printThe other day on “Life, Liberty & Levin,” Ben Shapiro trashed, but absolutely rubbished, John C. Calhoun, one of America’s greatest political theorists, in the estimation of historian Clyde Wilson, editor of the John C. Calhoun papers, and the foremost scholar of Calhoun in our time. From what I’ve read of Calhoun’s works, I concur.
Especially magnificent is “A Disquisition on Government,” published in 1851, wherein Calhoun developed the profound idea of ‘two different modes in which the sense of the community may be taken.’ The one ‘regards numbers only.’ The other invokes an entirely different quality or dimension, over and above the ‘numbers.’”
I was inspired to apply Calhoun’s idea in “Has Trump Awakened John C. Calhoun’s Concurrent Majority?” The column is from the book, The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed (June, 2016).
The more important point is logical. Ben Shapiro trashes Calhoun using the logic of the left—namely that a towering American intellectual and statesman held views considered improper to the American Idiocracy of the 21 Century.
As Professor Wilson has brilliantly written, “This is not historical debate. It is the propaganda trick of labeling something you do not like in order to control and suppress it. Such are those who want the war to be all about slavery—hateful, disdainful, ignorant, and unwilling to engage in honest discussion.”
Another fundamental flaw in Ben Shapiro’s decidedly Republican view of America, expressed on “Life Liberty & Levin,” is the idea that his party is the Good Party.
Libertarians (check) don’t have a bone in the bi-partisan fight, except to advocate for the truth. And the truth is that lot of pseudo-history rests on the deification of, say, the Radical Republicans.
Here is the truth with a caveat: “The Radical Republicans were far more vicious and barbaric than the Antifa. The Republicans supervised the genocide of some 60,000 Plains Indians from 1865 to 1890, led by General Sherman himself”:
MORE: “The Radical Republicans: The Antifa Of 1865,” September 6, 2017
UPDATED (7/22):
Great comment, Daffy Duck, aka Dale @dalerooster
One more thing: As someone who reads biblical Hebrew and gets it, I am Daisy Duck if Ben Shapiro knows any serious Hebrew, as boasted. Maybe Pidgin Hebrew, i.e., the Americanized crap they speak in Israel, these days.
?Great comment, Daffy Duck, aka Dale @dalerooster. One more thing: As someone who reads biblical Hebrew and gets it, I am Daisy Duck if #BenShapiro knows any serious Hebrew, as boasted. Maybe Pidgin Hebrew, i.e., the Americanized crap they speak in Israel, these days. https://t.co/u9licF1Xyn
— ILANA Mercer (@IlanaMercer) July 22, 2020