Ashcroft on American history

[Tom West]

Sandy Levinson writes:

> I note that Attorney General-designate Ashcroft wrote to
> the Southern Partisan, described in the Washington Post
> as "a magazine that defends the South in [the Civil
> War]," the following:  "Your magazine also helps set the
> records straight.  You've got a heritage of doing that,
> of defending Southern Patriots like Lee, Jackson and
> Jefferson Davis.  Traditionalists must do more.  I've go
> to do more.  We've all got to stand up and speak in this
> respect, or else we'll be taught that these people were
> giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and
> their honor to some perverted agenda."

I respond:

The quotation as given by the Washington Post is
technically correct but misleading, because in the context
Ashcroft is not praising the confederacy but the Founding
Fathers. Here is how the full quotation reads in the original
interview:

"Ashcroft: Revisionism is a threat to the respect that
Americans have for their freedoms and liberty that was at
the core of those who founded this country, and when we
see George Washington, the founder of our country, called
a racist, that is just total revisionist nonsense, a diatribe
against the values of America. Have you read Thomas
West's book _Vindicating the Founders_?

"Interviewer: I've met Professor West, and I read one of his
earlier books, but not that one.

"Ashcroft: I wish I had another copy: I'd send it to you. I
gave it away to a newspaper editor. West virtually
disassembles all of these malicious attacks the revisionists
have brought against our founders. Your magazine also
helps set the record straight.  You've got a heritage of doing
that, of defending Southern Patriots like Lee, Jackson and
Jefferson Davis.  Traditionalists must do more.  I've go to do
more.  We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect, or
else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives,
subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some
perverted agenda."

Taken as a whole, the quotation is a praise of America's
founders, with a parenthetical kind word thrown in for the
magazine that is interviewing him.

When I first read this interview, I remember being amused
that Ashcroft was as it were cramming my book
_Vindicating the Founders_ down the throat of this
magazine, which fancies itself as a defender of the Old
South. People who write for _Southern Partisan_ generally
don't like my book, precisely because it shows that the
Founders thought slavery was evil, and that they did what
they could, within the limits of their circumstances, to
confine, curb, and, where possible, abolish slavery.

In the quotation above, Ashcroft's last sentence is, "We've
all got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we'll be
taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing
their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted
agenda."

In the context of the whole quotation, this sentence refers
not to the confederates but to the Founders, who, in the
Declaration of Independence, pledged to each other, "our
lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

Ashcroft was deploring, quite sensibly, that Americans are
being taught to despise and hate their founders, instead of
respecting them for dedicating America to, in Lincoln's
words, "the proposition that all men are created equal."

The quotation as a whole shows that Ashcroft, as an
admirer of the "liberty that was at the core" of the founding,
is likely to be especially respectful toward the original
meaning of the Constitution (with its amendments), which
was designed to secure "the blessings of liberty to
ourselves and our posterity."

In this respect, Ashcroft would be much superior to the
outgoing administration.

Tom West