chest where he poked me while shouting those memorable words. Ouch.
After kindly noting that President Bush seems to be destroying freedom in order to save it, I went on to try to explain that Lincoln actually faced a real threat to the republic. Whereas, in my view, President Bush does not (Unless you count Vice President Cheney. But I don’t think that’s what Pool Deck Guy (PDG) had in mind.). At least not from “Islamic extremism.” Which isn’t to say that extremism, in all of its guises, isn’t a very serious threat, perhaps even the serious threat of our time. Just not the same kind of threat that the Confederacy was to the Union — which is to say, existential. So I started to walk PDG through the meaning of inter arma enim silent leges, the key differences between Ex parte Merryman and Ex parte Milligan, and the finer points of the impact that the Copperheads and Clement Vallandigham (citing this excellent new book) had on Lincoln’s perception of the rule of law. But now I was splitting hairs. Or so it seemed to the by-then VERY angry PDG. We were arguing, I have to admit. Loudly. (At least in his case. I, by contrast, was calm, genteel even, and quite persuasive. You can ask anyone who was there.) In a pool. In Florida. Surrounded by swimming children. And scores of snowbirds trying not to notice the scary professor sporting the shaved head and his aggressive friend with the Long Island accent. So I walked away.
In part, I’m writing about this because the case above is another instance that has me thinking a lot about the uses of history in political arguments. The past, it seems, is most interesting when deployed as an instrument of persuasion. But nobody ever seems to be persuaded, no matter how compelling the evidence. What to do? I honestly don’t know. Blog, I guess, at least for the moment.
Also, returning to the recurring theme of the lattice of coincidence that weaves together the disparate threads of our lives: I’ve been reading the manuscript for my colleague Kathy Olmsted’s new book on the history of American conspiracy theories. It’s both a brilliant and unsettling work of scholarship, part of which has been discussed on this blog (here and here). Particularly troubling are the long sections on the many actual conspiracies perpetrated by J. Edgard Hoover against the American people. So this Times article comes as little surprise.
Here’s the lede paragraph for the story you’ll find behind the link:
A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty.
Hoover hoped to round up and jail all of the people whose names appeared on his “suspct index,” a master list, compiled over the course of decades, of the many individuals he suspected of disloyalty. So, it appears that in 1950, President Harry Truman was one of the only things standing between this nation and an updated version of the nightmarish Palmer Raids of 1919-1921. Which begs the burning question, who will keep something like this from happening again? I wonder what PDG thinks. Maybe I’ll ask him later today. Or maybe not.
Editor’s Note: If you really want to know something about the Palmer Raids, go here and here and here and here. The eminent Professor Olmsted warns me that the above link is, perhaps, not entirely accurate. Stickler.
Update: I’ve just embedded a link above to a piece that Eric wrote some time ago on the substance of this glib post. But, given all the links I’ve arrayed before you, Eric’s essay might get lost. And that would be a shame. Because it’s good. So here’s that link again. As ever: Ari for glib, Eric for substance. Sigh.
31 comments
December 28, 2007 at 11:26 am
eric
Ari for glib, Eric for substance
… he says, mere millimeters above my Sacha Baron Cohen post.
December 28, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Ben Alpers
I’ll look forward to the Olmsted book on conspiracy theories! This is one of those subjects about which I’ve long wanted a good book to be written (it’s of particular potential interest in relation to my current project).
Though I’m always reluctant to ask the dreaded “how’s the book coming” question…what’s the ETA on it?
December 28, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Rob_in_Hawaii
Until you mentioned your interlocutor’s Long Island accent I thought perhaps you’d run into my brother on vacation. Alas, he’s from Virginia.
But like your new BFF in the pool he’s also a loud-mouthed loyal Bushie who has a similar knee-jerk reaction to “fancy-pants PhD’s” trying to make scholarly points about history. Why listen to the facts when you can just repeat your original point only LOUDER while poking your finger into the other guy’s chest?
Good thing you made a tactical retreat when you did, I think your debate foe’s final “argument” would have been to try to drown you.
December 28, 2007 at 1:50 pm
ari
I had that sense as well: a narrow escape, with dignity barely intact, is better than no escape at all. My son, after we left the pool: “Daddy, what were you talking to that loud man about?” Me, a bit ashamed: “Nothing.” My son: “It didn’t sound like nothing.” Me: grumble, grumble.
December 28, 2007 at 2:14 pm
blueollie
Wow. Sometimes I am very grateful for being a mathematics professor; I don’t have to deal with amateurs trying to convince me that they are right. :)
The thing is that someone can read a pop-history book and think that they know the subject.
Few people do that with math.
December 28, 2007 at 2:15 pm
eric
I don’t have to deal with amateurs trying to convince me that they are right
But apparently the physicists do.
December 28, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Ben Alpers
And we should all be glad that we are not biologists who have to teach intro evolutionary biology, let alone anthropologists who have to teach courses on human evolution. Especially in teh Heartland®.
December 28, 2007 at 4:08 pm
ari
My math skillz are not to be underestimated. I’ve seen A Beautiful Mind. Twice. As a historian, on the other hand, I’ve got a ways to go. I’ll probably rent Glory this weekend. That should do it.
December 28, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Sandie
Oh, Ben, I don’t know what you mean. Unlike you, I am living in la tierra del corazón, not galavanting to distant northern countries with long a long tradition of scientific inquiry. [You missed the ice storm of the century, btw.] I just taught Darwin and Nietzsche last semester (as intellectual history, of course). What’s wrong with comments like, “Yes, I know what Darwin said; I learned about evolution in my high school biology class. But I’m a creationist, so I don’t believe what he said.”? At times like these, I often nod and smile because there’s no point in trying to open a locked-up mind; it’s kind of the equivalent of Ari’s walking away from the jabbing finger. I prefer to teach the ambivalent ones.
December 28, 2007 at 7:15 pm
ari
“10 points for claiming that your work is on the cutting edge of a ‘paradigm shift.'”
But mine so is.
Oh, this is in response to Eric’s link above.
December 28, 2007 at 7:18 pm
urbino
If you were properly context-aware, you’d have waterboarded him.
BTW, I’ve been that biology teacher. Even had a student who was the grandson of a big creationist bloviator.
December 28, 2007 at 7:22 pm
ari
A fine idea. But, he was much bigger than me. Well, maybe not bigger, but certainly stronger. And filled with a righteous fury.
December 28, 2007 at 7:24 pm
urbino
Well, the water would’ve counteracted some of his mass advantage, but that righteous fury . . . yeah, that’s some bad juju.
December 28, 2007 at 7:44 pm
blueollie
Eric, thanks for that link.
Oh yes, I forgot about the angle trisectors (those who think that they’ve come up with a way to trisect an arbitrary angle with ruler and compass) and circle squarers. :-)
But I don’t see finger jabbing, though I did see one mathematician throwing a book at another (though this was during an argument about pedagogy)
December 28, 2007 at 7:48 pm
ari
Mathematicians argue about pedagogy? To the point of throwing books? I find that both surprising and oddly hopeful. To care that much about teaching, how noble. Really. I’d like to take a class with one or both of those people. Come to think of it, I’d really like to get another undergraduate degree. Or two. A math or a physics major or both. And while I’m going back to school, I wouldn’t mind an MFA in writing, preferably with an emphasis in narrative non-fiction. I think Stanford used to have an excellent program. Hmm.
December 28, 2007 at 7:50 pm
ari
I’ve tried hard to locate my righteous fury. But I seem to have lost it amidst all the anomie that’s cluttering up my psyche.
December 28, 2007 at 8:26 pm
eric
I’ve tried hard to locate my righteous fury
Has nobody looked in the wash-basin?
December 28, 2007 at 8:28 pm
ari
Filled with cloudy water of dubious properties. Have a look yourself.
December 28, 2007 at 8:31 pm
eric
MIT was after me, you know. Wanted me to rule the world for them.
December 28, 2007 at 8:35 pm
ari
That’s good work if you can get it. Or so I’m told.
December 28, 2007 at 8:40 pm
urbino
You mean W’s not their man? He has MIT written all over him.
December 28, 2007 at 8:42 pm
eric
You philistines are clearly not getting it.
December 28, 2007 at 8:44 pm
ari
I’ve never seen Help! If that’s what you’re after.
December 28, 2007 at 8:44 pm
eric
I meant, you philistines are clearly not getting it. You and your reading.
December 28, 2007 at 8:45 pm
eric
Boy, you are a philistine. Go, see, now.
December 28, 2007 at 8:45 pm
ari
But I know the line.
December 28, 2007 at 8:45 pm
ari
Doubly so no.
December 29, 2007 at 8:20 am
anon
unfortunately for professional, academic, tenure seeking and tenure receiving historians, “facts” and certainly “qualified distinctions” are irrelevant when discussing history to people who are not part of the academic system. what academics say history is and what non-academics “believe” history to be, is not the same thing. for most, history is for use, something you make a story out of. or something that is already a story that “we” already know to be true. to meet someone outside one’s group, one’s “we,” is shocking. it is not surprising that the two of you (ari and the finger poker) should meet far from your usual haunts. away from your usual “we’s.”
“facts” do not exist indpendent of a narrative–have no meaning except as part of a larger story that makes them true.
and people such as the one ari met near the florida pool already have their narrative, their story. thus, they have their “facts,” too, that lincoln did what bush did. for historians who work for universities, history does work something like science is supposed to work–one has theories of truth and one empirically tests them. one junks old theories and finds new ones as new information or new research methods come up.
for everybody else, though, history is more like religion–a belief structure that allows them to know what is true. “don’t blame me, i voted for jeff davis,” as i used to see more often than i do now. of course such “believers” are easy to manipulate–just ask the latest announced new nytimes columnist who (or the people who pay him) has had a lot to do with pushing along arguments about muslim terrorists that have so entranced ari’s finger-pointer. (just like kristol’s father used to push “the communists are coming, the communists are coming” line, tricking the same sorts of folks) none of which means that lincoln did not suspend habeus corpus, though. and thanks for joining the front lines, ari, that is to say, taking your arruments on the road to Dixie or close to it (since if you’re in South Florida, North Florida does not consider that to be “the South.”)
January 28, 2008 at 3:14 am
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January 28, 2008 at 5:48 am
CharleyCarp
Sorry to come so late to the thread. I didn’t see it before.
This one is easy for me, because I don’t agree at all that Lincoln was in the right. Taney has it right in Merryman, and the truth of it is shown in Merryman’s criminal trial.
I also like to point out that the very statute that deprives district courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas cases created a new cause of action in the court of appeals to review the enemy combatant decision: In what way is the public safety element of the Suspension Clause satisfied by moving the prisoner’s claim from one floor to another in the same courthouse?
(I’ve discussed elsewhere the problems that the government is having with the new cause of action: they can’t even produce the record on review, because, among other reasons, they never compiled the available information on the prisoners. In enacting the DTA, its proponents — notably Sen. Graham — presumed that the CSRT process was conducted according to military legal processes. He was misinformed: it was political start to finish, with predetermined outcomes, do-overs, stupidities of one kind or another.)
Then there’s this: If holding these prisoners is legal, why did the government go the one place they thought was beyond the law to do it?
January 28, 2008 at 8:29 am
ari
Charley, that’s interesting and all, but look! 1.9% on balance transfers for the life of the card! Also: I agree on Lincoln and civil liberties. As I said in the original post, it’s a recurring theme in my course. That said, Taney may have been right, but I’ve always assumed, not having the legal training to get deep into the case, that he was for the wrong reasons. And also, the new book by Jennifer Weber that I’ve talked about before, Copperheads, makes the case that there really was a legitimate threat to the Union coming from the peace Democrats. Still doesn’t make Lincoln right. But it certainly casts his actions in a different light.
Wow, a rhyme. I’m such a wordsmith that it pains me.