Comments Elsewhere

Kinsella: Geek, what exactly is your position? Are you saying that one criterion of being “one of the greatest libertarian theorists” is that you can’t espouse any nonlibertarian views? I.e., that you can’t be wrong about anything

I think that there are two basic points being made about Calhoun vis-a-vis the tradition of libertarian thought.

1. The absolute point: to describe Calhoun as a great libertarian thinker (or even a principled advocate of secession) when he vigorously defended slavery as a positive good on the floor of the Senate, and did more than perhaps any other single man to preserve and perpetuate Southern race slavery during the middle decades of the 19th century, is problematic, to say the least. (If you found someone who had eloquently and vigorously defended libertarian views, except that he supported the Holocaust on the grounds that Jews have no human rights, would you call him a great libertarian thinker? If you would, Christ, why?)

2. The relative point: you might respond to the absolute point by claiming that, in spite of Calhoun having played a really rotten role in the defense of Southern race slavery, and taking truly despicable positions on it, he was still a leading light in the context of his time, compared to the other folks who were doing political theory at the time. But that, too, is false. Indeed, it’s ridiculous. To go around celebrating slaver Calhoun’s contribution to the thought of his time, when men such as Lysander Spooner and William Lloyd Garrison were writing political theory—often theory diametrically opposed to Calhoun’s, on libertarian grounds—seems to me to be simply ludicrous.

I think the relative point is obvious. As for the absolute point, I think that you can only bypass it by ignoring how despicable American race slavery really was, and passing it off as if it were simply some niggling error on some minor point is just evasion. What Calhoun supported was an institutionalized assault on human liberty and dignity more systematic, more massive, more prolonged, and more awful, than almost anything else in human history, with the exception of atrocities committed with the explicit purpose of genocide. Saying “Oh, well, he’s a great libertarian except for his defense of Southern slavery” seems to me to be an awful lot like saying “Oh, well, he’s a great Catholic theologian, except that he argues in favor of worshipping the Devil.” Oh well, I guess nobody’s perfect.