Pretty Good Cause, Pretty Bad Argument

Rightwing commentators have a ridiculous thing going on right now. It appears to emanate from the otherwise intelligent and upright Dinesh D’Souza, who is puffing a new propaganda movie — Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party.

This ridiculous thing is the idea, now constantly confided as formerly hidden knowledge, that the Democratic Party has always been bad, and the Republican Party has always been good. After all, the Democratic Party supported slavery, and the Republican Party opposed it.

I submit that this notion is just as silly as Michelle Obama’s maunderings (much criticized by the Right) about the significance of the White House having been built by slaves. She might have added that the Louvre was built by a tyrannical monarchy. Or that the pyramids were built by a tyrannical monarchy, in the service of a false religion. We’ve come a long way from then. And so . . . ?

Now to the rightwing’s use of historical facts, or non-facts, about American political parties. This is the truth: the Democratic Party is almost 200 years old, the Republican Party more than 150. During the long, strange history of those parties, each of them has been colored by almost every conceivable political, social, and religious tendency. In terms of attitudes, ethnicities, gender roles, social classes, political beliefs, religious or anti-religious preoccupations — in short, in terms of everything — their present membership bears no similarity whatever to their original membership, except that almost all of their adherents have two eyes, a large mouth, and a peculiar nose (useful for detecting food, useless for detecting falsehood). Even in 1860, many Democrats opposed slavery, and many — perhaps most — Republicans were disgusting racists. And if you’re toting up ideological goods and evils, the Democratic Party was, for many long years, the party of hard money and low taxes, and the Republicans were the party of high taxes, crony capitalism, and big government projects.

I very much dislike the current Democratic Party of the United States. I consider it the source of much more than half of the political evil of this country. But something that antagonizes me even more than the DP of the USA is the willingness of good people, intelligent people, people whom I feel are on my side, to engage in false arguments and misrepresentations of history. They ought to know better, for God’s sake. Can’t they read?

If you don’t know anything about history, don’t insist on informing other people about it. And if your idea of “history” is nothing more than your idea of good and evil, and therefore of what should and should not have occurred, whether it occurred or not, you shouldn’t even use the word. You’re no better, intellectually, than any of your conceivable opponents. Drunk with your moral fervor, you’re denying yourself, and whatever slack-minded followers take you seriously, the real history by which moral judgments ought to be informed.