Still fighting the Civil War?: Two nominees should explain
Dionne, E.J. Jr.
E.J. DIONNE Jr. STILL FIGHTING THE CIVIL WAR? Ask Ashcroft & Norton about states' rights Thanks to George W. Bush's two most controversial cabinet nominees, our nation is about to rejoin the...
...Far from losing too much, we have gained a great deal...
...The GOP chairperson of one Florida county told the New York Times that "our lives" were at stake...
...It was linked to the right of the states to maintain slavery against the wishes of the federal government...
...It's important to look in detail at exactly what Norton said in that 19% speech about her first visit to "those Civil War graveyards" in Virginia and her reaction to a monument inscribed "in memory of all the Virginia soldiers who died in defense of the sovereignty of their state...
...What's clear is that Norton is subordinating the issue of slavery to the cause of states' rights...
...The politics of resentment created something almost akin to what Adorno called the authoritarian personality...
...Witness interior secretary-designate Gale Norton's speech on slavery as representing "bad facts" for states' rights advocates, and attorney general-designate John Ashcroft's praise for Southern Partisan, a neo-Confederate journal...
...That is the point I think we need to reappreciate...
...The columns of several highly respected Republican pundits read like James Baker's press statements...
...Which raises the question: Was slavery not a "perverted agenda...
...Most alarming, their treatment of Jesse Jackson's orderly protests seemed to suggest that any time an African American speaks forcefully about civil rights concerns to other blacks a riot has taken place...
...And there's ample evidence that Ashcroft is not, as some have charged, a racist...
...The issues in both these cases are more subtle, but very serious...
...They are about nothing less than our understanding of our nation's history and the role of the federal government...
...It is they who have put the issues of the Civil War back on the nation's agenda...
...Let's, first, toss some red herrings overboard...
...But apparently, they're not settled...
...Norton needs to explain what environmental gains she'd be willing to abandon in the name of states' rights and property rights...
...No one should claim that Norton was defending slavery...
...There was something frightening about the bullyboy tactics of the imported demonstrators and the consistent liberties that Baker and his surrogates took with the truth...
...Ask Ashcroft & Norton about states' rights Thanks to George W. Bush's two most controversial cabinet nominees, our nation is about to rejoin the issues raised by the Civil War...
...We can only assume they are serious people who are serious about what they say...
...don swift Erie, Pa...
...The argument can be extended to environmental protection, the area that would be under Norton's authority at interior...
...What exactly was Ashcroft trying to say...
...In cultural warfare, the stakes seem that great and call for extraordinary exertion that sometimes crosses the bounds of civility and lawfulness...
...These tactics are very effective, but they also damage the fabric of our system...
...But Ashcroft went beyond that: "We've got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda...
...Slavery is a mere inconvenience, a case of "bad facts...
...Republican presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Richard Nixon and, yes, the elder George Bush, have supported an active role for the federal government to clean the air and water, and to preserve the wilderness...
...2001, Washington Post Writers Group 9 (Continued from page 4) passions to win political support...
...These doctrines have real-life implications for the future role of the federal government, especially for these nominees in the areas of environmental protection and civil rights...
...But we lost too much...
...There's a lot to be said for regional pride...
...We lost the idea that the states were to stand against the federal government gaining too much power over our lives...
...The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 consciously overrode both states' rights and property rights in the interest of human freedom and equal justice...
...Here's the key passage: "Again, we certainly had bad facts in that case where we were defending state sovereignty by defending slavery...
...He noted that it was anger that finally brought the party control of the presidency and both houses of Congress...
...As for Ashcroft, there is his praise of the magazine Southern Partisan for "defending patriots like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis...
...States, she said, "need to be able to make their own decisions" so they can "provide that check in our federal system against too much power going to Washington...
...This mindset seemed to legitimize in29 (Continued from page 29) timidating black voters, doctoring absentee ballot applications in Seneca and Martin Counties, the reckless purging of voter rolls to reduce the number of black voters, and the stonewalling of the Florida secretary of state's office...
...She wasn't...
...After Bush became president-elect, Rush Limbaugh angrily dismissed suggestions that Republicans should turn away from an "orgy of hate" to seek conciliation and pursue moderation...
...It's fair to ask them to explain and defend their positions...
...For more than a century, our country has moved toward a different view: that the cause of individual human and civil rights matters more than states' rights, and trumps them...
...It was part of what was supposed to guarantee that our government would remain limited," she said...
...On the other hand, they uniformly defended the conduct of the congressional staffers and others sent to Florida to stop the recount...
...States' rights, in Norton's formulation, are what matter...
...These debates matter because if s more "socially acceptable now to flirt with" 8 neo-Confederate doctrines, says Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights...
...Perhaps Norton did not intend to put herself on the side of the Confederacy and the cause of those Virginia soldiers ("we certainly had bad facts in that case where we were defending sovereignty by defending slavery...
...Where does she think "we lost too much...
...You might argue that 138 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and 37 years after the great Civil Rights Act of 1964, there should be no need to reopen settled questions...
...The context was her argument that "bad facts make bad law" and her defense of the Tenth Amendment, which holds that powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states or the people...
...As Norton argues, the cause of states' rights wasn't being defended during the Civil War purely as an abstraction...
Vol. 128 • January 2001 • No. 2
