Letters to a Young Conservative (15 page)

Now let me say a word about the left-wing attack on Lincoln. This group of critics, composed of liberal scholars and African American activists, is harshly critical of Lincoln on the grounds that he was a racist who didn’t really care about ending slavery. The indictment against Lincoln is as follows: He didn’t oppose slavery outright, only the extension of it; he said (in his letter to Horace Greeley) that if he could save the Union without freeing a single slave he would do it; he opposed laws permitting intermarriage, and even opposed social and political equality between the races. If the neo-Confederates disdain Lincoln for being too aggressively antislavery, the left-wingers scorn him for not being antislavery enough. Both groups, however, agree that Lincoln was a self-promoting hypocrite who said one thing while doing another.

Some of Lincoln’s defenders have sought to vindicate him from these attacks by contending that he was a “man of his time.” This will not do, because there were several persons of that time, notably the Grimke sisters and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, who forthrightly and unambiguously attacked slavery and called for its immediate and complete abolition. In one of his speeches, Sumner said that while there are many issues on which political men can and should compromise, slavery is not one of them. “This will not admit of compromise.
To be wrong on this is to be wholly wrong. It is our duty to defend freedom, unreservedly, and careless of the consequences.”

Careless of the consequences.
Here we have that recognizable thing, the voice of Lincoln’s contemporary liberal critics who (whether they know it or not) are the philosophical descendants of Sumner. One cannot understand Lincoln without understanding why he agreed with Sumner’s goals while consistently opposing the strategy of the abolitionists. The abolitionists, Lincoln saw, were not primarily concerned with restricting or ending slavery. They were most concerned with self-righteous moral display. They wanted to be in the right and—as Sumner himself says—damn the consequences! In Lincoln’s view, abolition was a noble sentiment, but abolitionist tactics, such as burning the Constitution and advocating violence, actually promoted the cause of slavery.

Let us answer the liberal critics by showing them why Lincoln’s understanding of slavery—and his strategy for defeating it—was superior to that of Sumner and his modern-day followers. Lincoln knew that the statesman, unlike the moralist, cannot be content with making the case against slavery. He must find a way to carry out his principles to the degree that circumstances permit. The key to understanding Lincoln is that he always found the meeting point between what was right in theory and what could be achieved in practice. He always sought the common denominator between what was good to do and what the people would go along with. In
a democratic society, this is the only legitimate way of advancing a moral agenda.

Consider the consummate skill with which Lincoln deflected the prejudices of his supporters without yielding to them. During the debates in Illinois with Stephen Douglas in the race for the Senate, Douglas repeatedly accused Lincoln of believing that blacks and whites were intellectually equal, of endorsing full political rights for blacks, and of supporting “amalgamation,” or intermarriage, between the races. If these charges could be sustained, if enough people believed them to be true, then Lincoln’s career was over. Even in the free state of Illinois—as throughout the North—there was widespread opposition to full political and social equality for blacks.

So how did Lincoln handle this difficult situation? He used a series of artfully conditional responses. “Certainly the Negro is not our equal in color—perhaps not in many other respects; still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man. In pointing out that more has been given to you, you cannot be justified in taking away the little which has been given to him. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.” Notice how little Lincoln concedes to prevailing prejudice. Lincoln never acknowledges black inferiority; he merely concedes the possibility. And the thrust of his argument is that even if blacks are inferior, this is no warrant for taking away their rights.

Or again, facing the charge of racial amalgamation, Lincoln says, “I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that because I do not want a black woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife.” Lincoln is not saying that he wants, or does not want, a black woman for his wife. He is neither supporting nor opposing racial intermarriage. He is simply saying that from his antislavery position it does not follow that he endorses racial amalgamation. Elsewhere, Lincoln turned antiblack prejudices against Douglas by saying that slavery was the institution that had produced the greatest racial intermixing and the largest number of mulattos.

Lincoln was exercising the same prudent statesmanship when he wrote his famous letter to Horace Greeley asserting that his main objective was to save the Union and not to free the slaves. Lincoln wrote this letter on August 22, 1862, a year and a half after the Civil War broke out, when the South was gaining momentum and the outcome was far from certain. From the time of secession, Lincoln was desperately eager to prevent border states—Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri—from seceding. These states had slavery, and Lincoln knew that if the issue of the war was cast as an issue over slavery, his chances of keeping the border states in the Union were slim. And if all the border states seceded, Lincoln was convinced (and rightly so) that the cause of the Union was lost. Moreover, Lincoln was acutely aware that the many people in the North who were vehemently
antiblack saw themselves as fighting to save their country rather than to free slaves. Lincoln framed his case against the Confederacy as one of saving the Union so that he could maintain his coalition—a coalition whose victory was essential to the cause of antislavery. And ultimately it was because of Lincoln that slavery came to an end. This is why the neo-Confederates can never forgive him.

There is more to say about Lincoln, but this letter has gone longer than I intended. Not only do I admire Lincoln, I love the guy. To me, he was the true “philosophical statesman,” one who was truly good and truly wise. Standing in front of his critics, Lincoln is a colossus, and all the Lilliputian arrows hurled at him bounce harmlessly to the ground. I confess that I cannot put Ronald Reagan—not even George Washington—in the same category as Lincoln. He is simply the greatest practitioner of democratic statesmanship that America and the world have yet produced.

Dear Chris,

I understand that the president of your college has proposed “self-esteem workshops” for women and minorities. The premise of this seems to be that racism and discrimination cause these groups to feel bad about themselves, and that this low self-image translates into women avoiding “hard” fields, such as engineering, and into blacks and Hispanics doing poorly in school. If only we raise the self-esteem of these groups, the reasoning goes, surely the women will en-roll in engineering courses in greater numbers and the blacks and Hispanics will produce higher test scores. Such reasoning is fallacious.

Is it important to feel good about yourself? I am not sure about this. Sometimes when I feel very good about myself, I am on my guard because I realize that I am about to do something incredibly stupid. Feeling good
about myself does not make me smarter or better. Alas, these truths are lost on modern liberals.

One reason liberals support political correctness is that they believe stern social controls are needed to prevent insensitivity and bigotry because those things gravely injure the self-esteem of women and minorities. So, too, many liberals don’t like standardized tests because some people do better on those tests than others, and liberals worry that poorly performing students may suffer blows to their self-esteem. One school program, Outcomes Based Education, downplays grades and other measures of merit and instead focuses on such things as maintaining “emotional and social well-being” or developing “a positive personal self-concept.”

In addition, liberals frequently seek to modify the traditional curriculum in colleges and universities because they assume that reading Plato, Dante, and John Locke reinforces the self-esteem of whites while undermining the self-esteem of minorities. The general assumption here is that white students have big smiles on their faces because, you know, Homer wrote the
Iliad.
Liberals want the curriculum to emphasize the achievement of non-Western cultures and minority groups. In a sense, they are attempting to reassure minority students by saying, in effect, “Are you down in the dumps? Don’t worry, your ancestors invented the traffic light.”

Self-esteem is a very American concept and Americans, perhaps more than anyone else in the world, tend to
believe that feeling good about yourself is an essential prerequisite to performing to the best of your ability. Self-esteem is also a democratic idea. In a hierarchical society, one’s self-image is determined by one’s designated role: as brahmin, as elder, as patriarch, as peasant, and so on. Aristocratic societies do not speak of self-esteem but of honor. In a democratic society, self-esteem is claimed as an entitlement. Unlike honor, it does not have to be earned. Self-esteem in the West is largely a product of the romantic movement, which exalts feelings over reason, the subjective over the objective. Self-esteem is based on the wisdom that Polonius imparts to Laertes: “To thine own self be true.”

But does a stronger self-esteem make students learn better? This seems dubious. Institutions such as the Jesuits and the U.S. Marines have for generations produced impressive intellectual and motivational results by
undermining
the self-esteem of recruits. I am the product of a Jesuit education, and one of my Jesuit teachers liked to say that “be yourself” is absolutely the worst counsel you can give some people. He’s right: This is not the kind of advice we want to give to Charles Manson or Hitler. The Jesuits and the marines are both famous for first degrading the pride and self-image of youngsters and then seeking to reconstruct them on a new and firmer foundation.

Several years ago, a group called the California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem (no, I am not making this up) conducted a study to explore the relationship between
self-esteem and academic performance. The study found, to its own evident chagrin, that higher self-esteem does not produce better intellectual performance. Nor does it produce more desirable social outcomes, such as lower teen pregnancy or reduced delinquency.

These findings have been corroborated by academic studies—footnoted in my book
The End of Racism
—comparing the self-image and academic performance of American students with that of students from other industrialized countries. Consistently, American students score higher on self-esteem. Yet on actual reading and math tests, American students perform near the bottom. These results show that it is possible to have a healthy ego and be ignorant at the same time. Similarly, within the United States, black males have (you may be surprised to discover) the
highest
self-esteem of any group. Yet on academic measures black males score the lowest. The reason is that self-esteem in these students is generated by factors unrelated to studies, such as the ability to beat up other students or a high estimation of one’s sexual prowess.

None of this is to suggest that the research on self-esteem shows no relationship between self-confidence and academic performance. There is a relationship, but it runs in the opposite direction. Self-esteem doesn’t produce enhanced achievement, but achievement produces enhanced self-esteem. In other words, feeling good about myself doesn’t make me smarter. But when I study hard, when I discover the meaning of a poem,
when I find the amoeba under the microscope, when I see my way through a difficult math problem, then I feel exhilarated, and my self-esteem is justly strengthened.

That’s a lesson that I wish more liberal educators would take to heart.

Dear Chris,

As you say in your letter, liberals think that conservatives don’t care about the environment. But this is silly. We like trees, rivers, and baby seals as much as the next guy. Indeed, as conservatives, we should be dedicated to conserving God’s green earth, and we are. It is hard to quarrel with the environmentalist claim that the ecosystem is a precious and fragile thing, and that man has the power to destroy it. The stewardship of nature is now a human responsibility.

The problem with the environmentalists is that the movement seems to have been taken over by the environuts: vegetarians, organic farmers, fruit-juice drinkers, garbage-sorters, tree-huggers, and earth-worshippers. These people do not have a reputation for being rational. Indeed, they seem to operate in perpetual
alarmist mode. Thus they routinely exaggerate the threat that economic growth, technology, and human beings themselves pose to the planet. Moreover, the solution of many environmentalists—to restrict growth, to oppose “artificial” technologies such as pesticides and bioengineering, and to limit the aspirations of the world’s people—is impractical and harmful. Recycling and organic farming are not the answer.

Let’s begin with the tall tales that environmentalists Lester Brown and Paul Erlich have been spinning for decades. They have warned that the earth is running out of food and water, that pollution levels never abate, that the population of the earth is surpassing the earth’s capacity, and that massive ecological and human disasters are imminent. In reality, agricultural production per head has risen; known reserves of fossil fuels and most metals are greater than previously thought; economic growth has produced lower birth rates and successful efforts to reduce pollution levels, and none of the horrors predicted by the environmentalists has come to pass.