There’s a certain splendor to Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint’s retelling of the history of the Civil War. It’s almost as if DeMint and Sarah Palin are both graduates of the same finishing school for garbled buffoonery. I think this comment belongs on a plaque in the Smithsonian as a living testament to what has become of conservative “thought leaders” in this country.
“Well the reason that the slaves were eventually freed was the Constitution, it was like the conscience of the American people. Unfortunately there were some court decisions like Dred Scott and others that defined some people as property, but the Constitution kept calling us back to ‘all men are created equal and we have inalienable rights’ in the minds of God. But a lot of the move to free the slaves came from the people, it did not come from the federal government. It came from a growing movement among the people, particularly people of faith, that this was wrong. People like Wilberforce who persisted for years because of his faith and because of his love for people. So no liberal is going to win a debate that big government freed the slaves. In fact, it was Abraham Lincoln, the very first Republican, who took this on as a cause and a lot of it was based on a love in his heart that comes from God.”
–Fmr. Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, April 2014
Ian Millhiser detailed the many errors in this statement so that I don’t have to. I’d like to point out a few things, though, in addition. It’s true that the Dred Scott decision was unfortunate, but not nearly as unfortunate as DeMint’s home state’s decision to secede from the Union, fire on federal troops, and seize all federal property in Charleston months before Abraham Lincoln was even inaugurated.
I could be somewhat forgiving of DeMint’s conflation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution if not for the unintentional offense DeMint’s argument creates for black folks who were not very keen on the Constitution as it was worded before the federal government fought and won a war that allowed the federal government to amend it.
The philosopher/theologian in me also wants to know approximately how many “minds” God possesses. Also, where does DeMint stand on the idea that the Columbian [Wooly] Mammoth, was created on the Sixth Day with the other beasts of the field?
Had DeMint been asked to speak about the theory of relativity or quantum physics, one could excuse his ignorance. However, the man is in politics, public community service, and he ought to have some familiarity with both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independance. His errors were not just a slip of the tongue, these are completely wrongheaded statements that prove DeMint is an embarrassment.
But his supporters won’t care.
Had DeMint been asked to speak about the theory of relativity or quantum physics, one could excuse his ignorance. However, the man is in politics, public community service, and he ought to have some familiarity with both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independance. His errors were not just a slip of the tongue, these are completely wrongheaded statements that prove DeMint is an embarrassment.
But his supporters won’t care.
So if the constitution kept callin us back to all men were created equal I suppose the Declaration of Independence said black people were 3/5 of a person?
Jim DeMint (class of 1969, Wade Hampton High School, Greenville, SC) went to the same high school I did. I am five years older and missed the little jerk. The high school was named for a Confederate general, the sports team was called the “Generals” (the authorities didn’t want any “rebels” apparently), Dixie was the school fight song and played numerous times at football games. And Jim DeMint attended in the time immediately after passage of the Civil Rights Act and before court-ordered desegregation was imposed on the school.
(By contrast, I attended the school when the cognitive dissonance of the Civil Rights movement and Southern framing of history was the greatest. When demonstrators in the streets raised on the news every day what exactly was “freedom”.)
The junior year American history teacher was a committed conservative who advocated (but did not assign) that her students read David Lawrence (US News and World Report) and William Buckley (National Review). She was, however, too nitpicking a historian to mess around with facts and would never tolerate the sort of mistake that Jim DeMint makes in the service of ideology (this was before conservatives ran Barry Goldwater).
What DeMint did with historical fact is shameful. Miriam O’Dell would have been very ashamed of Jim DeMint and his understanding of history.
And by the way, the book used then was very strong on labor history, and Mrs. O’Dell taught labor history thoroughly even as she advocated for right to work laws.
DeMint was trying to dog whistle it. Of course he was trying to be offensive to black folks. That is the only way they can rally the base in this election; there is zero policy they can point to; there is zero direction for the future that the GOP and conservative movement can point to.
The only bright spot in this story is the amount of money that conservative donors are burning paying folks like Jim DeMint. They need to pay him much more.
Political culture changes this year if all that political cash buys the 1% absolutely nothing. It is the actions of Democrats as an alternative that will determine that. Pointing and snickering at Republicans is not an effective strategy; after 50 years, we should know that.
You misspelled “bullshit.”
Also, were Lincoln to rise from the dead today, the GOP would be clamoring all over themselves to (metaphorically or literally) play the role of John Wilkes Booth, all while sucking at the <stike>d*ck</strike> teat of “State’s Rights.”
Jim DeMint is not guilty of being ignorant or stupid. He’s deliberately and with forethought pushing his propaganda.
Don’t let him off the hook by accusing him of being .
a dopey Dixiefied nitwit.
He’s a rightwing idealogue who’s attempting to re-write the past in the same way Jonah Goldberg re-wrote and set a template for people embarrassed by what their conservative brethren were doing back in the Civil Rights era.
Propagandists are often also ignorant and stupid. It actually helps if they are ignorant and stupid because it’s easier to sell bs if one believes the bs.
Oh, I have severe doubts that all this historical malpractice was actually concocted by Duhmint. He doesn’t strike me as too much of a reader of anything longer than a couple paragraphs. He’s at best “a dedicated reader of newspapers”, which is how Sebastian Haffner described Hitler’s intellect in his great biography.
Of course you are correct that this “interpretation” is the work of some wingnut scribbler (perhaps at Heritage) seeking to provide grotesque misinformation to “conservative” dopes and dimwits. I just doubt that Duhmint could originate any independent thought whatever. He can’t even properly recite whatever this conserva-shit was supposed to convey…
I think my favorite part of his comments is how it wasn’t the federal government that ended slavery, it was Abraham Lincoln. Acting in a purely private capacity, no doubt.
My second favorite part is that he can’t think of an American abolitionist, so he throws in Wilberforce. I guess I have to give Rand Paul a little credit here, since he at least has heard of William Lloyd Garrison. But then William Lloyd Garrison once burned a copy of the Constitution at a 4th of July picnic, so that doesn’t really fit in with DeMint’s story, does it?
Lincoln was just like that dictator Obama, issuing executive orders. They didn’t have any conservatives yet so nobody knew it was unconstitutional. (Actually they did but conservatives were called Copperheads in those days, for some reason.)
Next Heritage will be publishing The Unknown History of Southern Abolitionists, who actually made up a majority of the Confederacy! Reserve your copy now, it’s certain to sell out within days!
As always, watching a “conservative” white male like Duhmint act as though he would have been abolitionist Repub in 1860 or an anti-monarchical revolutionary in 1775 is beyond comic. It would be horrible to be trapped in the brain of this ignorant gobbler of rancid rightwing sewage. But unfortunately he is a person of power and influence in Our Failing Nation.
re:
Hahahahaha! Anyone else remember all the wingnuts going apeshit over Obama ad-libbing, in reference to Lincoln, “founder of the Republican Party” into a paragraph of a speech?
So naturally, we can now expect from them an equivalent outpouring of outrage and insults focused on DeMint, because, as we all know, the wingnut howlers are nothing if not persons of principle!
Right?
Right???
I’m surprised they’d insist on this. Could have been any time up to the 17th century. God didn’t have to create it, he could have just directly created the fossil, “antiquing” the carbon to make it look a couple thousand years older than the 6,000-year-old universe. That’s obviously what he did with all those trilobites. Idle minds are the Devil’s playground, you know, especially when you have as many of them as the Lord does.
The Constitution is a person and the GOP gets to cast “his” vote.