This morning, at the top of his CNN program, Fareed Zakaria berated liberals for their criticisms of President Barack Obama, urging them to "grow up." Whether Zakaria is an effective defender of the president (in my view, this "grow up" line is about as ineffective as it gets), it does highlight an important point that appears to escape Very Serious People?the role of the activist is not to "be the adult in the room," it is to try and expand what the "grown ups in the room" can do.
In his book The Fiery Trial, Abraham Lincoln And American Slavery, Eric Foner, the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, wrote:
[Abraham] Lincoln, many recent scholars have argued, acted within the narrow limits of the possible, as established by Northern public opinion. Public opinion however, is never static; the interactions of enlightened political leaders, engaged social movements, and day to day experiences [. . .[ can change the nature of public debate and in so doing the boundaries of what is, in fact practical. As the Chicago Tribune noted at the end of the Civil War, in crisis situations beliefs once pronounced "impractical radicalism" suddenly become "practical statesmanship." In his celebrated 1919 essay, Max Weber defended the social utility of the politician's calling and identified three qualities as a politician. Yet Weber concluded by noting the symbiotic relationship between political action and moral agitation. "What is possible, [Weber] wrote, "would not have been achieved , if, in this world, people had not repeatedly reached for the impossible."[Emphasis added.]
The life of Frederick Douglass is one of the prime examples of American history of why reaching for the impossible, for not "growing up," is essential for the effective activist. Born a slave, Frederick Douglass was the living embodiment of asking for the impossible in order to achieve the good. While the perfect should not be the enemy of the good, asking for the perfect is essential to achieving the good.
Most are familiar with the basics of Frederick Douglass' life?born a slave in Maryland's Eastern Shore, surreptitiously learned to read, sent to be broken by a cruel overseer, and escaped while disguised as a free-born seaman. Once a free man living in the North, Douglass became a living rebuke of the ideology of slavery. Strangely, his detractors would question whether he had been a slave, as if this rebutted the central point of Douglass' argument?that blacks were equal to whites, and thus, slavery was an abomination.
But Douglass was more than a symbol, he was a key leader in the abolitionist movement, involved in strategizing on how to gain the prize of emancipation and equality. In his book, Foner credits the not "growing up" of the abolitionists as critical to creating space, indeed forcing the political space in the direction of the abolitionists, to steering Lincoln towards the emancipation view and to helping creating the political space whereby Lincoln could issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Douglass was at the forefront of the abolitionist movement after becoming a free man.
While generally in agreement with the leading lights of the abolitionist movement, Douglass was a shrewd activist, with his own strategies. One important divergence of thought occurred in the abolitionist ranks on what might be considered an abstract issue: Was the Constitution a pro-slavery or an anti-slavery document? The great abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison insisted (with good reason in terms of accuracy) that the Constitution was a pro-slavery document:
Garrison was unyielding and steadfast in his beliefs. He believed that the Anti-Slavery Society should not align itself with any political party. He believed that women should be allowed to participate in the Anti-Slavery Society. He believed that the U.S. Constitution was a pro-slavery document. Many within the Society differed with these positions, however, and in 1840 there was a major rift in the Society which resulted in the founding of two additional organizations: the Liberty Party, a political organization, and the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which did not admit women. Later, in 1851, the once devoted and admiring Frederick Douglass stated his belief that the Constitution could be used as a weapon against slavery. Garrison, feeling betrayed, attacked Douglass through his paper. Douglass responded, and the attacks intensified. Garrison and Douglass would never reconcile their differences.
Douglass' conversion on this point was not a capricious one. As Foner notes, Douglass was grappling with the problem of converting anti-slavery sentiments into anti-slavery action:
Shortly before the 1860 election, Frederick Douglass offered a succinct summary of the dilemma confronting opponents of slavery, like Lincoln, committed to working within the existing political and constitutional system. Abstractly, Douglass wrote, most Northerners would agree that slavery was wrong. The challenge was to find a way of "translating antislavery sentiment into antislavery action."
One way, Douglass posited, was to argue that the Constitution itself was anti-slavery. Douglass also recognized the value of the "extreme" view. On John Brown's attack at Harper's Ferry, Douglass remarked:
John Brown's zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light; his was as the burning sun. I could live for the slave; John Brown could die for him.
Douglass understood and applied the concept of creating political space. Lincoln said that his prime objective was to save the Union, as he remarked in a August 1862 letter to Horace Greeley:
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.
It was Douglass' endeavor to make Lincoln see that freeing all of the slaves was necessary to save the Union. This goal fired his actions and words in every way, including his agitation for having freed blacks join the Union Army. At the outset of the war, this was an extreme position. By 1863, the political space for black soldiers in the Union Army had been created. And Lincoln was no longer talking about saving the Union and leaving slavery undisturbed.
But Douglass also understood the reality of politics. When the Republican Party recoiled from the charge that the war was about emancipation during the 1864 election, Douglass was personally appalled over Republican rhetoric:
Stung by Democratic charges that emancipation was the sole reason the war continued, Republicans initially tried to play down the subject of slavery [. . . E]ven Radicals like William D. Kelly [said] that once emancipation had been secured, not only would southern blacks lose any desire to move to the North, but "there are not a thousands Negroes in Pennsylvania who would not leave for the tropics." Republicans, wrote Frederick Douglass in disgust in October, seemed ashamed of the Negro.
And yet, Douglass supported Lincoln's reelection in 1864:
[Douglass] would have preferred a candidate "of more decided anti-slavery convictions," Douglass wrote, but since the choice had come down to Lincoln and McClellan, "all hesitations ought to cease."
And indeed, in the light of history, Douglass, the activist, came to appreciate the actions of Lincoln, the politician:
It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit, even here in the presence of the monument we have erected to his memory, Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man.
He was preeminently the white man?s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the states where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President to draw the sword of the nation. He was ready to execute all the supposed guarantees of the United States Constitution in favor of the slave system anywhere inside the slave states. He was willing to pursue, recapture, and send back the fugitive slave to his master, and to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty master were already in arms against the Government. The race to which we belong were not the special objects of his consideration. [. . .]
[. . .] Our faith in him was often taxed and strained to the uttermost, but it never failed. When he tarried long in the mountain; when he strangely told us that we were the cause of the war; when he still more strangely told us that we were to leave the land in which we were born; when he refused to employ our arms in defense of the Union; when, after accepting our services as colored soldiers, he refused to retaliate our murder and torture as colored prisoners; when he told us he would save the Union if he could with slavery; when he revoked the Proclamation of Emancipation of General Fremont; when he refused to remove the popular commander of the Army of the Potomac, in the days of its inaction and defeat, who was more zealous in his efforts to protect slavery than to suppress rebellion; when we saw all this, and more, we were at times grieved, stunned, and greatly bewildered; but our hearts believed while they ached and bled. Nor was this, even at that time, a blind and unreasoning superstition. Despite the mist and haze that surrounded him; despite the tumult, the hurry, and confusion of the hour, we were able to take a comprehensive view of Abraham Lincoln, and to make reasonable allowance for the circumstances of his position. We saw him, measured him, and estimated him; not by stray utterances to injudicious and tedious delegations, who often tried his patience; not by isolated facts torn from their connection; not by any partial and imperfect glimpses, caught at inopportune moments; but by a broad survey, in the light of the stern logic of great events, and in view of that divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will, we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had somehow met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. It mattered little to us what language he might employ on special occasions; it mattered little to us, when we fully knew him, whether he was swift or slow in his movements; it was enough for us that Abraham Lincoln was at the head of a great movement, and was in living and earnest sympathy with that movement, which, in the nature of things, must go on until slavery should be utterly and forever abolished in the United States.
[. . .] I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible.
Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined. [. . .]
[Emphasis added.]
That was Frederick Douglass, the indefatigable activist, judging Abraham Lincoln, the politician and statesman. The activist does not "grow up," is not "reasonable," and does not justify political compromise. The politician does. Sometimes more than he should, for his own political sake.
But the activist does not judge his success by the political fortune of the politician, but on the success of his activism. Frederick Douglass fought for emancipation, liberty and equality. He achieved success in his activism. In the light of history, he can judge the politician fairly. But in the moment of activism it is not his or her place to stop to consider the judgment of history on the politician. That task remains to others.
POST SCRIPT: This post was inspired by Tim Lange, also known as Meteor Blades. Thanks Tim.
breaking political news political magazines daily sport newspaper msnbc politics
No comments:
Post a Comment