Posts Tagged ‘Scott Yenor’

By Scott Yenor

Constitution Hall

Pres. Obama thinks Iranian protesters will be “on the right side of history.”  An obscure Arkansas congressman supported the cap and trade bill because it was on “the right side of history.” Opponents of extending government’s control over the delivery of health care is, as NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof contends, are “on the wrong side of history.” Bill Clinton knew that he was “on the right side of history” and that Barack Obama would be “on the right side of history.” A pro-same-sex marriage group is called “the right side of history campaign.” Even after legal recognition for same-sex marriage was denied in a Maine referendum, Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign (a same-sex marriage advocacy group) beamed: “It’s still inevitable. It’s always been inevitable.”

The idea that history has a right side is connected to the idea that history has an end.  History ends with the appearance of a universal, omni-competent administrative state, which recognizes each citizen as equal and free and with the disappearance of repression and national difference, and the eradication of political, social, and cultural prejudice. Those on the right side of history possess a prophetic wisdom about where history is headed despite the actions of individuals at any particular time.

Resistance is futile—much like Nazi resistance to the Allies or the South’s attempt to cling to its peculiar institution. This is the trope’s rhetorical power.  Since resistance is futile, why resist?   Being “on the right side of history” gives rise to conviction, which sustains acts opposed by today’s benighted public opinion. The public may oppose cap and trade or gay marriage or an extension of government control over health care, but controversial and unpopular decisions will be baptized with the blessing of history.

The view that we know the direction of History (I now use a capital letter to designate its capital importance) seems to take hold among those apprehensive about History’s direction as well. Resignation is indeed a rational reaction to an inevitable.  Others resist. Whittaker Chambers, once told the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948: “I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side. . .but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism.” Yet the short span of 40 years showed that the losing side had won, something in itself illustrative about our sometimes inability to detect the direction of History.

Purveyors of “right side of history” progressivism can be false prophets too.  Does the persistence of Britain’s National Health Service look as “inevitable” today as it did in 1947?  Does Canada’s?  After all, as Ben Stein’s father, Herb, quipped, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Was AFDC reform inevitable?  Was it inevitable that the United States would turn around its historic crime wave?

If History’s end is inevitable, why fight for it?  Since History is coming anyway, why is it necessary to campaign on its behalf?  Faith in a progressive prophecy justifies our elected officials in opposing the public in order to be on the right side of history, but those fighting to bring it about show that that end is not inevitable or determined.

The clearest wisdom on these matters is seen in how the American Founders and their latter day heir, Abraham Lincoln, thought about the future of slavery.  From today’s perspective,

slavery’s abolition may seem inevitable, and indeed more than a few progressives treat slavery as something flattened by History’s steamroller.  That is not how it appeared to John Jay and Lincoln.  Jay, rightly charged by English abolitionists with hypocrisy for condemning slavery in principle but tolerating it in practice, discussed how the abolition of slavery could come about. It was by the spreading of the doctrine of human rights, which serve as a “little lump of leaven which was put into three measures of meal: even at this day, the whole mass is far from being leavened, though we have good reason to hope and to believe that if the natural operations of truth are constantly watched and assisted, but not forced and precipitated, that end we all aim at will finally be attained in this country.”  There was nothing inevitable about the future—statesmen would still have to mold public opinion in the direction of natural equality.

All three of Lincoln’s greatest speeches before becoming president—the Peoria speech on restoring the Missouri Compromise; the Dred Scott speech; and his “Crisis of the House Divided” speech—deal with the consequences of America’s failure to uphold the “natural operations of truth.” Slavery seemed to be on the march, spilling over the lines that had contained it.  Public sentiment and law had turned against blacks—freed and slave.  The Declaration of Independence had been reinterpreted to exclude members of the human family, and had been denigrated as an instrument merely useful for asserting the rights of Englishmen instead of being a statement of right good for all times. Some denied the truth about human equality; others saw slavery as a positive good.

In response, Lincoln did not stand up to proclaim that these moves were “on the wrong side of history.”  In fact, his melancholy about perhaps being on the losing side is not entirely dissimilar to Chamber’s.  Yet, like Chambers, he resisted and not in the name of History, but in the name of justice, truth and right.  Better to lose elections or die on the losing side than allow slave power to triumph!  Lincoln’s central effort is to show that all acknowledge by their actions that slaves are human beings and that the Declaration’s promises are the key to “the progressive improvement in the condition of all men everywhere.”

Lessons from these episodes abound.  A few years ago, it was fashionable to display one’s opposition to Pres. Bush’s action and to show one’s virtue with the bumper sticker with an Edmund Burke quotation:  “All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Could it mean that there is no right side of history?  Could evil triumph?  Luckily we had “good people” bumper stickering to put an end to this reign of terror.

Lincoln’s actions show that, not History alone, but rhetoric informed by truth and evidence, move people.  Relying on History alone—History secretly controlled by reason—destroys the incentive to effort, undermines the ground of judgment, and destroys humanity.  Lincoln and the Founders believe in progress, and progress implies an end.  They see the place of human effort in bringing about that end, which means that it may not ever come about.  Theirs ennobles human effort, as it combines, darkly, with our grasp of truth and right to achieve human progress.

There is nothing inevitable but death and taxes.  The desire to evade the one has led some to wish an increase in the other, but they will not inevitably get their wish.

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The views expressed in this essay are not necessarily those of the Jack Miller Center.