“Neocons like Max Boot typically know absolutely nothing about Calhoun; they merely denounce him as “pro-slavery,” implying that we should therefore ignore everything the man ever said. By that standard, we should also ignore everything Abraham Lincoln ever said. In his famous Cooper Union speech he denied that southern slavery should be ended because, he said, it exists. (What moral clarity). In his first inaugural address he pledged his support for a constitutional amendment that had just passed the senate that would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering in southern slavery. He thus defended slavery much more so than Calhoun ever did, doing so as the president of the United States. Max Boot is not one to let such facts get in his way.”

It was interesting to read The Weekly Standard’s review of Thomas Wood’s Politically Incorrect Guide to American History by Max Boot. (See here). I always thought Max Boot would have been a more appropriate name foe a WWF wrestler than a political columnist, but let’s leave that to rest.

Talking about nullification, Bootus Maximus said “Soon enough, however, the guide starts to slip from conventional history into a Bizarro world where every state has the right to disregard any piece of federal legislation it doesn’t like or even to secede. “There is, obviously, no provision in the Constitution that explicitly authorizes nullification,” the author concedes, but Woods nevertheless is convinced that this right exists. His source? Mainly the writings of the Southern pro-slavery politician John C. Calhoun.”

So in neocon-land Calhoun is just a pro-slavery politician. I suppose George Washington is next.

In Amconmag Woodsie replied thus:

“…What my book actually says is that important early Americans held the view that the states could refuse to enforce unconstitutional federal legislation and that both North and South had recourse to this mechanism at one time or another during the 19th century. As for relying “mainly” on Calhoun, in an 11-page chapter on the subject my discussion of Calhoun amounts to half a page. My main source, in fact, is Thomas Jefferson…”

As for myself I’d be as happy as a pig in something if they merely settled for some Will Rogers. ““When you get into trouble 5000 miles from home, you’ve got to have been looking for it”