At The Atlantic, where he is a senior editor, Ta-Nehisi Coates takes on a Washington Post columnist:
Charles Lane compares the radicalism of white supremacists with the radicalism of escaped slaves:
Today, we admire the American revolutionaries, and subsequent uncompromising movements. But don't forget: The victors write history. If the South had won the Civil War, what would our schoolchildren be taught about the abolitionists today? Some in the antislavery movement were as extreme, in their way, as the Southern "fire-eaters." We tend to think of the secessionists as resisting federal authority during the run-up to Fort Sumter. But the antislavery side had its moments of nullification as well. In 1851, a Boston crowd broke into a federal courthouse to free "Shadrach," a black man being held there by U.S. marshals enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law. Abolitionist Theodore Parker declared this blatant defiance of Washington "the most noble deed done in Boston since the destruction of the tea in 1773."
I am not suggesting a moral equivalency between the anti-slavery and pro-slavery forces. But I am suggesting an attitudinal equivalency - one that has been played out repeatedly in our history, and that may play out again.
Lane is referencing, in rather disrespectful fashion, the awesome Shadrach Minkins. A Norfolk-area slave, Minkins' unthinking extremism deluded him into believing that he was a human being. Upon this radical realization, the hot-headed Minkins fled North and took up with a band of ex-slaves and abolitionists who also had thoughtlessly decided that blacks were people.
Lane is trying to cover himself by noting that he's comparing attitude, not morals. This only works in the most absurdly narrow sense--both abolitionists and fire-eaters believed that aspects of the federal law should be resisted. But this is like saying that both Roosevelt and Hitler had resigned themselves to mass killings. ...
There certainly is more here that's erroneous--I'm not convinced that "attitude" and "morality" are separate spheres. Moreover, I think that if Lane had used some empathy, the kind that leads you to use a man's full name unencumbered by scare quotes, he'd see the difference. Instead we have a lazy, mealy-mouthed "on the other hand" kind of centrism, which is every bit as rote, calcified, and rehearsed as the extremes it claims to deride.
As von at Obsidian Wings writes:
This takedown is the exception that proves Godwin's law; that is, Coates shows how a proper Nazi comparison should be done. It's fine writing at its finest.
Remind me never to piss Coates off.
Coates often exhibits fine writing - but, more importantly, fine thinking - at its finest.
• • • • •
At Daily Kos on this date in 2003:
It seems Bush is a little depressed about the war he inflicted upon our nation, and he's been a little hard on himself. So everybody, please, feel sorry for him. Because, you see, as our men and women die in Iraq, in addition to thousands of civilians, this is all about him.
People who know Bush well say the strain of war is palpable. He rarely jokes with staffers these days and occasionally startles them with sarcastic putdowns. He's being hard on himself; he gave up sweets just before the war began. He's frustrated when armchair generals or members of his own team express doubts about U.S. military strategy. At the same time, some of his usual supporters are concerned by his insistence on sticking with the original war plan. [...]
Friends say the conflict is consuming Bush's days and weighing heavily on him. "He's got that steely-eyed look, but he is burdened," says a friend who has spent time with the president since the war began. "You can see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. I worry about him."
A piece like this doesn't get written without the go-ahead from Rove. So what's the angle? What is the White House trying to sell? And why am I so offended by it, to my very core?