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Friday, August 07, 2020

Allocating public honor: The cases of Benedict Arnold and Philipe

Allocating public honor is no small issue.  Consider two possible candidates for such honor.  The first is Benedict Arnold.  Given that he is an eponym for traitorous conduct, it is no surprise that there are no monuments honoring him in the United States.  But consider the almost certain possibility that there would be no United States were it not for his courageous leadership at the Battle of Saratoga.  Not only were the British forces defeated; it is also the case that the victory spurred the then-onlooking French to decide that the American secessionists were worth investing in.  There  can be little doubt that the French support was absolutely vital to winning American independence.  As Lin-Manuel Miranda has brought to our collective attention, there was not only the figure of Lafayette, but also, at least as importantly, the aid given by Rochembeau and the Franch navy in order to prevail at the Battle of Yorktown.  Had Arnold's generalship not prevailed, all might have been lost.  Had he died shortly thereafter, there can be little doubt that he'd be remembered, perhaps even earning a commemorative stamp of a plate block devoted to "Heroes of the American Revolution."  So why should the “mere” fact that Arnold, a genuine hero and contributor to the reality of the United States of America circa 1777,  decided that he would remain loyal to King George III after all deprive him of even an iota of recognition that one might argue is his due?  No doubt the question appears odd, even bizarre.  But would honoring Arnold be any more bizarre than the fact that the United States Postal Service in 1995 published a plate block of stamps devoted, in 12-point type to the Civil War--in 10-point type to the War Between the State--and included stamps honoring, among others, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis?  Were they really more worthy of “commemoration” than Benedict Arnold?  Had any of them really served the country they had pledged loyalty to so well as Arnold had through the Battle of Saratoga.

The second candidate is Field Marshall Philppe Petain of France, the so-called “Lion of Verdun” in recognition of the key role he played in the ultimate defense of France and defeat of Germany during World War I.  As a result, he was honored by the City of New York with a ticker-tape parade down Broadway in New York City, which in turn was commemorated by a  plaque in a series that recognized everyone who had garnered such a tribute down what was  labeled the “Canyon of Heroes.”  Needless to say, most people today remember Petain, if at all, as the collaborationist head of the Vichy regime during World War II.  A committee appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio to consider a number of New York monuments, including those of  Christopher Columbus in Columbus Circle and of Theodore Roosevelt in front of the Museum of Natural History, recommended that reference to the “Canyon of Heroes” be removed from all 206 of the various plaques recognizing those who had received ticker-tape parades.  They did not, however, recommend the removal of Petain’s particular plaque, either because it is thought to be part of a historical record of persons who have been so honored, perhaps because they feared that some of the remaining 205 honorees might also be found to have had feet of clay should they be closely examined.  So the Solomonic compromise was to acknowledge that he had received a ticker-tape parade while eliminating the suggestion that anyone receiving such a parade was necessarily a “hero.”

As with Arnold, Petain’s initial heroism was completely negated by his later conduct.  He was stripped of the equivalent of the “honorary degree” as a “hero” awarded him by New York; perhaps we should analogize this to the withdrawal by a number of universities of honorary degrees conferred on the hitherto philanthropic Bill Cosby upon discovery that he was also a serial sexual predator.  Reputation—and consequent “honor”—is always subject to revision, either because of after-acquired information or later conduct or simply revisions in our estimation of what was long known to be true.  Dramatic recent examples include Woodrow Wilson and John C. Calhoun, each now “dishonored,” in a quite literal sense, by Princeton and Yale, respectively, by the renaming of programs and colleges.  Most recently, Millard Fillmore, Buffalo's contribution to the White House, was stripped by the State University of New York at Buffalo from one of its central buildings, presumably because he had signed the so-called Compromise of 1850 that included an even more tyrannical Fugitive Slave Act than the first one of 1793, should that be possible.  So why should Fillmore deserve honor merely because he was one of our "accidental" presidents, getting there by the death of the "real" presidents and, just as importantly, having done nothing as president to balance out the support of the Fugitive Slave Act.  Though, of course, one of the principal rock venues of all time was on Fillmore St. in San Francisco, presumably named by grateful Californians whose entry to the Union, as a free state, was another part of the Compromise.

Might one argue that Arnold does in fact deserve some (grudging) recognition as an American hero, even if we must combine that with appropriate caveats?  So, then, what about Petain?  If one believes that defeat of Germany was essential during World War I, then should we continue to pay due homage to the Lion of Verdun?  If we answer (some version of) “Hell, no!!” is not the reason that collaboration with what most of us continue (correctly) to view as the baseline for absolute evil makes one, in the most literal sense, dishonorable?  Petain presumably was not a Nazi himself, but, rather, came to the conclusion that it was in the interest of “the French” to accept the reality of their defeat and therefore to accept as well the creation of the puppet Vichy government that he headed.  Most of us no doubt prefer Charles de Gaulle.  I have no problem with accepting that argument.  But, to put it mildly, it is thoroughly political and, as with all political arguments, it is presumably open to argument.  And one can ask about its application to many other examples.

Barack Obama notably informed Americans, following the election debacle of 2010, that politics always involves compromise; he pointed out that there would have been no United States without accepting the reality that his wife’s ancestors would continue to be held in bondage.  He is surely correct, and we can debate to this very day whether what William Lloyd Garrison called the “covenant with death and agreement with Hell” was worth it.  But let us not deny the realities undergirding the United States.  If we reject Charles Blow’s recent remarkable column, “Yes, Even George Washington,  denouncing the “Father of our Country” as just one more slaveholder, and reply that Washington, after all, won American independence, then why not recognize that Benedict Arnold has his own claim to being honored by Americans grateful for independence as (or, perhaps, if ) they celebrate July 4?  And if sophisticated “realists” say even today that American collaboration with dictators and thugs is “necessary and proper” in order to achieve the ends of American foreign policy, then why, exactly, draw the line at Petain?  I do not deny that there are good answers as to why Petain is different, say, from collaborators with Josef Stalin during World War II, including, of course, the United States.  But the answers need to be spelled out rather than blithely assumed.

The present moment invites a national conversation raising the most fundamental questions of how Americans wish to define themselves.  As Oliver Wendell Holmes reminded us, “We live by symbols.”  Part of de Gaulle’s genius was to redefine France as a nation of resisters instead of the collaborationists that all too many were, led by Petain but, in fact including later President Francois Mitterand and a variety of lesser worthies.  And, of course, the United States quickly snatched up Werner van Braun as an honored contributor to the weaponry of the Cold War.  No doubt it was considered in bad taste, in Huntsville, Alabama, to bring up van Braun's collaboration with the Nazi regime.

History is the reality of the almost literally endless reconsideration and what Joseph Schumpeter, in a different context, called “the creative destruction” of symbols.  That destruction is inherent to the process by which societies choose, sometimes thorough solemn institutional deliberation, sometimes by the spontaneous action of mass movements and protests, to redefine themselves and instantiate their most fundamental commitments.   As Paul Simon put it, we are living in what, in its own way, is an “age of miracles and wonders.” It poses the most fundamental of Socratic questions, “How shall we live, and whom shall we choose to honor?





60 comments:

  1. Treason is all the more bitter when someone you love and admire betrays you.

    Benedict Arnold is a deeply tragic figure and would be a great topic for a movie. Brilliant and recklessly brave commander and partiot arguably saves the new nation at Saratoga, but is denied compensation, recognition and command by political enemies, so he avenges himself on those enemies by betraying his country.

    The recent television series Turn: The Story of Washington's Spies did fair job of portraying Arnold as a badly injured and handled man after Saratoga.

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  2. Arnold's behavior was rather worse than your summary. He was the commander of West Point, a critical fort blocking any British attempt on NY. He planned to betray that fort to the British. Not only would that have been a disaster on its own, it might very well have changed the course of the Revolution -- Washington would not have been able to move south and trap the British at Yorktown. His treason would have substantially undone the battle of Saratoga. So while Arnold did do something noteworthy, his later behavior pretty well negates that. On balance, it's hard to justify honoring him or his role at Saratoga.

    Washington's situation is quite different. He was literally the indispensable man first for winning the Revolution and then for establishing the new government after the Constitution was ratified. Those accomplishments are so significant that he deserves recognition, even commemoration.

    Any commemoration should, IMO, generally be limited to events rather than people. People are fallible; they are a mixed bag of good and bad. The events are (usually) less ambiguous. In this sense, we can celebrate the Revolution and the Constitution, commemorating Washington's role in both, without deifying him personally. It's a fine line, perhaps, but one we should try to observe with all historical figures (even Lincoln).

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  3. The fundamental difference between Benedict Arnold and the Confederates, is that the Union sought to return the Confederate states to being part of the Union.

    If they had only sought to treat them as conquered lands, the Confederacy's leaders could have been treated like Arnold. But then, the exhausted Union would have been faced with the defeated Confederacy as a hostile force that could not have been integrated back into itself for generations, if ever.

    Replacing the evil of slavery with the evil of maintaining a conquered people as subjects. Not a wise move. The bargain was that the Confederacy would be accepted back in on, soon enough, equal terms, and in return would not be treated as traitors so long as they surrendered.

    So, basically, we treat the Confederacy's heroes as honorable, because we wanted the Civil war to end, and not on terms that would have destroyed the US as a democracy.

    So, the question is not how Petain is regarded in the US, which had no need to peacefully co-exist with the people who'd run the Vichi government.

    The question is how he's treated in France. He was, in fact, tried for what he'd done, convicted, and the result wasn't exactly pretty, though France did hold together.

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  4. "The fundamental difference between Benedict Arnold and the Confederates, is that the Union sought to return the Confederate states to being part of the Union."

    That's what the British, and therefore Arnold, sought in the Revolution.

    Your view of the slaveholding traitors and of the Union goals skips back and forth in time to the point of incoherence. No, Brettus, they were not honorable men.

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  5. The general questions which Sandy is raising are good ones; however, Benedict Arnold is not a good example. It is an extreme exaggeration to state that it is "almost certain" that "there would be no United States were it not for his courageous leadership at the Battle of Saratoga." Arnold did not win the Saratoga campaign and force the surrender of Burgoyne's army single-handedly. Even if you give Arnold 100% of the credit for the American successes in the engagements that are usually known as Freeman's Farm and Bemis Heights, those two small-scale battles were not the whole campaign, and a plausible case could be made that they did not radically change the strategic equation. Burgoyne was in a bad position before either battle took place, and remained in a bad one after they were over. And even if he had "won" those engagements, they would not have dislodged the American army from its position along the Hudson.

    Lots of people not named Benedict Arnold made major contributions to the American victory in the Saratoga Campaign. Daniel Morgan, John Stark, Peter Gansevoort, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and even the much-maligned Horatio Gates all played their parts--just to give a partial list.

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  6. The bargain was that the Confederacy would be accepted back in on, soon enough, equal terms, and in return would not be treated as traitors so long as they surrendered.

    So, basically, we treat the Confederacy's heroes as honorable, because we wanted the Civil war to end, and not on terms that would have destroyed the US as a democracy.


    There is a big gap between treating someone as a traitor and treating him as honorable, or at least not dishonorable. There is a further gap between treating someone as honorable and as someone worthy of having statues erected in his honor and being held out as an exemplar of virtue.

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  7. The fundamental difference between Benedict Arnold and the Confederates, is that the Union sought to return the Confederate states to being part of the Union.

    The British sought to return the colonies back to being part of the British Union.

    If they had only sought to treat them as conquered lands, the Confederacy's leaders could have been treated like Arnold.

    The Confederate leaders are not "like" Arnold. Arnold first served the revolutionary cause and then defected, planning to give the Brits a great prize. It would akin to one of Grant's generals given battle plans to Lee in a way that could have changed the war. That's the tricky point here -- a mixed bag. As noted in comments, the example probably is flawed.

    But then, the exhausted Union would have been faced with the defeated Confederacy as a hostile force that could not have been integrated back into itself for generations, if ever.

    This is a separate debate from the point of the discussion from what I can tell. FWIW, I think it was realistic not to legally go after the leadership of the Confederacy, as President Johnson did wish to do to some degree. Reconstruction including the 13-15A approached the situation is a different way.

    The bargain was that the Confederacy would be accepted back in on, soon enough, equal terms, and in return would not be treated as traitors so long as they surrendered.

    A bit more than that -- they had to provide some basic civil rights to blacks. They resisted and thus a harder policy started. But, again, that isn't really the point.

    So, basically, we treat the Confederacy's heroes as honorable, because we wanted the Civil war to end, and not on terms that would have destroyed the US as a democracy.

    Treating them as "honorable" is a step beyond letting them go home after they were defeated.

    So, the question is not how Petain is regarded in the US, which had no need to peacefully co-exist with the people who'd run the Vichy government.

    It is relevant since he's an example of wider mixed nature of flawed historical figures, there as a matter of French history. It is unclear from looking it up how "not pretty" his conviction of treason was. Anyway, the complications arising from WWII etc. seems a bit unlike the average American "complicated" figure.

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  8. "generally be limited to events rather than people"

    maybe but people will be part of the honoring; and I think events also are often a mixed bag

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  9. One way to look at how we should remember people is by trying to understand their motivations. For example, in the case of Arnold, why did he turn against the colonists? From what I've seen, the short answer is greed, mounting debt, anger at the way he was treated by the Continental Congress, and finally, some buyer's remorse at the way things were going.

    Is that really worth excusing him in any way?

    As for the Confederates, why did Lee decide to abandon his oath? A desire to protect slavery? And that deserves celebration?

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  10. Confederates compare unfavorably to Arnold, at least the latter's treason was not based on a devotion to slavery and white supremacy, the biggest stains on the promise of the United States of America.

    "But then, the exhausted Union would have been faced with the defeated Confederacy as a hostile force that could not have been integrated back into itself for generations, if ever."

    Of course, many if not most of the Confederate monuments in question today were erected decades after the end of the Civil War. And, even if they were erected as a necessary evil of the time, like the 3/5ths Clause perhaps, that's no reason to continue to maintain and honor them today (again, we don't still respect the 3/5ths Clause today).

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  11. "The British sought to return the colonies back to being part of the British Union"

    Right, but they failed, so the issue of how they'd treat people like Washington, whose position relative to the British empire was analogous to Lee, never came up.

    Clearly the Confederates were not in the same league as Arnold, the analogy is really bad. The Confederates never lied about which side they were fighting for, they were honorably fighting for the other side. But it wasn't me suggesting that Arnold was comparable to the Confederates, it was Sandy.

    Petain is an example of a mixed historical figure, I'm just saying the US's treatment of him isn't relevant to this analysis. It wasn't the US that needed peace with the portion of France that had played along with the Nazis, it was France that needed it. So you have to ask how FRANCE treated him. Badly, but not as badly as might have been, and I gather there was some controversy over it, they had to sneak him away before the verdict was announced.

    "Treating them as "honorable" is a step beyond letting them go home after they were defeated."

    Yeah, and I'm really confident you're a better judge of what was needed to bring the country back together than Lincoln was.

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  12. As long as they were white men from long enough ago there seems to be few crimes one could commit that would lower Bircher Bart's empathy, esteem and admiration for those persons...

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  13. Folks, my experience in criminal law is maybe 5% of the people who committed crimes were genuinely evil and enjoyed harming others. Most others are simply flawed human beings who are struggling with bad upbringing, circumstances where all the alternatives were bad, or some mental or substance monkey on their back.

    If nothing else, this profession has made me appreciate how blessed I am by my family and the one I gained by marriage.

    None of this excuses the crime, but a Christian or anyone with empathy will attempt to understand context, if not ideally forgive the sinner.

    People rationalize harming others by denying their humanity. You may truly believe in classical liberal principles for everyone, but the Other you consider to be less than human. This is how the human mind rationalizes the dichotomy.

    There are no perfect people, most certainly not totalitarians who condemn others for imperfection.

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  14. Note Bircher Brett actually thinks Arnold compares *better* than the Confederate traitors. He doesn't even mention that the Confederates were committing treason in order to further white supremacy and slavery, instead he focuses solely on that Arnold committed the horrible sin of misrepresenting himself. As I mentioned in the previous thread, atrocities to black lives and dignity just don't get much weight for this Bircher...

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  16. "There are no perfect people, most certainly not totalitarians who condemn others for imperfection."

    Bircher Bart gets all morally relative when it comes to the 'imperfections' (read: white supremacy and the owning of other human beings, really not worse than, say, cheating on your high school girlfriend or vandalizing her new boyfriend's car I guess) of white men of old. This is especially funny and deplorable given his utter simplistic Manichean conspiracy filled worldview displayed in virtually every other discussion of what is moral and just.

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  17. BD: "There are no perfect people, most certainly not totalitarians who condemn others for imperfection."

    Mr. W: Bircher Bart gets all morally relative when it comes to the 'imperfections' (read: white supremacy and the owning of other human beings, really not worse than, say, cheating on your high school girlfriend or vandalizing her new boyfriend's car I guess) of white men of old. This is especially funny and deplorable given his utter simplistic Manichean conspiracy filled worldview displayed in virtually every other discussion of what is moral and just.


    You may have no feel for analogy, but you have a superb talent for thoughtless irony.


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  18. "None of this excuses the crime, but a Christian or anyone with empathy will attempt to understand context, if not ideally forgive the sinner." And build a statue to be placed prominently in the public square celebrating the criminal for his efforts in furthering the crime, not caring about his victims and their families that have to pass by regularly, I suppose...

    This is the kind of demented morally and intellectually empty type of arguments one is led to when they choose to support horrible people because of base tribalism. And remember: it should be the easiest thing for someone who believes in, say, lower taxes, a strong defense, less regulation, or what have you to also say 'the Confederacy was a stain on our great national project and we should cease celebrating it.' But they can't or won't. Because the movement that animates Birchers was never about those kind of things, it was at heart about white privilege.

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  19. Clearly the Confederates were not in the same league as Arnold, the analogy is really bad.

    Sandy Levinson noted there was some postal stamps honoring Confederate generals and found that stupid. He argued that at least Arnold, before being a traitor, worked for the revolutionary cause. OTOH, you had some confused thing that seemed mostly to be a way to bring back some of your usual hobbyhorses.

    Petain

    Petain was brought up as a conflicted figure that did some good to the nation at issue but then something seen as bad. SL referenced some honor given to him by New York apparently for his past heroism. So, a judgment call (especially since the U.S. fought the Germans in both conflicts) would still be relevant.

    Yeah, and I'm really confident you're a better judge of what was needed to bring the country back together than Lincoln was.

    Thanks. I try.

    They had to lay down their arms, declare allegiance to the union, do basic things like end slavery and protect black civil rights & not fight again.

    What did Brett say?

    So, basically, we treat the Confederacy's heroes as honorable, because we wanted the Civil war to end, and not on terms that would have destroyed the US as a democracy.

    I'm not seeing this as the same thing especially regarding how "we" today treat them. Chamberlain treating the defeated rebels at Appomattox with dignity is one thing. Treating them as "honorable" later on, especially today, not quite.

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  20. "You may have no feel for analogy, but you have a superb talent for thoughtless irony."

    Lol, poor Bircher, he doesn't get that he does what I mention even in the very post I replied to ("totalitarians")!

    For Bircher Bart, an protestor who burns a mailbox at an anti-racism rally is, of course, a horrible Antifa, Marxist, totalitarian thug to be treated most harshly by government (even federal!) force, but people who took up arms motivated by white supremacy to fight a war to defend and maintain the mass enslavement, murder, rape and torture of millions of black Americans should have statues celebrating them erected and maintained by the public fisc in public squares.

    This is, of course, because Bircher Bart is an authoritarian tribalist, and the much, much, much more atrocious 'imperfections' of the latter group didn't effect people in his tribe, just black persons, whose welfare and dignity have never much mattered to him.

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  21. The last part is like letting some people who trespass on federal land to go home since it is seen as on balance not worth it to prosecute. If they don't commit any more crimes, they are let be. This is far from saying they are "honorable."

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  22. As I read it, it was seen as not worth prosecuting because the prosecution themselves had proven dishonorable, their case based on lies.

    Specifically, the defense were trying to argue that some of the actions had been taken because they were fearful for their lives, due to being surrounded by snipers. On the basis of the government's assertion that there were no snipers, the defense was prohibited from raising this defense.

    Then it comes out that the government had riflemen stationed around them, and itself had referred to them as "snipers". The defense's claims were true, the prosecution knew them to be true, and perjured itself to prevent the defense from making them in court.

    So the prosecution was dismissed with prejudice for prosecutorial misconduct. NOT because it wasn't seen on balance as not worth it.

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  23. I'm not talking about some specific case.

    I'm saying that non-prosecution doesn't by itself mean the government and 'we' are saying the people not prosecuted were "honorable" doing what they did or that their "heroes" are/were. Non-prosecution can be in place for a variety of reasons there.

    When the Whiskey Rebellion happened, after the rebellion was put down and after the rebels went home, President Washington rejected a harsh response. He pardoned two people sentenced to hang. Federal power was enforced and it was seen as unnecessarily harsh to do more. This did not mean the rebels were "honorable" or that their leaders were "honorable."

    The 14A even added a provision that holds "neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States." We can consider some idea that some lowly private who lost a farm or something by fighting the war in South Carolina deserves payment. That he fought "honorably" or something. But, such monetary payment is specifically addressed there in the negative.

    Not that Sandy Levinson's reference to the Confederacy is really germane to this. Again, he noted postal stamps that he thought stupid, comparing that to Arnold, who at least did some good in the war (SL argued had a significant role in fact) before becoming a traitor. And, the mixed nature of Arnold was part of his wider discussion. It was quite germane.

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  24. Are highly positioned Democrats actually wargaming a post-Trump victory civil war?

    The American Spectator reports as follows from a linked report of Democrat and #NeverTrump election "simulation" called the Transition Integrity Project, and Democrat media reports on their product:

    Far more interesting, and totally unnoticed, is the behavior of former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Podesta also took part in the simulations, and unlike the anti-Trump Republicans, he wasn’t pretending to be someone he hates. Instead, organizers did the sensible thing: they had an anti-Trump Democrat portray an anti-Trump Democrat. Because the simulation designers apparently wanted to torment him as much as possible, Podesta had to endure an exact 2016 repeat: he played Joe Biden in a simulation where Trump loses the popular vote but wins a close but convincing victory in the Electoral College.

    Buried at the bottom of a New York Times article, the paper describes what Podesta did:

    ‘Mr Podesta, playing Mr Biden, shocked the organizers by saying he felt his party wouldn’t let him concede. Alleging voter suppression, he persuaded the governors of Wisconsin and Michigan to send pro-Biden electors to the Electoral College.

    ‘In that scenario, California, Oregon, and Washington then threatened to secede from the United States if Mr Trump took office as planned.’


    This was so astonishing that Cockburn’s monocle nearly popped off reading it — and he doesn’t even wear one. The actual text of the final report is even more jarring. According to a summary of the game, while acting as Biden — rather than accept defeat — Podesta actively instigated secession, and then issued an ultimatum: Trump could only begin his second term if Puerto Rico and DC became states, California was cut into five pieces, and the Electoral College was abolished. When the ultimatum was refused, Podesta got the Democratic House (played by other Democrats) to declare Biden the president, and then watched to see how the military would react. If you think Cockburn exaggerates, here’s what the document says about ‘Game 3: Clear Trump win’ (a scenario in which Trump wins the Electoral College and the popular vote):

    ‘The Biden campaign encouraged Western states, particularly California but also Oregon and Washington and collectively known as “Cascadia” to secede from the union unless Congressional Republicans agreed to a set of structural reforms to fix our democratic system to ensure majority rule. With advice from President Obama, the Biden Campaign submitted a proposal to 1) give statehood to Washington, DC and Puerto Rico; 2) divide California into five states to more accurately represent the population in the Senate; 3) require Supreme Court Justices retire at 70; and 4) eliminate the Electoral College, to ensure the candidate who wins the popular vote…’

    And it goes on,

    ‘One of the most consequential moves was that Team Biden on January 6 provoked a breakdown in the joint session of Congress by getting the House of Representatives to agree to award the presidency to Biden (based on the alternative pro-Biden submissions sent by pro-Biden governors.) Pence and the GOP refused to accept this, declaring instead that Trump was re-elected under the Constitution because of his Electoral College victory. This partisan division remained unresolved because neither side backed down, and January 20 arrived without a single president-elect entitled to be Commander-in-Chief after noon that day. It was unclear what the military would do in this situation.’


    Good God.

    If Mr. Podesta's thinking here represents a significant swath of the Democrat establishment, our cold civil war could get very hot indeed. Perfect coda for 2020.

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  25. Yeah, and I'm really confident you're a better judge of what was needed to bring the country back together than Lincoln was.

    What Lincoln did to reunify the country is neither here nor there. It may be relevant to our judgment of Lincoln, but has nothing to do with our judgment of the Confederates.

    We can evaluate their behavior without taking the political considerations Lincoln was faced with into account. We are not bound by what you call Lincoln's bargain.

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  26. If Mr. Podesta's thinking here represents a significant swath of the Democrat establishment, our cold civil war could get very hot indeed. Perfect coda for 2020.
    # posted by Blogger Bart DePalma : 12:34 PM


    Don’t worry, Sniffles. Trump is doing a great job making sure that none of that stuff happens.

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  27. A lot of poilus died under Petain's command at Verdun - but probably fewer than under any alternative candidate. Petain did not subscribe to the offensive "furia francesa" bias of other French commanders, notably Nivelle and Foch, and is remembered for the accurate quip "firepower kills". So after the bloodbath at the Chemin des Dames in 1917, which led to widespread mutinies, Petain was put in charge. He succeeded in restoring discipline, largely because the poilus trusted him not to order senseless attacks. This record as much as Verdun explains why many Frenchmen and Frenchwomen trusted him in 1940.

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  28. Blatant, Bircher threadjack by Bircher Bart. This person doesn't respect any norms or principles other than to produce partisan propaganda, so no surprise.

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  29. "What Lincoln did to reunify the country is neither here nor there. It may be relevant to our judgment of Lincoln, but has nothing to do with our judgment of the Confederates.

    We can evaluate their behavior without taking the political considerations Lincoln was faced with into account. We are not bound by what you call Lincoln's bargain."

    True. And we're in a much better position to evaluate Lincoln's judgment than Lincoln himself was. Hindsight is almost always better.

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  30. Mr. W:

    How many previous posts before mine discussed Democrat secessionists?

    Dismissing Democrats openly wargaming a new secessionist effort as “partisan propaganda” will not hunt.

    What do you think of Podesta’s rsfusing to recognize the duly elected POTUS and threatening secession? Sounds like something Sandy might sign off on.

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  31. "How many previous posts before mine discussed Democrat secessionists?"

    None of course. But again, let's not be surprised by this Bircher-esque behavior by Bircher Bart.

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  32. Tell us, Bart, if you were put in charge of one party in a wargame in which the other side had already threatened to cheat (and not merely in the game!), would you consider something dramatic in response?

    The discussion was about celebrating secessionists. Anyone want to celebrate Podesta? Or even either Clinton? I'm guessing that the Clinton era is going to be relegated to the appendices of histories in the future.

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  33. "And we're in a much better position to evaluate Lincoln's judgment than Lincoln himself was. Hindsight is almost always better."

    This is true, but largely irrelevant. We're not facing what Lincoln faced, we're over a hundred years away from that, the South was brought in generations ago, and that South is not today's South. The question is why in the world we would today continue to maintain celebrations of a movement devoted to treason in order to maintain and expand the enslavement, torture, murder and rape of black persons en masse in the name of white supremacy. There's no reason why this is 'necessary' now. These celebrations stay up because so many people like our Birchers put little to no value on black persons lives, welfare and dignity.

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  34. Of course, it wasn't 'necessary' then either. The large majority of Confederate monuments were erected decades after the Civil War was over. But my point about it being especially not 'necessary' today stands.

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  35. "The discussion was about celebrating secessionists."

    Actually, no. There was no discussion of celebrating secessionists. There was a discussion about celebrating people who did awful things. Arnold nor Petain were 'secessionists' and to classify the Confederacy and celebrations of it as merely a discussion about 'secessionists' is to obscure that the most salient point about the Confederacy was not secession but secession in the name of maintaining and expanding the mass enslavement, murder, torture and rape of black persons under a philosophy of white supremacy. When someone like Bircher Bart thinks the salient point of the Confederacy is merely secession it is because he elides the actual salient point because the lives, welfare and dignity of black persons mean very little to him.

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  36. Note that New England seriously entertained secession in the issues leading up to the War of 1812. But those involved are not the subject of intense debate about honoring or celebrating. Likewise, Southern leaders like Calhoun who flirted with secession are the subject of intense debate about honoring or celebrating. Because it's not about secession, those who see only or mainly that are being morally obtuse or poor sighted. Instead it's because Calhoun saw secession (and nullification, as well as other things) as part of his toolbox to advance his support of white supremacy and the enslavement, torture, rape and murder of black persons, and the New England proponents of secession had other less atrocious motives.

    Likewise treason itself is serious, and this is why Arnold, who did not have such atrocious motives as Confederates or Calhoun, is still vilified. But treason is not itself as necessarily bad as backing slavery or other horrible aspects of white supremacy. The Founding Fathers were committing treason themselves. John Brown was hanged for treason and yet he is not the current subject of intense debate about celebrating or honoring.

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  37. I see supporting slavery and white supremacist based atrocities against black persons as being so much worse than any comparable thing because it involves the greatest stain on our great national ideal, if you will it involves the largest, most serious 'welsh' on the promise of the great values upon which this nation was (at least abstractly) based. It was our worst 'own goal,' operating at a metaphysical level. So, to commit treason against the United States by taking up arms against it *for the reason of furthering this stain* is to commit a double or exponential treason, both actual and metaphysical.

    The fact that that is actually *celebrated* in many parts of the country is despicable, the most 'un-American' thing I can imagine.

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  38. C2H5OH said... Tell us, Bart, if you were put in charge of one party in a wargame in which the other side had already threatened to cheat (and not merely in the game!), would you consider something dramatic in response?

    Of course, the situation Podesta faced was not "cheating" (at least by the Republicans), but rather a repeat of 2016 (which I find the most likely of the possibilities).

    In case of actual violations to elections law, I'm old school and expect law enforcement and the courts to deal with them. If not, then peaceful resistance. The final option being a Second Amendment solution.

    The discussion was about celebrating secessionists. Anyone want to celebrate Podesta?

    I thought the discussion was about condemning secessionists. I wanted to see if you Democrats even saw a problem with high ranking members of the Party of Secession planning a second go.

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  39. I thought the discussion was about condemning secessionists."

    A partisan propagandist is much like a bot, unresponsive and instead repetitive in its programmed talking points.

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  40. I thought the discussion was about condemning secessionists.

    You were mistaken.

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  41. I thought the discussion was about condemning secessionists. I wanted to see if you Democrats even saw a problem with high ranking members of the Party of Secession planning a second go.

    No, not even a murmur of objection from any of you. Nothing.

    I doubt many of you are true secessionists, but if your increasingly insane party leadership actually attempts this stunt, Trump has the sand and power to send in the military.

    Be very, very careful what you allow to be done in your name.

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  42. Bart, Nobody really regards your out-of-control paranoia worthy of remark anymore. Doing a wargame exercise to game out the alternatives is not "planning" (unless, of course, when the military wargames nuclear strikes they're secretly planning to attack.)

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  43. 2020 may become the year when Americans finally discarded their Republic for a dictatorship.

    When Obama ruled by "pen and telephone" after the voters fired his Democrat House, Republicans might have assumed they removed that dictatorship by retaking the White House in 2016. Not hardly.

    The first response to COVID by a bipartisan supermajority of governors and mayors was to decree abridgments of our basic liberties never before seen in the United States. These were rationalized as "emergency acts" originally supposed to last for the two week incubation period of the illness. We are now entering the fifth month of these illegal decrees with no end in sight.

    Now, Trump has simply decreed the Republican tax and spending position which never passed a stalemated and largely absent Congress.

    God save our Republic.

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  44. Sniffles, you really are a fucking moron.

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  45. C2H5OH said...Bart, Nobody really regards your out-of-control paranoia worthy of remark anymore. Doing a wargame exercise to game out the alternatives is not "planning" (unless, of course, when the military wargames nuclear strikes they're secretly planning to attack.)

    How many times have our hosts here seriously discussed this option?

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  46. Bart, have you been drinking? What "option"? Nuclear strikes? I was unaware that our blogmasters here are military planners. Or do you mean refusing to abide by the decision of a properly-constituted Electoral College?

    (Apropos of which, even in your paranoia you seem to realize that the chances of an outright majority of the votes cast is beyond the realm of possibility for Trump. The only chance he has is that the E.C., undemocratic as it is, somehow manages to screw up the popular vote so badly that a 42 percent gives him a narrow win. And should that happen, and Biden concede -- we note that Biden is running, not Podesta, who is not even in Biden's advisors -- do you somehow think that would be *good* thing?)

    But this has gone on long enough. I think it's pointless.

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  47. Sniffles is very upset about people threatening succession. Unless they own slaves. Then he’s a big fan. It’s almost like he’s a racist asshole.

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  48. Now, Trump has simply decreed the Republican tax and spending position which never passed a stalemated and largely absent Congress.

    God save our Republic.
    # posted by Blogger Bart DePalma : 7:12 PM


    I missed this earlier. Sniffles appears to have realized that Trump is about to get crushed, so it's time to start pretending that Trump's a RINO and that Sniffles isn't a spineless lickspittle scumbag.

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  50. C2H5OH: Doing a wargame exercise to game out the alternatives is not "planning" (unless, of course, when the military wargames nuclear strikes they're secretly planning to attack.)

    Wargaming is simply the military term for determining whether a plan stands up to scrutiny. Think of defending a thesis in academia. Any thorough planner wargames their plans against colleagues.

    Yes, the Transition Integrity Project the Democrats ran was a political wargame. In the military, generally officers will command their own units in the scenario and intelligence officers will play the opposition. In this TIP, various politicos played the POTUS candidates to determine how they would react to different scenarios.

    No, our hosts did not wargame or even consider what would happen in real life if blue states attempted to secede again, as I laid out in detail during those conversations.

    Finally, I have no real idea what will happen in November. Too many variables I have never seen in this combination or at any time in American history - governors and mayors illegally shutting down their economies for months in the name of fighting a severe cold; weeks of rioting across many of our major cities with the government doing nothing or actually encouraging the violence; a populist POTUS in a death match with a political and media establishment, which chose as their POTUS candidate a 77 year old man who is descending into dementia and offering an incoherent socialist agenda; and the opposition is openly discussing secession if they lose to the populist again. Now that Trump has started ruling by decree like Obama when he did not get his way with Congress, I am rapidly losing hope. What I recognize as another choice of the lesser of two evils has only become more evil.

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  52. Right on cue, David Super, who had zero problems with his POTUS ruling a decree with a pen and a telephone, is condemning the opposition POTUS for doing the same damned thing.

    Ditto all the Donald's fan boys and girls cheering on their POTUS for doing the same thing for which they savaged Obama for years.

    With COVID, governors and mayors feel free to join in on the fun, harming the lives of tens of millions with the stroke of a pen.

    Apparently, dictatorship is now politically acceptable to both sides so long as your team is issuing the decrees.

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  53. Sniffles, you are the least self aware person on the planet.

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  54. Ever the purely partisan propagandist Bircher Bart threadjacks a krazy kooky konspiracy theory into what was at the time a fairly productive and honest conversation. After it was pointed out several times that this was an irrelevant threadjack, much like the bot that purely partisan propagandists are, Bircher Bart simply ignored those responses and simply repeated his krazy kooky konspiracy theory and then launched (stumbled?) into an even larger threadjack made up of Limbaugh letter litanies of lies seemingly brought on by his despair that fascist Trump has, as was inevitable, undercut 'classical liberals' worried about 'executive overreach.'

    This is not a serious person here to have anything approaching an honest, on-topic conversation. This is a partisan incoherent, a purely partisan propagandist just here to spew the latest propaganda points he perceives his party is pleased to have thrown against the wall for today, hoping some of it sticks in some way. More importantly, this is the GOP base right now.

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  55. In truth, Bart's despair is not that the president Bart backed has turned out to be an incompetent despot-wanna-be (as was pointed out from the time Trump burst on the scene, this was always obvious, and Bart even said he'd prefer a murderer to a Democrat.)

    No, it's that the chances that Trump will somehow manage to worm his way into a second term is vanishing day by day, week by week.

    Getting back to the original topic, since nobody has brought this up: Benedict Arnold is actually honored and "celebrated" ... well, his leg is. And all of him, in London.

    Which seems appropriate. We may either celebrate and honor the parts of a person (his actions, in other words) that we find honorable, or we can celebrate the person in his or her entirety, warts and all. In the case of Arnold, this is done.

    But what parts of any of the Confederates are we supposed to approve of? Speaking only for myself, and in spite of having grown up in a society which "whitewashed" a lot of the actions of Lee, Forrest, etc., I've come to the conclusion that there's precious little to honor in their actions, their motivations, or their legacies.

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  56. Getting back to the post, at some point [and comments about Arnold's role suggest this] there is a basic "it isn't all or nothing, we need to use perspective" reply to this:

    If we reject Charles Blow’s recent remarkable column, “Yes, Even George Washington, denouncing the “Father of our Country” as just one more slaveholder, and reply that Washington, after all, won American independence, then why not recognize that Benedict Arnold has his own claim to being honored by Americans grateful for independence as (or, perhaps, if ) they celebrate July 4?

    As was noted, Arnold's role in the war was not so grand to so honor him, especially if we take his later traitor move as a whole. Some people a traitors out of a type of desperation. A desperate person can trade a neighbor for a bit of food for their family. If before doing this, the person was heroic figure, we might take that into consideration. But, as noted what did Arnold become a turncoat for? What did he plan to give up? Just how special (especially as compared to Washington) was he beforehand?

    ===

    The Charles Blow op-ed states: "On the issue of American slavery, I am an absolutist: enslavers were amoral monsters." What of those that aided and abetted slavery? I note by the way that Ben Franklin had one of more slaves. But, the op-ed makes an easier case given how many slaves Washington has and how he only freed them in his will.

    If one wants to not honor slaveowners with monuments, I think that can work. This won't "cancel" history. We will have a variety means, including markers and displays of events that mention Washington, to learn and remember our history.

    I do wonder about lines there. I think it unrealistic to count every slave owner form ancient times to today as mere "amoral monsters." Humans are not like that. They can be cruel creatures that find means, especially when taught from birth, to justify horrible things. But, humans aren't monsters. That is in fairy tales. The rule here is that they upheld such a horrible institution that we should not honor them this way.

    Let us be honest with ourselves though. Those who aid and abet "amoral monsters" or "rapists" or just stand in the sidelines are rather troubling too. At some point, we do have to note the limits of human nature there. Perhaps, our descendants will think that way about us.

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  58. C2H5OH, I think there can be acts which are so contrary to today's values that they can and should override even admittedly impressive other accomplishments of a person such that it doesn't make sense to honor or celebrate the person today (I think Arnold and especially Petain fall into this category). Being a leader of the movement to maintain and expand white supremacist enslavement of millions falls into that category (if it doesn't, what does?). Therefore, I'd argue that *even if* Confederate leaders did have other admitted accomplishments to institutions that are not as problematic, they should not be honored because of today because of their later outweighing violations of our present values.

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  59. joe, I can certainly understand why persons, especially black persons, may want to stop any honoring of Washington, but for me I think he can still be honored. Apart from the cartoonish caricatures and fever paranoia of our Birchers, no one is demanding perfection from historical figures in order to be honored. Everyone knows Lincoln said and did some things that we would be rightly appalling today, regarding slavery and black persons. But when one looks on his life and works one sees 1. an evolution to be generally better for his times on this issue and 2. works of his furthering the ideals of our nation in this or some other area that outweigh other rightly concerning works/views.

    I think the same can be said of Washington. He was an owner of of other human beings and his behavior towards his victims should appall everyone. Yet he evolved on this issue, manumitting his slaves at his death. He also made many other major contributions that most people would agree were important or critical in moving our nation into the ideal we recognize today. So, I think in a weighing of the scales his, though a close one, come out as still warranting honoring (though certainly not the un-critical kind conservatives usually want).

    Of course, none of this can be said for the chief and general focus of debate: Confederate honorings.

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  60. To me, a real shame has been (and I think this is in large part because of the 'long-time-coming' nature of this issue and the fact that there is still so much deplorable resistance still) the focus on 'taking down.' We should focus instead on who should 'go up,' or replace certain figures. As noted in the OP we are symbol focused creatures, heroic role models are important. It's true we should have recognized that so many of our current honorings send the wrong (horrific even) symbolic messages and should have been taken down many years ago without such controversy. But I think this would be helped along if there were a focus on 'remove and replace' instead of toppling...What's appalling to me on this is that there are so many figures from history that could replace the monuments in controversy, people who played important roles but who have been 'whitewashed' from our history because of prejudiced tribalism, and the focus should be on them *replacing* our horrid symbols. Incredibly, we could still meet basic non-prejudiced 'tribal' concerns fairly easily. South Carolina could lose its deplorable son Calhoun, but replace him with their daughters the Grimke sisters or Laurens. Virginia could remove its despicable Lee, Jackson and Stuart and replace them with Thomas, van Lew, and Carney. Etc.

    The resistance to removing Confederate monuments has never been about opposing 'erasing history' as much history, any anti-Confederate, has indeed been 'erased' in that there are essentially no monuments to people from Confederate areas who took anti-Confederate stances. It has never been about 'Southern heritage' or opposing hostility to the South since every Southern state has plenty of worthy people to be honored but who essentially are not. Focusing on these people would make even more obvious this point, leaving the Bircher-esque supporters of Confederate monuments to admit what's been obvious all along: they simply don't find the Confederacy to be morally repellent enough to override even the merest other values they may invoke (Bircher Brett's 'I personally find this KKK tribute to the Confederacy pretty to look at, so it should stand' test).

    And, of course, they don't find the Confederacy to be morally repellent enough because the enslavement, torture, rape and murder of *black* persons just doesn't register much on their moral scales. This is why Bircher Bart can equate every and any secessionist with the Confederacy: he literally can't see what makes the latter any different in a way relevant to the discussion, because he doesn't seem to value what's involved in the key difference...

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