TellerBooks reader Roderick Clay has recently written a letter to the Editor of TellerBooks criticizing one of the books in our “
Reply, Refutation and Rebuttal” imprint. Believing in the importance of the open dialogue and debate that our “Reply, Refutation and Rebuttal” imprint seeks to engender, the Editors of TellerBooks have opted to publish Mr. Clay’s letter. In the letter, reprinted below, Mr. Clay responds to Harold Palmer’s recent publication, “
Dinesh D’Souza’s What’s So Great About America: A Reply, Refutation and Rebuttal.” Mr. Clay, defending Dinesh D’Souza’s New York Times Best Seller, argues that Mr. Palmer’s Reply is mistaken, superficial, naïve and marked by faulty reasoning. We leave it to our readers to judge between Mr. Palmer’s critique of Mr. D’Souza’s book and Mr. Clay’s defense of it.
Dear Editor:
It is so easy from our 21st century perch to look back and condemn slavery (while we engage in other practices that, by God’s grace, our descendents will look back on and condemn with equal justification, e.g., abortion). Yes, we understand only too well now hundreds of years later that slavery is an abomination – but, as D’Souza quite correctly observes, slavery is as old, and as widespread, as mankind – it was practiced for centuries all over the world and for centuries there was virtually no opposition to it – it was simply an accepted part of life on earth. Today we really have no idea how commonplace and uncontroversial it was. Instead, from our privileged 21st century position we look down our noses and gasp at the ignorance and evil of our forebears. “How could they have been so ignorant and evil?” we self-righteously ask ourselves (while we ignorantly, sinfully commit other horrific transgressions we are not yet enlightened enough to realize). We are so self-righteous, sanctimonious, and hypocritical.
Virtually of the Founding Fathers in the northern states and some in the southern states detested slavery and wished with all their hearts to get rid of it, but they realized that they would not be able to win independence from Great Britain and found a new viable country without the slave holding southern states and their slavery supporting leaders. So they did what they thought was the best thing – they made the break with Great Britain and did everything they thought they possibly could to lay the groundwork for slavery’s eventual, and speedy, eradication. Did they do the best thing? Well, again it’s easy for us over 200 years later to look back and say “No, they didn’t,” but the truth is we don’t know whether they chose the right course or not. Monday morning quarterbacking is so easy. If they had not made the decision they did, the USA might never have been born. And then where would we be? Who knows?
Was slavery a terrible mistake for America from the beginning? Yes, obviously. But, once entrenched, it was so, so difficult to end. Has slavery been for all of our history a national nightmare from which we have desperately, and unsuccessfully, tried over and over again to awake? Is its legacy even now threatening to split this country apart and destroy it? Sadly, terrifyingly, yes.
But does this terrible mistake, of which virtually all countries for all of history have been guilty, make America a bad country? I’m with Dinesh – I say “No.”
In many of his “facts” and statements I think Mr. Palmer is very mistaken. I think his history of slavery and its abolition in different countries is in several significant ways mistaken. And, by the way, the “bloodiest war in [America’s] history” was NOT fought to abolish slavery. Before the war Lincoln said "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union."
Mr. Palmer’s criticism of the three-fifth clause is woefully ignorant and naïve. He completely misunderstands the clause, its meaning, its necessity, and its value, and D’Souza’s justification of it. His criticism of it is lamentably naïve. It just completely misses the political realities of the time and the situation. It is political fantasizing. (Is Mr. Palmer a liberal? This kind of naïveté is usually characteristic only of liberals who have long since given up on the practice of actually dealing in reality.)
Another gem of liberal expression follows immediately after: “The impracticality of abolishing slavery cannot be used to justify the continuation of slavery” – i.e., considerations of the difficulties of something (i.e., reality) cannot, should not, be taken into account when attempting to decide whether, or how, or when, to do something. Instead, just because something is “right,” we should just plunge right in with both feet, and the devil take the hindmost. Of course some consideration needed to be given to the likely consequences/problems of emancipating the slaves in one fell swoop. These problems could/should not have been used to prevent emancipation of course, at least not indefinitely or for an extended period of time, but they absolutely should have been taken into account and efforts made to prepare for them and to minimize them. So, this far at any rate, Mr. Palmer should have made it clear that D’Souza’s argument has merit. One has only to perform a cursory study of the Reconstruction period in the South to see that the emancipation of the slaves did entail major and often wrenching problems of adjustment for those so emancipated. (By the way, another prime example of naïveté and/or incoherence is embedded in this discussion when Mr. Palmer asks “one is left wondering why America was able to abolish slavery in 1865 but not in 1776? Was America any less democratic in 1865 than it was in 1776? Did it require any less civic duty of its citizens in 1865 than it did in 1776?” Does Mr. Palmer honestly not understand why America was not able to abolish slavery in 1776? And that it was able to abolish it in 1865 only because it had just fought “the bloodiest war in its history”?)
In Mr. Palmer’s next section “The Framer’s Dilemma: How to Uphold Democracy and Yet Abolish Slavery” Mr. Palmer again exhibits anachronistic and just plain illogical thinking. His thinking is anachronistic because when he argues “All men have access to [their inalienable] rights, including the right to self-governance and to choose one’s governors, regardless of their skin color. If this view were adopted, then there would be no tension between abolition and the consent of the governed,” he is again projecting/assuming our 21st century knowledge on/of the 19th century Americans who obviously did not possess this knowledge. Mr. Palmer’s assumption seems to be “well, this is all so obvious to us in the 21st century, so it was obvious to those in 19th century America struggling with this question.” Mr. Palmer’s assumption is patently mistaken. And Mr. Palmer’s argument is illogical because it posits as a solution to the problem, i.e., slavery, the enfranchisement of the slaves that did not yet exist but was a reality only after the problem was solved! In other words, Mr. Palmer proposes as a cause of abolition what was, and could only have been, its result!
Mr. Palmer’s reasoning is faulty in his next section as well. In opposition to D’Souza’s contention that “the founders did not draft a constitution that institutes, legitimizes or condones slavery,” Mr. Palmer writes “If the Constitution really were neutral on slavery, there would have been no need for the post-Civil War Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments (abolishing slavery, establishing citizenship rights, and granting suffrage to blacks, respectively).” But surely Mr. Palmer is aware of the fact that the entire Bill of Rights was declared by many of the Founding Fathers to be “unnecessary” since, they argued, all of the rights enumerated therein were known and assumed by all. Others argued, however (fortunately!), that, though these rights were universally known and accepted, nonetheless, it was prudent and useful to clearly set them out in the Constitution. I would argue that these amendments Mr. Palmer refers to as proof that the Constitution was not neutral on the question of slavery fall into the same category as the entire Bill of Rights, namely as amendments intended to make plain and beyond dispute what was already known and accepted by all but which might have been challenged by recalcitrant and disputatious trouble makers left over from the slavery era. These amendments were NOT needed to give these rights to the former slaves, they were needed only to make them clear and indisputable.
In these, and possibly other ways, Mr. Palmer’s Reply, Refutation, and Rebuttal of Mr. D’Souza’s book, where the issue of slavery in America is concerned, fails to refute or rebut effectively or even logically.
Yours truly,
Roderick Clay
