Streetwise Professor

There’s nothing like a historical debate to get the juices jangling here on SWP, and methinks Sergei (“The Tarantula”) Lavrov has provided the material (H/T LR).  Where does one begin?  Where does one end?  There’s just so much here.

Lavrov is Orwellian in his invocation of Orwell:

It is difficult to interpret such attempts to politicize history as anything other than euphoria in the spirit of “winner takes all” (presumably in the Cold War), that is, the right to interpret history according to the well-known method so well described by George Orwell.

Lavrov then proceeds to politicize history in a quintessentially Orwellian fashion.

Here are some of the high points (or low points, depending on how you look at it):

The history of World War II has been rewritten many times. Elements of this approach, which was dictated by considerations of ideology and political expediency, were also present in the Soviet Union. At the same time, even during the Cold War nobody ever tried to equate the Nazi regime and the Stalinist dictatorship. It occurred to no one to compare the Nazi threat, which meant the enslavement and destruction of entire peoples, to the policies of the Soviet Union, which was the only force capable in the beginning of opposing the military machine of Nazi Germany and, in its final phase, of ensuring its defeat, which was accelerated by the opening, however late, of a second European front in 1944.

Nice of him to mention the “second European front in 1944”–but no mention of the earlier efforts.  More importantly, there is a very revealing lacuna here.  Yes, Naziism meant the enslavement and destruction of entire peoples.  But Stalinism, and Bolshevism generally, had a body count that rivaled Hitler’s: and among the people enslaved and slain wholesale by Bolshevism and Stalinism were Russians.  To say that the USSR was not monstrous in the same way that Nazi Germany does not imply that the USSR was monstrous in its own, special, murderous way.

Historical revisionism has been used to attempt to link August 23 and September 1, 1939 – the conclusion of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact and Germany’s attack on Poland. These two events are taken completely out of historical context, ignoring the Munich Agreement of 1938, which led to the dismemberment and occupation of Czechoslovakia; the Anglo-German Declaration, which was signed at the same time and was essentially a non-aggression agreement between Great Britain and Nazi Germany (the so-called ” peace in our time” agreement); and a whole series of other events that prepared the way for German aggression and directed it towards the East. As always, the sequence of events was critical. Were it not for the Munich Agreement, much of what followed would not have occurred.

By denouncing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact the Russian Parliament has admitted that the Soviet Union made a mistake. And we are justified in expecting that in other nations which dealt with the Nazis it was done not at the political leadership level but at the political decision-making level. The West, like Soviet Russia, was not blameless. Why is this difficult to admit now that the Cold War has seemingly ended?

M-R is always good for a food fight around here, so let’s have at it.  Me first.

First, the linkage of 23 August and 1 September 1939 is not, as Lavrov suggests, a latter day invention of revisionists.  It was understood that the events were linked at the time.

Second, M-R was not foreordained by Munich.  Stalin made a deal in which he thought he would profit.  We’ve been over this before, so I won’t belabor it.  He was wrong in his calculation, but make no mistake: he made a calculation that he would advance his interests by dealing with Hitler.  Period.

Third, Lavrov’s implication here is that those in the West have completely overlooked Munich and heaped blame for the war only on the poor, misunderstood USSR.  That is complete bullshit.

Look.  I grew up in the United States during the ’60s and ’70s.  During that time, Munich was emblematic of the moral and strategic failure of Western governments.  Any proposal to make a compromise with international adversaries–most notably, the USSR–was met with accusations that such efforts would represent another Munich.  Every American president wanted to avoid another Munich at all costs.  One American president, Kennedy, wrote a book excoriating the weakness of the French and British over Munich.  I heard about Munich from the time I could remember: I seldom heard about Molotov-Ribbentrop.  To say, as Lavrov does, that M-R has been singled out for calumny while Munich has been swept under the rug is complete, utter, tripe. Only marginal loons like Pat Buchanan extol Munich.  It wasn’t difficult for virtually everyone in the West to come to honest grips with Munich before the Cold War ended.  It isn’t difficult now.

It is difficult to understand that the Western nations were prevented for reasons other than ideological preferences from implementing in 1945-1946 the principles that later led to the lessening of tensions during the 1970s, that is, from choosing to “engage” the Soviet Union. This would have encouraged Stalin to follow a moderate policy in Europe, but this chance was lost—not just for Europe but for the Soviet Union itself.

If it’s difficult for you to understand, Sergei, you are past all hope.  Yeah.  Sure.  Stalin would have been the soul of cooperation and moderation had the US and the UK just “engaged” him and not reverted to pre-war anti-Bolshi policies.  This is so self-evidently risible that it doesn’t require deconstruction.

What about the Phony War, which points to the unsavory plans of the Western Allies toward the Soviet Union in connection with Nazi Germany’s attack on Poland?

Who even knows what “unsavory plans of the Western Allies toward the Soviet Union” Lavrov is talking about.  Hey Sergei: Your paranoia is showing!  And about the Phony War.  Riddle me this: if the USSR, with the world’s largest military, was so incapable of taking on the Germans even with the potential support of Poland and perhaps the Western Allies that it was forced to treat with Hitler, how could you possibly expect the Western Allies to confront Hitler aggressively after Poland had fallen and the USSR was neutral?  And the USSR wasn’t so neutral, was it?  During the Phony War–and when the war turned anything but phony when the Germans attacked west–where did the Wehrmacht’s gas come from?  The fodder for its horses?  The food for its soldiers?  Do I need to tell you?

The establishment of a sustainable model of economic and social development—socially oriented with universal suffrage and supported by a significant middle class—was only possible during the Cold War and on the basis of new technology.

So just when is Russia going to adopt a sustainable model, then?

Freedom came from the East . . . .

Those who falsify history forget about what they gained as a result of the Red Army’s liberation campaign, including territory. The victory over Fascism and the events preceding the war, like it or not, gave all countries of Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe, as well as the former Soviet Union, their modern boundaries, which most members of the Euro-Atlantic family have no objection to. Would we like to return to the past—to a Europe burdened by the territorial problem?

Somehow, it seems to have escaped the notice of those in the path of the Red Army that anything approaching “freedom” came in its wake.  To suggest otherwise is truly Orwellian.  Moreover, I guess Sergei believes that the Poles, for instance, should overlook the inconvenience of nearly 50 years of brutal occupation because it gained territory in the aftermath of WWII.  Recall, moreover, that Stalin’s whole point of enlarging Poland was to gain territory under Soviet control at German expense.  It was hardly a gift to the Poles.  And if we want to discuss “territorial problems,” how about discussing, oh I dunno, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Moldova?

Lavrov’s attempts at economic exegesis betray a cluelessness about the the subject which is very difficult to exaggerate:

It was in response to the “challenge of the Soviet Union and socialism” that Western Europe’s economic development model became socialist.

Uhm, post-War Western Europe was not a libertarian’s paradise, but it wasn’t an example of a socialist development model either.  The welfare state and socialism are two different things.

Erroneous conclusions were eventually drawn from the end of the Cold War. Some thought that in the absence of the “Soviet threat” it was no longer necessary to restrain market forces by government regulation, so that it now became possible to engage in “financial alchemy,” including the financial pyramids from which liberal capitalism began at the start of the 18th century. The devastating consequences of such shortsightedness and the unwillingness to understand the historical pattern that Europe followed in the “hothouse” conditions of the Cold War are all too obvious to ignore and continue along the same path. Moreover, this mistake should not be repeated in the sphere of “strict security,” which is no less important in terms of its consequences for the future of Europe.

I see, the end of the Soviet threat (scare quotes aren’t necessary, Sergei: the threat was real enough) led to the unleashing of capitalism, red in tooth and claw, which begat the financial crisis.

Yeah.  Whatever.  I mean this is totally ahistorical drivel.  Overlooking that the connection between economic liberalization and the financial crisis is extremely remote, even assuming such a connection, ask the question: when did this move to liberalizing economies in the West begin?  With Carter, tentatively, in the late-1970s, Thatcher in 1979, and Reagan in 1981.  In other words, at the height of the Cold War.  The Cold War waxed its hottest at any time since the early-1960s at precisely the same period that restraints on market forces were relaxed throughout the West.  So much for your theory of cause and effect.

I could go on, but I’ll stop here.  I’m sure that this is enough to get the comments flying.  Have at it, folks!

* For newcomers, and those who have forgotten.  Last year I gave a talk about Russian energy policy to a group of US Foreign Service officers.  (I’ll talk to another group in 2 weeks.)  Afterwards, one guy came up to me and related the story of an intelligence specialist, Russian by birth, who said: “Sergei Lavrov is fascinating, in the same way a tarantula is fascinating.”

Back when the South Korean corvette Cheonon sunk, I said to myself: if they raise it in two pieces, NoKo torpedo.

Why?  Because that’s what modern torpedoes do.  They don’t hit on the side of a ship.  They detonate underneath the keel, amidships.  The explosion creates a rapidly expanding air bubble that raises the center of the ship upwards.  The bubble works as a fulcrum, and the weight of the fore and aft sections of the ship pushing against this fulcrum break the ship  in two.

Here are a couple of examples:

Note that the ships destroyed in the videos were far larger (destroyers, about 8000 tons displacement) than the Cheonon (a corvette, of only 1200 tons). You can imagine the havoc on board the Korean ship.

And yes, it came up in two pieces:

Even though the cause of the sinking should have been a foregone conclusion once the salvage of the ship had taken place (indeed, once divers had found the ship in two pieces, split as with a saw amidships), the South Koreans undertook a thorough forensic investigation. This investigation provided other evidence that showed conclusively that a North Korean torpedo was responsible.

The reaction in South Korea, and even in the US, has been, shall we say, pianissimo. Yes, Hillary Clinton condemned the attack, and claimed that it could not be “business as usual” on the Korean Peninsula. And the US and SoKO announced joint naval exercises. But the reaction was decidedly muted.

It was deafening, however, when compared to the Chinese and Russian response. As for the Russians:

Russia will not announce an official position on the sinking of the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan, it emerged Tuesday. Moscow sent three torpedo and explosion experts to South Korea and analyzed findings of an international probe from May 31 to June 7 and was expected to announce its official position early this month.

A Foreign Ministry official said the Russian experts will eventually finish drawing up a report and submit it to the Russian government, but it seems Moscow “has no plan to make any announcement about it.”

“No plan to make any announcement.”  Isn’t that precious.

And why not?  Political cowardice, or opportunism of the “let’s you and him fight” variety:

There is speculation that Russia decided to delay the announcement while the U.S. and China are at odds over the sinking at the UN Security Council.

The UNSC has been unable to reach any conclusion because China is declining to point the finger of blame at North Korea. If Russia endorses the findings of the international probe that the Cheonan sank due to a torpedo attack from the North, Russia would have to join the U.S., the U.K., and Japan, which support South Korea’s position, against the North, a long-term ally.

If it remains noncommittal, Russia could face criticism that it is standing up for a rogue state, as China already does. Its best course of action may be to postpone any announcement until the UNSC takes action against the North.

In other words, let China and the US have at it, stalemating the UN Security Council.  Russia then doesn’t have to take a stand.  I mean, one can understand their solicitous regards for Kim Jung Il’s feelings.  He’s such a tender, sensitive thing.

The psychostate of North Korea is a Soviet and Chinese creation.  It is kept alive through Chinese, and to a far lesser degree, Russian sufferance and support. The refusal of China and Russia even to condemn the attack (the Chinese official media is virtually silent on the entire subject) speaks volumes on their worldviews.  Neither China nor Russia (with China being the most culpable) have played a constructive role in dealing with North Korea since the mid-1990s.  For a variety of reasons, none of them admirable, they have permitted the situation to metastasize to a point where the likely outcomes are terrible or worse.

The whole episode demonstrates, as if further demonstration was needed, the pathetic nature of the UN, and the delusional nature of anyone who truly believes that it can play a decisive role in resolving any serious international dispute.  If anything, it is an obstacle to such resolutions.

Admittedly, North Korea is a hard case because it is governed by crazies and has nukes. So won’t the world be so much more fun when Iran, already governed by crazies, gets nukes too.  A development also facilitated by Chinese and Russian “statecraft” and Western (including American) pusillanimity.

The Cheonon sinking, and the world’s reaction to it (if “reaction” is at all the right word), says a lot about the way things are. Supineness in the face of deliberate provocation–murder, in fact–only brings more chaos in its wake.  Yes, damning the torpedoes and pouring on the steam creates its own hazards, but they pale in comparison to not damning them, and leaving the initiative in the hands of the crazy, the malign, and the crazily malign.

When writing my post on the Progressive interpretation of the Declaration of Independence, I was curious at what, if anything, Obama would say on the 4th of July.  He spoke, and he didn’t disappoint.  By not disappoint, I mean that he made remarks that effectively confirmed what I’d written, not that I concur with what he said.

Speaking casually dressed from the White House balcony, here’s what Obama said:

“We celebrate the principles that are timeless, tenets first declared by men of property and wealth but which gave rise to what Lincoln called a new birth of freedom in America — civil rights and voting rights, workers’ rights and women’s rights, and the rights of every American,” he said. “And on this day that is uniquely American we are reminded that our Declaration, our example, made us a beacon to the world.”

The remarks are revealing, and contradictory; indeed, they are revealing because they are contradictory.  They are contradictory because the last sentence is directly at odds with the first statement that the Founders’ principles as set out in the Declaration are “timeless.”  Indeed, the “but” in that sentence makes it clear that Obama distances himself from the Declaration as originally written and understood, while he embraces various social rights that would have been alien to the Founders.

Let’s break it down.  First, Obama takes a typical Progressive swipe at the Founders: “men of property and wealth.” They wrote down some principles (unstated), but these were defective because they reflected the interests of the wealthy. But Lincoln corrected these deficiencies:  in a “new birth of freedom,” he gave life to the Progressive rights that are really important.

The conscription of Lincoln into the Progressive cause was quite common in the 1930s.  Leftists routinely claimed Lincoln as a proto-Progressive: perhaps the most memorable example is naming of a group of leftist–and largely Communist–Americans who fought for the Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War the “Abraham Lincoln Brigades.”  The leftists mischaracterized Lincoln then, as Obama does today.  It is ahistorical, and extremely so, to view Lincoln as a devotee of the kinds of social and economic rights that Obama praises.

The contradiction in Obama’s formulation deserves emphasis.  Those voting for a break from the King, and for the Declaration of Independence, had a conception of liberty and freedom that was primarily negative: they wanted freedom from tyrannical government action.  What Obama praises–the alleged product of Lincoln’s midwifery–is quite the opposite.   It is a justification for the intrusion of the state into every nook and cranny of people’s lives.  The allegedly “timeless” principles of the Founders have been discarded–properly so, in Obama’s view–and replaced by something quite different.  Arguably something quite the opposite; so much for timeless.  The contrast between what Obama praises and what the Founders endeavored to achieve is best characterized by what the British musicians played during their surrender at Yorktown: The World Turned Upside Down.

Looking at Obama’s speech, and the broader political debate, it is clear that your view of what happened 1776-1789 is highly correlated with your current political stance.  Obama and other Progressives are not well-disposed, to say the least, towards the ideals of the Founding.  In stark contrast, Obama’s most intense political opponents repeatedly invoke an originalist interpretation of the Constitution, and conspicuously wrap themselves in Revolutionary symbolism–such as the Gasden (“Don’t Tread on Me”) Flag.

If the Civil War was the Second American Revolution, we may be on the brink of the Third.  Not that it will break out into armed conflict, but there is a yawning philosophical and political gap that will spark intense and ugly political strife.  And on either side of that gap stand people with diametrically opposed interpretations of the Founding and its meaning.

For a further illustration of  my earlier post on the dangers of reading too much into the apparent triviality of the Russian spy ring, it’s worth reading this account from the Wall Street Journal about how the KGB attempted to recruit a journalism student–who later held several influential government staff positions, and who is now deputy NYC police commissioner.  It demonstrates that the time horizons of some intelligence is very long.  It also demonstrates that intelligence services try to bird dog talent at very early stages, and get their hooks in early.  One imagines that the success rate is low, but the payoff of those few successes may be great.

The article, and the story of the Russian spy ring, also highlight the banality of most espionage.  Most espionage is not about The One Big Secret.  It is not about getting one’s hands on the secret plans to invade Freedonia.  It is about collecting bits and pieces of information, sifting it, sorting it, seeing if there’s a pattern.  Information is collected from a variety of sources and then much of it is analyzed, or stored for later analysis on an as needed basis.  Chinese intelligence, for instance, interviews returning students and travelers.  In so doing, it gleans countless facts and impressions that are useless in themselves, but contribute to a broader understanding of the intelligence target.

The US has, characteristically, put a technological spin on this, using data mining and pattern recognition software to extract nuggets of information from a mass of triviality.  This approach has proved incredibly valuable in Iraq, for instance, as a means of identifying, tracking, and apprehending–or killing–terrorists.

And in judging Russian motives, one should not forget potential cultural differences.  Going back to Czarist times, Russia’s rulers have had an enormous appetite for information about every aspect of their subjects’ lives, in large part because they viewed (and view) their subjects as potential adversaries.  Why would it be surprising that this mindset extends to their adversaries abroad?

Not only is the 4th of July the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence: it is also the anniversary of the surrender of Vicksburg in 1863.  That was the culmination of what to my mind is the most outstanding campaign of the Civil War, and arguably of American military history.  Indeed, it is one of the most impressive campaigns in all of military history.

Grant’s Vicksburg campaign was a masterpiece of what is now referred to as “the operational art.”  It involved an impressive and creative use of combined arms: Grant utilized David Dixon Porter’s riverine Navy force brilliantly to move his army to the south of the city and break a stalemate.  It employed deception: Grierson’s raid and Grant’s simultaneous threatening of multiple strategic points paralyzed the Confederate response and reduced Pemberton and Johnston to piecemeal, spasmodic, lurching reactions.  Grant utilized maneuver brilliantly, and as a result always had a substantial preponderance of force at every engagement.  The logistics of the operation were challenging and complex, but were accomplished faultlessly.

Grant had at his disposal an incredible army of hardy, strapping Midwestern farmboys.   They had ample combat experience, gained at battles like Donelson, Shiloh, and Corinth, but hadn’t suffered the shattering casualties that hampered the effectiveness of some armies, like the Army of the Potomac.

Grant has a reputation as a butcher, but Vicksburg belies that.  It is hard to find anything to criticize about the entire operation.

The surrender on the 4th did not fully open the Mississippi River: that didn’t occur until 9 July, when Port Hudson capitulated.  But that was inevitable once Vicksburg fell.

Vicksburg is worth a visit.  Although the most crucial battlefields of the campaign are not systematically protected, the ground of the siege is contained within the Vicksburg National Battlefield Park.  The siege works and many of the approach trenches are well-preserved.  The most important battle of the campaign, Champion Hill, is now accessible due to the work of the Civil War Preservation Trust, although much of the hill itself was excavated for gravel for I-10 decades ago.

Port Hudson is also a worthwhile trip, though beware!  On my visit there some years ago I just about stepped on the biggest damn water moccasin you’ve ever seen.  I was stepping gingerly after that, I’ll tell you what.

Harry Jaffa argues that Lincoln was different from his political peers in that he believed the Declaration of Independence, rather than the Constitution, to be the seminal document of the American Founding.  Lincoln believed, and fervently so, that the Declaration literally meant what it said: that all men are created equal.  He further believed that it was his solemn duty as a statesman to ensure that the nation realized that ideal.

Obama has been compared to Lincoln, largely on the basis of some superficial similarities.  (Very superficial.  Like: “tall guys from Illinois.”)  But it is clear on the substance, and on the belief in the truth and relevance of the Declaration, that the comparison is decidedly inapt.  Indeed, laughable.  Lincoln’s commitment to the Declaration, and the belief that the United States was indeed the “last, best hope of earth” was fervent, undeniable, and repeatedly expressed.  Lincoln did believe that America was exceptional, and that it although it was flawed, it embodied an ideal that was an example for all of humanity.

In contrast, Obama’s views on those propositions are, at best, ambivalent.  As Charles Kessler of the Claremont Review of Books writes:

The second new element in President Obama’s liberalism is even more striking than its postmodernism. It is how uncomfortable he is with American exceptionalism—and thus with America itself. President Obama considers this country deeply flawed from its very beginnings. He means not simply that slavery and other kinds of fundamental injustice existed, which everyone would admit. He means that the Declaration of Independence, when it said that all men are created equal, did not mean to include blacks or anyone else who is not a property-holding, white, European male—an argument put forward infamously by Chief Justice Roger Taney in the Dred Scott decision, and one that was powerfully refuted by Abraham Lincoln.

In short, President Obama agrees with his former minister, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, much more than he let on as a presidential candidate. Read closely, his famous speech on that subject in March 2008 doesn’t hide his conclusion that Wright was correct—that America is a racist and ungodly country (hence, not “God Bless America,” but “God Damn America!”). Obama agrees with Wright that in its origin, and for most of its history, America was racist, sexist, and in various ways vicious. Wright’s mistake, Obama said, was underestimating America’s capacity for change—a change strikingly illustrated by Obama’s own advances and his later election. For Obama, Wright’s mistake turned on not what America was, but what America could become—especially after the growth of liberalism in our politics in the course of the 20th century. It was only liberalism that finally made America into a decent country, whereas for most of its history it was detestable.

Unlike most Americans, President Obama still bristles at any suggestion that our nation is better or even luckier than other nations. To be blunt, he despises the notion that Americans consider themselves special among the peoples of the world. This strikes him as the worst sort of ignorance and ethnocentrism, which is why it was so difficult for him to decide to wear an American flag lapel pin when he started running for president, even though he knew it was political suicide to refuse wearing it.

As President Obama hinted in his Berlin speech during the campaign, he really thinks of himself as a multiculturalist, as a citizen of the world, first, and only incidentally as an American. To put it differently, he regards patriotism as morally and intellectually inferior to cosmopolitanism. And, of course, he is never so much a citizen of the world as when defending the world’s environment against mankind’s depredations, and perhaps especially America’s depredations. In general, the emotionalist defense of the earth—think of Al Gore—is now a vital part of the liberalism of our day. It’s a kind of substitute for earlier liberals’ belief in progress. Although his own election—and secondarily liberalism’s achievements over the past century or so—help to redeem America in his view, Obama remains, in many ways, profoundly disconnected from his own land.

This is a very different state of mind and character from that of Franklin Roosevelt, who was the kind of progressive who thought that America was precisely the vanguard of moral progress in the world. This was the way Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, and every great liberal captain before Obama thought about his country—as a profoundly moral force in the world, leading the nations of the world toward a better and more moral end point. Obama doesn’t think that way, and therefore his mantle as an American popular leader—despite his flights of oratorical prowess—doesn’t quite fit him in the way that FDR’s fit him. One can see this in the tinges of irony that creep into Obama’s rhetoric now and then—the sense that even he doesn’t quite believe what he’s saying; and he knows that but hopes that you don’t.

Obama’s ambivalence is, in many ways, the perfect symbol of the dilemma of the contemporary liberal.

As people have become increasingly aware of this ambivalence, Obama’s popularity has plunged.  And there is a growing realization that “ambivalence” might actually understate the matter.  Obama’s associations of a lifetime, of whom the aforementioned Reverend Wright is just one, are anything but ambivalent in their views of America.  If they believe that America is exceptional, it is only because they believe that America is exceptionally malign, evil even.  There is a suspicion that political caginess leads Obama to conceal his true sympathies for these views.  The habitual apologies, the routine criticism of his country while abroad, the notable imbalance between criticism and praise of the country’s past and legacy, all contribute to a palpable fear that Obama is actually the anti-Lincoln.

This unease–to put it mildly–that many people have with Obama is much more visceral, and much more important, than disagreements about this health care policy or that, or the handling of the Gulf oil spill.  Indeed, for many people the significance of these things is not the policy specifics themselves, but what these policies reveal about Obama’s heartfelt beliefs about the nation and its meaning.  A fear that he does not share their beliefs about the country, its ethos, and its values.

I think this helps explain the tremendous anxiety in the country.  Yes, dreary economic news and the steady bubbling of oil from the Gulf contribute to that anxiety.  But it is more than that.  More basic.  An anxiety rooted in a fear that they are being governed by a foreigner.  Not a foreigner in the birther “he was born in [state country of choice here]” (non-)sense.  But a foreigner in the sense of someone alien to, or at the very least alienated from, their beliefs about America and what it means.

Divides over belief are much more intractable than divides over policies.  The latter are amenable to compromise, and can be influenced by facts and data.  The former, cannot.  Which means that the next two plus years will be as tumultuous politically as any period in recent American history.  Obama and his ilk are notable for their Europhilia, and we are on the brink of descending into a European-style political conflict that America has largely avoided in large part because of a shared belief in some fundamental tenets about the country’s political meaning and heritage that is typically lacking in Europe.  The fear that the president, and a large fraction of his political allies, do not share those beliefs will make the coming political conflicts and campaigns of a like not seen in this country in living memory.

About this time of day, 147 years ago, 15,000 Confederate soldiers topped the gentle rise of Seminary Ridge and began trudging towards the Emmitsburg Road, and beyond it, a low stone wall just below the crest of Cemetery Ridge.  When it ended, the Confederate force reeled back, blasted and torn.  A few stalwart men had penetrated a point in the Union line where the 71st Pennsylvania had broken, but the breach was soon sealed by a horde of running, shouting–and shooting–Federals from Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont.

If you’ve stood on the ground, you wonder what Robert E. Lee could have possibly been thinking.  Advancing a mile without cover against a line of veteran troops on an elevation, with cover, and with ample artillery.  To me, it was the culmination of a little more than a year of remarkable achievements by the Army of Northern Virginia that had hurled its opponent from the very gates of Richmond onto the soil of Pennsylvania, winning engagement after engagement.  Hubris born of a year of amazing victories had convinced him that his men could accomplish anything.

But not all of his men were convinced.  His chief subordinate, James (“Old Pete”) Longstreet surely was not.  He resisted launching the assault, his opposition verging on insubordination.  And it is not as if Longstreet was a timid man who routinely opposed the offensive.  In fact, he was the architect of three of the greatest, most successful assaults of the Civil War: at Second Manassas, Chickamauga, and the Wilderness.  But he was a realist, and he foresaw what awaited his division, and the two of A. P. Hill’s Corps, that were to make the assault over that ground, against that enemy.

Lee realized it too, but too late: “It is all my fault” he said, as the broken ranks that had stepped off so confidently an hour or so before streamed back torn and bloodied, and so many fewer than before.

Faulkner wrote a famous elegy to the (mis-named*) Pickett’s Charge:

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago….

Faulkner’s description was not accurate when he wrote it. Not every Southern boy imagined himself in the shade of the trees on Seminary Ridge in the early afternoon of 3 July, 1863: maybe every white Southern boy–a revealing lacuna.  But even with that modification, Faulkner’s characterization of the youthful Southern imagination is now an anachronism.  Well into the 20th century, the Civil War–pardon me, the War of Northern Aggression–was deeply imbued in the consciousness of most white Southerners.  Now, even in the deepest recesses of the erstwhile Confederate states, thoughts of the war hardly enter the minds of 14 year old boys.  Yes, interest in the War is more intense in the South than in the remainder of the country, but that isn’t saying much.  Today, Southern 14 year olds are far less distinct from their Northern peers than was the case when Faulkner wrote.

And yes, there are a large number of people with an abiding intellectual interest in the War, some going so far as to want to relive the lives of Confederate soldiers to the extent possible in the modern world (as described in Confederates in the Attic).  But the very intensity and novelty of these aficionados demonstrates how things have changed: whereas during Faulkner’s day a deep, mystic, and romanticized connection with the Civil War was ubiquitous in the South, today any connection is limited to a very few, often quite eccentric, individuals.

Which is for the good.  I am an ardent historical preservationist who believes that the past can be instructive and should be preserved.  But preserving an idealized, romanticized view of a culture that enslaved millions was destructive.  As much as I am in awe of the bravery and martial skill of the soldiers of the Confederacy, I have no fondness for the Lost Cause, which is really a fondness for a profoundly unjust social system, the remnants of which persisted for far too long after the War.  So I am grateful that, in 2010, the Southern boy for whom it is “still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863” is the exception, rather than the rule.

* Pickett’s Division represented only one of three that made the assault.  Two divisions from A. P. Hill’s Corps, Pettigrew’s and Trimble’s, also participated.  (I saw a plaque honoring Pettigrew at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, during a visit in April; he entered the school as a 15 year old.)  Trimble was horribly wounded and captured.  Pettigrew was mortally wounded on the retreat from Gettysburg.  A. P. Hill was physically incapacitated during most of the battle, most likely from the effects of syphilis, and was shot in the last days of the War, during Grant’s final assault on Petersburg.  Pickett’s survival (in a charge that felled every one of his brigade commanders–Garnett and Kemper and Armistead–and all but one regimental commander) and the Virginia-centric bent of post-war historiography ensured the connection between his name and the charge.