Comments Elsewhere

S.K.: “Do you know Tom DiLorenzo? I do. He has nothing to do w/ the bucktoothed yahoo type you must envisage. He is a cosmopolitan guy, and very intelligent and sincere, and not the type to pine for the plantation. So give it a rest. These continual character assassinations are of fellow libertarians are disgusting.”

Who’s “envisaging” anything? I cited some things that DiLorenzo wrote and said (1) that they seemed like indications of “a fetish for the Confederacy and its leaders, which sometimes overrides respect for documented historical fact” and (2) that “in addition to unthinking pro-Confederate apologetics, it may also serve as a good example of unthinking contrarianism as well”.

If you think that believing either (1) or (2) about someone requires you to believe that he or she is a “bucktoothed yahoo type” then you should probably think harder about it. The “Lost Cause” mythology has always been promoted primarily by well-spoken, articulate white Southerners, including politicians (among them Jeff Davis himself, in his memoirs), educators, and professional historians. Being articulate and well-spoken, however, does not have any bearing on whether what they say is true or false, nor on whether what they say indicates sincere engagement with the facts or dishonest fetishism.

So, let’s move on to the actual issue, which is what DiLorenzo said, not the ad hominem context of what virtues or vices you think DiLorenzo has as a person.

S.K.: “As I have almost no interest in the Confederacy issues, I have no opinion on DiLorenzo’s comments on Jeff Davis etc. I don’t know what it has to do with “Confederacy” worship.”

If you care so little about “Confederacy issues” that you haven’t bothered to form any opinion at all about DiLorenzo’s decision to single out Jeff Davis and Robert E. Lee for praise then how in the world do you know that DiLorenzo (or anyone else writing for LewRockwell.com, other than yourself) is not engaging in dishonest fetishism for the Confederacy? You make strong claims that he isn’t, but it seems to me that if you haven’t bothered to look into these questions you shouldn’t have any rational basis for giving an answer.

That said, the connection is simple. DiLorenzo singled out two central figures of “Lost Cause” Confederate mythology for praise, in spite of the fact that they are opposed to libertarian political principles on every important point—from slavery to conscription to secession. He did so in spite of the fact that they had no apparent qualifications for the praise other than their leading roles in the Confederate government and the Confederate war machine. And in his writings there and elsewhere, he has told flat lies (e.g. that Lee willingly freed his father-in-law’s slaves when he actually kept them in slavery as long as he legally could) and omitted important truths (e.g. that Jeff Davis, not Abe Lincoln, pioneered national conscription in America) in order to make Confederate leaders look better than they actually were. Doesn’t that seem like pretty clear indication of a fetish for the Confederacy to you? If not, what would?

Since none of my remarks had anything at all to do with Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Lew Rockwell, or DiLorenzo’s criticisms of Lincoln (which I mostly consider to be just and well-founded), the rest has been snipped without reply.